Rowan Maddox holds three degrees from the University of Leeds (BA & MA, Critical Theory and Mphil, Sociology and Social Policy) and is now in the final stages of their doctorate at the University of Bergen. Their thesis is a theoretical interrogation and exploration into how disability and gender are historically constituted categories and how the logics of these categories are being mobilised in the push back against transgender lives. Address: Senter for Kvinnes- og Kjønnforskning University of Bergen Parkveien 9 Bergen 5020
Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 2021
The article reads Walter Benjamin against the grain to find Enlightenment and post Enlightenment ... more The article reads Walter Benjamin against the grain to find Enlightenment and post Enlightenment constructions of disability within his texts. Benjamin’s keen criticism of bourgeois humanism and its attendants, capital, progress narratives, individualism, and hierarchies can be seen most clearly through an examination of the strange creatures who inhabit the borders of his thought. The argument is that positioning these as figures of disability sheds further light on Benjamin’s ethical and political concerns after World War I. Primarily focusing on the mute figures that appear in The Mummerehlen and The Storyteller: Reflections on the Work of Nikolai Leskóv, the article puts these two texts in dialogue with one another to argue that Benjamin saw a radical disruptiveness in non-normative and not-quite-human corporeality.
The overarching concern of this thesis is discovering what it is that autism does to gender. This... more The overarching concern of this thesis is discovering what it is that autism does to gender. This thesis argues that autism has come to constitute a form of gender trouble. Thus, the central question is how people assigned female at birth who have been formally diagnosed with autism as adults understand their gendered identity pre and post diagnosis. This thesis ascertains whether the diagnosis of autism holds any significance in how autistic individuals understand, think about and produce their gender. This thesis is interested in how an autistic identity is negotiated and how an autistic subjectivity emerges. It takes as its central proposition that autism is a masculinised diagnostic category and one which is produced and knowable through a masculinised discourse. Furthermore, autism is categorised as a neurodevelopmental disorder, thus, it becomes attached to the self or the ‘I’ of the person diagnosed through contemporary understandings of neurology and the self. This thesis de...
Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 2021
The article reads Walter Benjamin against the grain to find Enlightenment and post Enlightenment ... more The article reads Walter Benjamin against the grain to find Enlightenment and post Enlightenment constructions of disability within his texts. Benjamin’s keen criticism of bourgeois humanism and its attendants, capital, progress narratives, individualism, and hierarchies can be seen most clearly through an examination of the strange creatures who inhabit the borders of his thought. The argument is that positioning these as figures of disability sheds further light on Benjamin’s ethical and political concerns after World War I. Primarily focusing on the mute figures that appear in The Mummerehlen and The Storyteller: Reflections on the Work of Nikolai Leskóv, the article puts these two texts in dialogue with one another to argue that Benjamin saw a radical disruptiveness in non-normative and not-quite-human corporeality.
The overarching concern of this thesis is discovering what it is that autism does to gender. This... more The overarching concern of this thesis is discovering what it is that autism does to gender. This thesis argues that autism has come to constitute a form of gender trouble. Thus, the central question is how people assigned female at birth who have been formally diagnosed with autism as adults understand their gendered identity pre and post diagnosis. This thesis ascertains whether the diagnosis of autism holds any significance in how autistic individuals understand, think about and produce their gender. This thesis is interested in how an autistic identity is negotiated and how an autistic subjectivity emerges. It takes as its central proposition that autism is a masculinised diagnostic category and one which is produced and knowable through a masculinised discourse. Furthermore, autism is categorised as a neurodevelopmental disorder, thus, it becomes attached to the self or the ‘I’ of the person diagnosed through contemporary understandings of neurology and the self. This thesis de...
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