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{
    "pk": 40608,
    "title": "That Hateful Tail: The Sirena as Figure for Disability in Italian Literature and Beyond",
    "subtitle": null,
    "abstract": "This paper traces the appearance of the siren-mermaid figure throughout Italian literature, arguing that the figure has been used – from Dante to the present day – to represent disabled female subjects, while also acting as a figure for narrative itself. I begin with a survey of examples from the classical, medieval and early modern periods before turning to recent autobiographical texts by disabled women authors. I focus on Mirella Santamato’s \nIo, sirena fuor d’acqua\n, showing the way the author grapples with the relationship between mind and disabled body, as staged upon the partially human body of the mermaid. The mermaid’s \ncoda\n, as stand-in for both the phallus and the writing pen, reveals a hybridity that bridges gender categories, as well as those of human and animal, oral and written, disabled and non-disabled. Drawing parallels to medical literature on the surgical treatment of the condition “sirenomelia” (fused legs), I argue that the insistence upon the separation of the mermaid's legs combines heteronormative fantasies of controlling the monstrous female body with the normalizing imperatives of medical cure, illustrating the extent to which ableist ideologies undergird and reinforce normative expectations regarding gender and sexuality, and vice versa. Finally, drawing from Agamben’s \nL’Aperto\n, I argue for an understanding of the \nsirena\n in disability narratives as a figure for the inseparability of body and narrative, and thus for an understanding of the materiality of disability as inherent to self-expression and disabled identity.",
    "language": "en",
    "license": {
        "name": "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial  4.0",
        "short_name": "CC BY-NC 4.0",
        "text": "Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\n\nNonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.\n\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.",
        "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0"
    },
    "keywords": [
        {
            "word": "Italian Literature"
        },
        {
            "word": "Disability Studies"
        },
        {
            "word": "Feminist theory"
        },
        {
            "word": "Mermaids"
        }
    ],
    "section": "Images and Identities",
    "is_remote": true,
    "remote_url": "https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3jd296nm",
    "frozenauthors": [
        {
            "first_name": "Kate",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Noson",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "UC Berkeley",
            "department": "None"
        }
    ],
    "date_submitted": "2015-07-17T00:52:44Z",
    "date_accepted": "2015-07-17T00:52:44Z",
    "date_published": "2016-12-14T22:58:23Z",
    "render_galley": null,
    "galleys": [
        {
            "label": "",
            "type": "pdf",
            "path": "https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cisj/article/40608/galley/30486/download/"
        }
    ]
}