Defects: Engendering the Modern Body

348 Pages·2000·19.861 MB·English

by  Helen Elizabeth Deutsch (editor), Felicity Nussbaum (editor)

AN
Engendering the
Modern Body
Helen Deutsch and
Felicity Nussbaum
MICHIGAN

“DEFECTS”
Corporealities: Discourses of Disability
David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder, editors
Books available in the series:
“Defects”: Engendering the Modern Body
edited by Helen Deutsch and Felicity Nussbaum
Revels in Madness: Insanity in Medicine and Literature
by Allen Thiher
Points of Contact: Disability, Art, and Culture
edited by Susan Crutchfield and Marcy Epstein
A History of Disability
by Henri-Jacques Stiker
“DEFECTS”: Engendering the Modern Body
Helen Deutsch and Felicity Nussbaum, Editors
Ann Arbor
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS
Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2000
All rights reserved
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
2002 2001 2000 2003 he ay 2 ok
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise,
without the written permission of the publisher.
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from
the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Defects : engendering the modern body / Helen Deutsch and Felicity
Nussbaum, editors.
p. cm.— (Corporealities)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-472-09698-2 (cloth : acid-free paper)
ISBN 0-472-06698-6 (pbk. : acid-free paper)
1. Disability studies—Great Britain—History—17th century. 2.
Disability studies—Great Britain—History—18th century. 3.
Disability studies—France—History—17th century. 4. Disability
studies—France—History—1 8th century. I. Deutsch, Helen, 1961-
II. Nussbaum, Felicity. III. Series.
HV1568.25.G7D44 1999
363.4’0941—de21 99-6767
CrP
For Michael Meranze, Marc Wilett,
and in memory of
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Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
xi
Introduction
Part 1. Disability
Dumb Virgins, Blind Ladies, and Eunuchs:
Fictions of Defect 31
Felicity Nussbaum
Dr. Johnson, Amelia, and the Discourse of Disability
in the Eighteenth Century 54
Lennard J. Davis
Paper, Picture, Sign: Conversations between the
Deaf, the Hard of Hearing, and Others 75
Nicholas Mirzoeff
Part 2. Monstrosity
In the Bodyshop: Human Exhibition in Early
Modern England 95
Stephen Pender
Making a Monster: Socializing Sexuality and the
Monster of 1790 127
Barbara M. Benedict
viii ¢ Contents
Monstrous Knowledge: Representing the National
Body in Eighteenth-Century Ireland 154
Joel Reed
The Author as Monster: The Case of Dr. Johnson 177
Helen Deutsch
Part 3. Imperfections
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the
“Glass Revers'd" of Female Old Age 213
Jill Campbell
“Perfect” Flowers, Monstrous Women:
Eighteenth-Century Botany and the Modern
Gendered Subject 252
Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook
Obedient Faces: The Virtue of Deformity in Sarah
Scott's Fiction 280
Robert W. Jones
Afterword: Liberalism, Feminism, and Defect 303
Cora Kaplan
Contributors 319
Index 323