ABSTRACT
Exclusionary practices ensnaring disabled persons are evidences of man’s ill orientation on what it means to be human. In this critical treatise, comedy and critical disability studies question the basis for the perfect affirmation of being. This amalgam of perspectives considers it irrational for the society to craft ‘perfection of the body’ as a paradigm for humanness? Contending this disorder in a fluid universe, the comic orientation of ableism subscribes to the notion that man can make and unmake circumstances that threaten his existence. It connotes the idea of fluidity which ponders on the boundless possibilities of the human spirit irrespective of bodily impairment. As a counter hegemonic discourse, the social model of critical disability studies dismisses the negative connotations of disability by bringing up the concepts of fluidity and transgression to establish disability as a positive identity, thus creating a new society that is responsive to the yearnings of freedom from the disabled. As seen in Ahmadou Kouroumi’s Allah Is Not Obliged, from the comical perspective, reveals that the disabled characters, are not deterred either by oppression or the disability itself. Rather, they are fluid in moving across the boundaries of otherness to achieve heroic feats. In its deconstructive nature, this reading discards the negative reception of comedy by disability theorists by incorporating it into a larger emancipatory discourse. The resolve of this paper is that the text is a comic one that critiques the ideology of ableism from the theoretical provisions of critical disability studies. The tandem binding comedy and critical disability studies is located in their quest for the emergence of a new human community where life is celebrated, thus, echoing Northrop Frye’s mythos of spring. Hence, this reading of Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah Is Not Obliged affords the rethinking of ableism, from the lens of critical disability studies and comedy.
Keywords: Ableism, Critical Disability Studies, Humanness, Exclusionary Practices, Fluidity, Transgression, Comic Orientation
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Obayi, Onyekachi Venatus is a budding literary critic with a high regard and value for knowledge. He is currently a final year English Student at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. His Philosophy of life is that man only begins to live when the divinity of God begins to find expression in his being. Onyekachi is currently the associate editor for critical writing for Muse 49. He believes that literature is a platform that offers man access to come to a deep contemplation about his existence. He is the associate editor (Critical Writing) for The Muse No. 49.