Embodying Difference

This book explores how phenomenological ideas about embodiment, perception, and lived experience are discussed within disability studies, critical race theory, and queer studies. Building on these disciplines, it offers readings of memoirs and novels that address the consequences of stigmatization and the bodily dimensions of social differences. The texts include Robert F. Murphys The Body Silent, Simi Lintons My Body Politic, Rod Michalkos The Two-in-One: Walking with Smokie, Walking with Blindness, three memoirs by Stephen Kuusisto, Vincent O. Carters The Bern Book, as well as two novels, Matthew Griffins Hide and Armistead Maupins Maybe the Moon. All of the texts discussed in this book negotiate the significance of bodily and perceptual habits, the influence of language and culture on embodiment, the importance of relationality and community, the severe effects of misrecognition, and the possibilities of emancipation and socialrecognition. Hence, they are read as pioneering contributions to the emerging field of critical phenomenology.