Disability and Life Writing in Post-Independence Ireland by Elizabeth Grubgeld

Abstract

Reviewed by: Disability and Life Writing in Post-Independence Ireland by Elizabeth Grubgeld Bridget English Disability and Life Writing in Post-Independence Ireland, by Elizabeth Grubgeld (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, 182 p., hardcover, $89.99) Disability studies rose to prominence in the late 1990s, and while the field was initially beleaguered with problems of representation and a lack of a clear methodology, it has become increasingly intersectional, focusing attention on the lived experiences of oppressed subjects through the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexual identity. In recent years disability studies has proven particularly enticing to social justice activists and scholars, and to specialists in Irish Studies concerned with postcolonial trauma and embodiment. This scholarship has largely focused on writers like James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, whose work features disabled or immobile characters. Elizabeth Grubgeld's essential new book, Disability and Life Writing in Post-Independence Ireland, departs from these fictional interpretations, instead analyzing nonfictional narratives—specifically autobiography and life writing—to consider how this kind of writing captures the tensions between disability and class, and reveals the ways that private life is shaped by institutional structures. Disability and Life Writing treads the lesser-known terrain of Irish life writing and examines these narratives in correlation with the development of the Irish disability rights movement. In the first chapter Grubgeld distinguishes her work as a literary scholar from that of researchers in politics and sociology and makes a case for the study of life writing that underscores the "relations between disablement and economic inequities, as well as calling into question the individualist sentiment of much public discourse involving disability and the pressure to repress rather than articulate difference." Her aim is to situate these narratives in the context of the colonial and postcolonial state and thus push beyond some of the criticisms that have plagued the larger field of disability studies: namely its failures to move past a middle-class and primarily Anglo-American model. Disability and Life Writing in Post-Independence Ireland successfully bridges the gap between disability studies, Irish cultural history, and the genre of life writing. However, it is worth noting that the majority of the narratives analyzed in Disability and Life Writing are written by cisgendered white men, though Grubgeld does balance these accounts with references to women such as Nuala O'Faolain and longer discussions of the autobiographies of women such as Mossie Forde, Dorine Reihill, and Mary Duffy. Grubgeld is constrained by the published memoirs available to her from this time period, though given the current popularity of this genre, more could be done in the final chapters to address these concerns. The focus also remains on physical impairments, such as blindness and cerebral palsy, rather than intellectual disabilities or mental illness, [End Page 140] which might include more material by women. Grubgeld does acknowledge that women "often produce significant variations on these tropes, and future studies of writings by immigrants and people of diverse ethnicities, sexuality, and ways of life … may uncover entirely different forms of subjectivity and modes of telling" (14), thus paving the way for future scholarship in these areas. The five subsequent chapters each combine disability with another theme: class, testimony, literature, sports, and blogs. These categories reveal the wide-ranging scope of Grubgeld's study and the abundance of material on this topic. The second chapter begins by articulating the book's argument, "that disability life writing in Ireland takes a particular shape influenced by cultural factors and the protocols of genre." Memoirs of blindness are examined in the context of genres such as the bildungsroman and the extent to which these autobiographies challenge the power of religious institutions over private life. For Grubgeld, class is one of the most important factors in determining both the origin and treatment of disability. Thus, Sean O'Casey's autobiography, I Knock at the Door (1939), which attempts to articulate a "collective history of a colonized and subjugated population" but shockingly refuses to incorporate the voices of other disabled children and adults, is contrasted with broadcaster Joe Bollard's memoir Out of Sight (1998), which highlights how the conditions of poverty affect, and in some cases even cause, physical...