Cain's brothers: Facial disfigurement and masculinity in 19th and 20th century narratives.

摘要

Traditions in narrative representation in the 19th and 20th centuries, including fiction, nonfiction, film, and other media, of the male disfigured face were surveyed and specific texts, drawn from three national cultures (French, English, and American), were analyzed in depth, using various critical lenses, including Freud's notion of the uncanny and Kristeva's of abjection.; In the nineteenth century, earlier texts, such as those written by Hugo and Dickens, emphasized issues of religion, spirituality, and morality, while later texts, such as those written by Stevenson, Wilde, and Leroux, reflected medical discourse on disfigurement and masculinity.; In the twentieth century, texts about male disfigurement inchildhood and adolescence form a new tradition: in the former, relationships between mother and son dominate and questions of congenital versus acquired disfigurement become central, while the latter center on questions of sexuality and marriageability.; A second twentieth century tradition is that of texts in which disfigurement is acquired as a result of warfare. In such texts, questions of wounded masculinity, of romantic and sexual success, and of reintegration into society are raised. Parallel to these questions are issues raised by changing technologies of war and the relative positioning of soldiers towards the individuals they disfigure or who disfigure them.; Finally, texts in which multiple, simultaneous identities are present were examined, building on Kimberle Crenshaw's notion of intersectionality and Derrida's concepts of erasure and hauntologie were applied to film adaptations: each of these texts was adapted into a film in which one of the multiple identities was essentially erased.; A number of themes emerged from the analysis of these texts and the traditions they form, many of which may most easily be summarized as issues of the relationship between the face, gender, personhood, and selfhood, as well as the predominantly nondisfigured and nondisabled audience's responses to such narratives as ways of working through their own usually unconscious fears of their relationship to the uncanny.