Flannery O'Connor: Writing a Theology of Disabled Humanity

Postscript: Complications of Language and Representation

109 POSTSCRIPT Complications of Language and Representation Despite the heavy influence of disability studies upon this book, I have attempted to keep the main text of the book free of disability-studies language and academic arguments. My goal has been to reimagine O’Connor’s work from a disability perspective and thereby to offer a new interpretation of her signi ficance.The danger of my method lies in being misunderstood, and one concern in particular may have left readers with some discomfort, especially those familiar with disability studies. The correct use of language concerning disability is complex and continuously evolving, and the literary use of disability as a metaphor is even more complicated. The purpose of this postscript is to uncover the complexity of the issues involved as well as to provide some explanation for why I at times used the terms disability and grotesque interchangeably. Disability studies tends to critique any use of disabilityas -metaphor, which O’Connor uses regularly in her work. The problem disability studies has with authors using disabilityas -metaphor is related to how our culture perceives disability negatively. Representations of disability in literature are nearly 110 Flannery O’Connor always negative metaphors, which only serve to reinforce negative stereotypes. The point I want to make concerning O’Connor’s use of disability-as-metaphor is not that O’Connor’s representations of disability are above reproach. Sometimes O’Connor does use disability as little more than a metaphor to propel forward the action and meaning of a story, and these instances require a strong critique.A disability perspective is right to suggest that the use of disability-as-metaphor reinforces the cultural tendency to totalize persons with disabilities and assign some negative meaning to their condition. However, to lump together all of O’Connor’s uses of the disabled and grotesque as merely metaphorical or just a literary tool fails to observe the larger categories of meaning O’Connor employs as well as the development of her technical use of the grotesque. To put it differently, O’Connor’s use of disability is not so simplistic as equating disability with the aesthetic category of the grotesque, at least not solely in a negative sense. In light of the above, I proceeded cautiously and with a certain dialectic as I explored the complex relationship between disability and the grotesque in O’Connor’s fiction. I sought to affirm a disability critique of the reductive, aesthetic use of disability-as-metaphor while acknowledging the necessity and possible benefits of a new vision of disability-as-metaphor in O’Connor’s writings. What makes O’Connor’s employment of disability so complex is the tension between her regular use of disability as a negative metaphor and the fact that the larger concepts and intentions behind O’Connor’s use of disability are often aligned with the values and aims of disability studies . Adding to the complexity, O’Connor so thoroughly refutes modernity that she implicates even disability studies in the process. Instead of using the grotesque and disabilities only as metaphor, O’Connor comes to use the grotesque to challenge modern social perceptions of what is good and bad, to embody the necessity of accepting limitations, and to create an example of how what we consider grotesque can be a conduit for God’s grace in the world. Postscript 111 From a disability perspective, O’Connor’s employment of the grotesque is problematic because the grotesque runs the risk of turning her characters into mere caricatures. Many of her earliest readers viewed her stories as mere embodiments of caricatures, with Northern literary critics laughing at the bumbling idiots in the South. Of course O’Connor’s Southern family and fellow Milledgevillians were afraid of becoming the objects of ridicule. At first glance, O’Connor’s caricatures perpetuate harmful stereotypes of the South—of race, of conservative Christians, and of the physically and mentally disabled. As disability studies has begun to engage literary studies, its primary concern has been with the way disability is represented in literature. Authors of fiction include disability, as with every other detail, for a specific purpose, and disability generally gets used as a negative metaphor.1 O’Connor’s representations of the disabled are no exception.2 O’Connor’s and her critics’ discussion of human variation in her fiction, therefore, has largely used the aesthetic language of...