“Something Else Already Opening up.” The Utopian Impulse and the Novum of Disability in Missouri Williams’s The Doloriad

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article focuses on a close analysis of The Doloriad, a 2022 debut novel by Missouri Williams. The post-apocalyptic text is read as a critical dystopia, which, while representing a destroyed world inhabited by degenerated humanity, implies a possibility of a better reality in the future. Examining the novel’s employment of disability in the context of disability studies, in particular, in view of the concept of narrative prosthesis, and employing Yi-Fu Tuan’s distinction between space and place to understand the core conflict between world orders and the characters associated with them, the author argues that The Doloriad can be perceived as an unusual text in which the utopian impulse is correlated with the novum (sensu Darko Suvin) of disability.