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Literary Representation of Disability as an Identity in Ludmila Ulitskaya's Short Story “Daughter Of Bukhara”
Petra Grebenac
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu
Sažetak
The paper analyzes the short story “Daughter of Bukhara” (“Doch' Bukhary”) by contemporary Russian author Lyudmila Ulitskaya, which deals with the problem of growing up of a girl with Down syndrome in the post-war Soviet era in Moscow. The analysis of the short story reconstructs and problematizes the mechanisms of identity formation of the protagonist in a broader and narrower social context, taking into account the achievements of poststructuralist anti-essentialist theory of identity formation and of disability studies, an academic discipline that advocates understanding of disability as one of identity categories and an outcome of processes of exclusion, stigmatization and marginalization. All mechanisms of repression and discrimination of disability (visible in the example of the relationship of institutions, neighbors, great-grandfather and father to the main character, the girl Milochka), as well as the conduct of other marginalized characters (mother, Pasha and Grigori) toward the stigmatized girl with Down syndrome, actively participate in the formation of her identity as rejected (reduced to the category of sick, insufficient), but also able from its marginal position to encourage a change in the generally accepted way of thinking about (ab)normal and to reverse the given cultural patterns. The analysis of the short story shows that Milochka's disability is not presented as a lack and obstacle to the realization of her happiness in life, but as a precondition for a different view of the world and a happier being in it. In a relationship filled with love and understanding, which Milochka first builds with her seriously ill mother, and then with her husband Grigori, who also has Down syndrome, the protagonist's disability becomes an identity category with which she gladly identifies and which she accepts as integral to, rather than the sole attribute of, her identity.
Ključne riječi
contemporary Russian literature; Ludmila Ulitskaya; identity; disability
Hrčak ID:
286008
URI
Datum izdavanja:
21.11.2022.
Posjeta: 431 *