From Freaks to Goddesses

In his book Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self, Leslie Fiedler, reaching back initially to his own childhood experiences, uses a Freudian lens to demonstrate that the exaggerated corporeal difference of the sideshow attraction embodied childhood nightmares and anxieties over scale, the limi...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Postmodern culture 1997-09, Vol.8 (1)
Main Author: Martin, Charles D
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age of Enlightenment
Children
Disability
Embodiment
Fairs & exhibitions
Feminism
Rhetoric
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In his book Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self, Leslie Fiedler, reaching back initially to his own childhood experiences, uses a Freudian lens to demonstrate that the exaggerated corporeal difference of the sideshow attraction embodied childhood nightmares and anxieties over scale, the limits of the body, individuality, even the primal scene of the child's creation. [...]unlike some of her predecessors--Bakhtin and Fiedler, for instance--she finds little difference in effect between the display of the extraordinary body as an anti-authoritarian exhibition of a world turned topsy turvy (a prelapsarian vision of folk culture before the Age of Reason); the Barnum presentation of the sideshow freak as prodigy and potential humbug, a spectacle to be deciphered; and the rational rhetoric of medical case history that diminishes the extraordinary body to an anomalous specimen of a malady in need of treatment.
ISSN:1053-1920
1053-1920
DOI:10.1353/pmc.1997.0040