『코끼리 인간』다시 읽기: 장애의 문화적 재현에 대한 통섭적 접근

Re-reading The Elephant Man: An Approach to the Cultural Representation of Disability based on the Consilience Theory

Postmodern insights are appropriate and useful for the development of comprehensive disability discourse. Disability studies has been developed based on the contemporary Zeitgeist, such as postmodernism and consilience theory. Disability studies is an emerging interdisciplinary field of scholarship that critically examines issues related to the dynamic interplays between disability and various sociocultural aspects. The analysis of the topic of disability in literary works reveals its widespread cultural and political implications for society as a whole. In The Elephant Man, Joseph Merrick is shown as a Victorian sideshow ‘freak’ whose deformed and disabled body earned him the name of ‘elephant man.’ This drama explores the meaning and questions about disability as a socio-political status, along with the development of the play. The dramatic representation of disability in this play suggests some possibilities of cultural and political resistance discourse. Aesthetic of difference is an innovative discourse that confronts oppressive social reality and converts it into something liberatory.