Mind over Body? Stigma, Staring, and the Self

Summary

ovelty is fragile and staring volatile because the longer we look, the more accustomed a once surprising sight becomes … S eeing disability reminds us of what Bryan S. Turner (2006) calls “ontological contingency,” the truth of our body's vulnerability to the randomness of fate. Each one of us ineluctably acquires one or more disabilities—naming them variably as illness, disease, injury, old age, failure, dysfunction, or dependence.

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY German literary canon does not, as a rule, focus specifically on unexpected bodies in central characters, with some notable exceptions such as those discussed by my esteemed colleagues in this forum. This being said, there is an emphasis on stigma across literary genres and periods in this century of German literature. This thematization of stigma and the precarity of individual existence culminates in an intense interest in psychological pathologies in Sturm und Drang as well as Weimar classicism. This interest has problematized distinctions between mind and body and emphasized the influence of an individual's social and material context on their psychology. I n this forum entry, I attempt to outline parallels in the portrayal and function of various stigmas in this broad literary period, which is credited with the development of modern individuality. I posit that Garland-Thomson's theory of the extraordinary body is an extension of this modern individual, who, contrary to popular understanding, is in fact born of, sustained, and afflicted by stigma.

When we think of the individual in eighteenth-century German literature and especially the literature of the Goethezeit, we think of an individual with agency. A ll men, according to Locke, are Adam—created in God's image and sovereign over their inheritance. A ccording to Kant, every individual is charged to use his own mind. With the rise of Lutheranism and especially among Pietists, it became the individual's responsibility to find his or her own private way to God.

In literature, we see the creation and rise of the novel—an individualistic endeavor if ever there was one. I n sentimental works, Enlightenment values and pure emotions lead the hero or heroine to a good life of moral steadfastness in the face of an immoral world. Gellert's Swedish Countess weathers political intrigue and physical capture. S he witnesses incest and suicide—all unscathed. Her happy ending is directly attributed to her strength of character.