TY - CHAP
T1 - Complicating the semiotics of loss
T2 - Gender, power, and amputation narratives
AU - Wånggren, Lena
PY - 2021/8/11
Y1 - 2021/8/11
N2 - Focusing on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century accounts of non-medical amputation in literary and cinematic narratives, this chapter, through a focus on embodiment and affect, explores the cultural and political—and often gendered—signification of corporeal dismemberment. Distancing itself from a psychoanalytic reading of amputation, it moves toward a politicized, historical, and specifically gendered reading, examining amputation as an expression and contestation of social values and hierarchies. Examining W. C. Morrow’s “His Unconquerable Enemy” (1889), Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Case of Lady Sannox” (1894), and the silent feature The Unknown (1927), the chapter shows how concerns of power, control, and gender are intricately linked in these amputation narratives.
AB - Focusing on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century accounts of non-medical amputation in literary and cinematic narratives, this chapter, through a focus on embodiment and affect, explores the cultural and political—and often gendered—signification of corporeal dismemberment. Distancing itself from a psychoanalytic reading of amputation, it moves toward a politicized, historical, and specifically gendered reading, examining amputation as an expression and contestation of social values and hierarchies. Examining W. C. Morrow’s “His Unconquerable Enemy” (1889), Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Case of Lady Sannox” (1894), and the silent feature The Unknown (1927), the chapter shows how concerns of power, control, and gender are intricately linked in these amputation narratives.
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-74377-2_3
DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-74377-2_3
M3 - Chapter (peer-reviewed)
SN - 9783030743765
SN - 9783030743796
T3 - Literary Disability Studies
SP - 43
EP - 59
BT - Amputation in Literature and Film
A2 - Grayson, Erik
A2 - Scheurer, Maren
PB - Palgrave Macmillan
ER -