‘Brilliant, bright, boiling words’: literary disability, language and the writing body in the work of Christopher Nolan

Abstract

This article uses theory on disability, embodiment and language to explore the production, context and presentation of two pieces of life-writing by Christopher Nolan. It examines Nolan’s unusual use of language and form in his presentations of an experience of disability, and considers its literary and political significance. Consideration is given to the role played within language, and by extension society, by the disabled writing body, as a point of resistance to dominant discourse, and as a point of origin both for language that subverts dominant, disabling language and for ‘new’ language that might replace it.