Of Non-Mice and Non-Men: Against Essentialism in Joshua Ferris's The Unnamed

Abstract

Noticing the recent trend in disability studies to entertain essentialism in an attempt to capture the efficacy of identity politics, this essay articulates the reductive implications of doing so. By way of a meta-theoretical synthesis that guides a reading of The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris - a novel that defies categories precisely by defying the categorization of its protagonist's fictional disability in which he is unable to stop himself from walking - disability theory merges here with a range of speculative realisms to expose how the dangers of essentialism are reflected even in the very term "ableism."