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Extraordinary Bodies

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

Disability studies / feminist theory

It is a foundational text uniting disability studies with feminist and literary theory.

Synopsis

A feminist study of how American culture and literature construct the disabled body as a deviant spectacle against a normative standard.

Core passage idea

Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted work

The 'normate' is a cultural figure defined by marking certain bodies as extraordinary, deviant, and other.

It reveals disability as a representational system of power, not a fixed bodily fact, intertwined with gender and race.

To avoid a bubble

Pair with Disability Theory.

Reading note

Read it for its close cultural and literary readings, watching how representation does political work.

Best paired with

Disability Theory

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