Literary and Cultural Depictions of Multiple Sclerosis in Kuwait

Abstract

Literary disability studies focuses on reading the representation of disability in literary and cultural texts. While there has been a plethora of Western scholarship around anglophone literature and readings of disability discourse, there remains little scholarship concerning Arab disability and narratives that examine disability. The silence around disability is staggering and part of the larger metanarrative of disability as taboo. The article examines the depictions of multiple sclerosis (MS) through different literary and cultural artifacts to arrive at a metanarrative of MS in Kuwait. The writers challenge and re-affirm the metanarrative of MS through their fictional depictions but also engage with real and lived experiences.