Aesthetic Nervousness

Ato Quayson is professor of English and inaugural director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. He taught for ten years on the Faculty of English and was also director of the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cambridge. He has also published widely on African literature, literary theory, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies.

• Preface Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Aesthetic Nervousness 2. A Typology of Disability Representation 3. Samuel Beckett: Disability as Hermeneutical Impasse 4. Toni Morrison: Disability, Ambiguity, and Perspectival Modulations 5. Wole Soyinka: Disability, Maimed Rites, and the Systemic Uncanny 6. J. M. Coetzee: Speech, Silence, Autism, and Dialogism 7. The Repeating Island: Race, Difference, Disability, and the Heterogeneities of Robben Island's History Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

Quayson raises illuminating points... and reveals how disability is perceived in a multifaceted society... Highly recommended. CHOICE Quayson's new work is at once learned, wide-ranging, cosmopolitan, and meticulous. -- Lennard J. Davis Modern Philology