Editorial

Abstract

The present issue (vol. 3, no. 2) of the transcript: An e-Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies is a themed one with special focus on Disability Studies. With this aim in view, the issue comprises four articles and one book-review on various aspects of the area chosen for analysis. The subjects explored range from locating female experiences of disability and sexuality, followed by an analysis on the politics of subjugating female bodies to power structures, and then comprising two genre-based studies—one on Graphic novels and the other on cinema—thereby enabling the development of a truly multimedial perspective on Disability Studies. In her article on the twin issues of sexuality and violence, and their joint interface with women with disabilities, Dr. Mukul Chaturvedi analyses select narratives of such women, including a few court cases, and studies how violence inflicted upon them is often examined without due cognisance of the sexuality of the victims concerned. This engagement with the disciplinary rigours of repressive structures continues in the article by Rishiraj Sen & Shweta Jha which deals with a select lesser-explored short stories of Chughtai to show how regimes of surveillance, norms, and punishment are deployed to construct desexualised female bodies amenable to the unjust strictures of patriarchy. Mushrifa Rahim, in her article, examines the efficacy of the Graphic novels with its visual dynamics as a medium of expressing the intricate experiential dynamics of disability and also enabling newer orientations on the subject-matter explored through its medium. Roy Jreijiry & Carla Dreij continue this “medial” engagement with the representation of disability through an analysis of Lebanese cinema comprising characters played by actors with both assumed and real-life disabilities. The authors also shed light on the problematic consequences of normalising disability at the cost of trivialising or making light of the special needs of the persons with disabilities. The book-review by Dr. Krishna Kumar S examines Andrew Leland’s The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight as a work that looks at blindness both as a lived experience and a subject of historical inquiry, and shows how writing as an activity could ultimately prove to be an enabling experience and a faculty for “sightedness” thereby effectively countering the limitations of blindness.