Event Title

Avatar: Opening Pandora's Box to a Post Human Future

Location

Goldstein Student Center

Event Website

http://crippingthecon.com/

Start Date

11-4-2013 10:30 AM

End Date

11-4-2013 12:00 PM

Description

American discourse about disability and impairment is based on assumptions of what disability is. Challenging these assumptions is among the goals of disability studies. This thesis first explores the construction of presumed defect in images of disability in the 2009 sci-fi fantasy Avatar, written and directed by James Cameron. In the narrative, Jake Sully chooses to abandon his human paraplegic body to become an able-bodied Na’vi. This erasure of disability is what Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell theorize as narrative prosthesis. Thus, Pandora’s box is opened to a problematic strategy of eliminating presumed defect rather than undermining the presumption.

Comments

Full presentation will be available in August 2013.

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Apr 11th, 10:30 AM Apr 11th, 12:00 PM

Avatar: Opening Pandora's Box to a Post Human Future

Goldstein Student Center

American discourse about disability and impairment is based on assumptions of what disability is. Challenging these assumptions is among the goals of disability studies. This thesis first explores the construction of presumed defect in images of disability in the 2009 sci-fi fantasy Avatar, written and directed by James Cameron. In the narrative, Jake Sully chooses to abandon his human paraplegic body to become an able-bodied Na’vi. This erasure of disability is what Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell theorize as narrative prosthesis. Thus, Pandora’s box is opened to a problematic strategy of eliminating presumed defect rather than undermining the presumption.

https://surface.syr.edu/bts_conf/2013/Presentations/15