عنوان

Compulsory Futures:

Number

TL1fv0w8dh

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

Compulsory Futures:

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Apgar, Amanda Elizabeth

Title Proper by Another Author

Childhood Disability and Growing Up Straight

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Mankekar, Purnima;Deutsch, Helen

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

UCLA

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2018

Body granting the degree

UCLA

Text preceding or following the note

2018

Text of Note

This dissertation analyzes memoirs written by parents of children with disabilities, a subgenre of "special needs" memoirs. Using tools of narrative analysis and feminist interpretive methods, I contextualize my analyses to the social, political, and economic conditions that enable, or limit, recognition of non-normative identities and embodiments. I demonstrate that the figure of the disabled child uniquely articulates how gender, heterosexuality, and typical ability are mutually constituted, and significantly, how the life stages of childhood and adulthood are not only relational, but made intelligible by developmental paradigms that assume heteronormative-ability. In the absence of typical ability, heteronormativity is a narrative device that causes disabled children to "overcome" their disabilities and achieve a "normal" childhood (and future normal adulthood). I organize "special needs" memoirs according to three narrative registers: the ordinary, the extraordinary, and the disruptive. My analyses show how these narrative templates, which intend to be recuperative and to promote inclusion, inscribe disabled children into a normative life course overdetermined by limited narratives of progress, individualism, and autonomy. I demonstrate that the subgenre of parenting memoirs as a whole, as well as the narrative templates that dominate it, align with neoliberalism's mandates for self-improvement and to make a project of one's life.

Apgar, Amanda Elizabeth

Mankekar, Purnima;Deutsch, Helen

UCLA

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y