BIODIAL: The Biopolitics of Disability, Illness, and Animality: Cultural Representations and Societal Significance

The purpose of this project has been to investigate how some human and nonhuman lives are socially constructed as less valuable than others, and how such constructions are informed and troubled by cultural, literary, and social representations of disability, illness, and animality. The interdisciplinary core of the project is to link disability studies--which can include illness studies--with animal studies within an overarching framework of biopolitics, despite the fact that disability studies and animal studies have often resisted biopolitical intersections between them. This theoretical background can illuminate cultural attitudes and problems related to disability, illness, and animality, as well as policy discussions and debates in the Norwegian public sphere. BIODIAL focuses on various ways of thinking about what it means to be human - as opposed to animal - when analyzing literary and cultural representations of humans with disabilities and illnesses. We have thus aimed to advance research in the humanities and the social sciences by further developing disability studies and animal studies and the ways in which these new interdisciplinary branches of inquiry intersect with key questions of biopolitics and bioethics. Biopolitical questions include which forms of life should be allowed to live or die with impunity, including populations that can be deemed disposable or less valuable by the state. These questions connect disability, illness, and animality to gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and class, as well as educational policies, workplace conditions, and legislation regarding issues such as discrimination, accessibility, accommodation, euthanasia, assisted suicide, abortion, health care, vivisection, animal experimentation, factory farming, animal welfare, and veterinary medicine. Our method primarily has been to apply critical discourse analysis to literary and cultural texts, analyzing representations of disability and illness in relation to broader social issues. Team members include Michael Lundblad, Professor of English-Language Literature (Primary Investigator), Jan Grue, Professor of Qualitative Methods in the Department of Special Needs Education (Co-Investigator), Sara Orning, Postdoctoral Fellow in Special Needs Education, and Tom Bradstreet, PhD Fellow in English-Language Literature. Research for the BIODIAL project has resulted (thus far) in an edited special issue of New Literary History, an academic monograph, five journal articles, three book chapters, and three interviews with pioneering figures in the fields of disability studies, posthumanism, and animal studies. Over the course of the project period, team members gave over two dozen conference papers, seminars, and invited lectures. Lundblad was invited to talk about his research in relation to the project internationally at universities in Sweden, Denmark, England, and Taiwan. Funding from the Research Council enabled BIODIAL to organize and host three major international symposia at the University of Oslo and the House of Literature, featuring world-renowned invited lecturers. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we were unable to implement two additional planned events. Team members participated in public forums and contributed to news outlets such as Morgenbladet, Klassekampens Bokmagasin, and NRK P2 radio. Another key form of public communication came through The BIODIAL Blog, created and edited by BIODIAL team members. This blog allowed us to communicate research from the project with an educated public audience, featuring 8 blog posts that engaged with films, TV series, and other well-known literary and cultural texts. Since disability or illness will ultimately impact almost everyone at some point in their lives, and since so many people already live with stigmatization if not discrimination already, we believe this project has broad societal relevance. By exploring cultural attitudes that are both reflected in and produced by literary and cultural texts, we have aimed to complicate the assumptions that people have when they consider which lives - human or nonhuman - are more or less valuable. With a more complex understanding of what it means to be human or not, we can encourage more productive and respectful public conversations and debates. The benefit to society could also include better social policies for people with various kinds of disabilities or for various forms of life that have been previously devalued. The BIODIAL project's intervention into the academic fields of disability studies, posthumanism, and animal studies has already had a tremendous impact, particularly through the publication of the special issue in such a prestigious journal with such distinguished collaborators. The issue has been nominated for the Council of Editors of Learned Journals Best Special Issue Award.

Outcomes 1. Increased competence and expertise for team members in the academic fields of disability studies, posthumanism, and animal studies 2. Increased interdisciplinary and international research collaboration 3. More visible contributions to public discussions related to disability, illness, and animality 4. Potential for university administrators, public actors, and politicians to apply this research to the development of new and better policies related to vulnerable forms of life Impacts 1. Increased attention to the significance of how we think about what it means to be human in relation to various forms of human and nonhuman life 2. Increased potential for coalitions among and between advocacy movements related to disability and animality 3. Potential for reducing stigmatization and discrimination related to disability 4. Potential for creating policies that protect and celebrate diverse forms of life

This project will explore various ways of thinking about what it means to be human--as opposed to animal--when analyzing literary and cultural representations of humans with disabilities and illnesses. Thus, it seeks to advance research in the humanities and the social sciences by further developing disability studies and animal studies and the ways in which these new interdisciplinary branches of inquiry intersect with key questions of biopolitics and bioethics. Biopolitical questions include which forms of life should be allowed to live or die with impunity, including populations that can be deemed disposable or less valuable by the state. These questions connect disability, illness, and animality to gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and class, as well as educational policies, workplace conditions, and legislation regarding issues such as discrimination, accessibility, accommodation, euthanasia, assisted suicide, abortion, health care, vivisection, animal experimentation, factory farming, animal welfare, and veterinary medicine. We will apply critical discourse analysis to literary and cultural texts, analyzing representations of disability and illness in relation to broader social issues. The project is centered around the collaboration of the primary investigator, an expert in animal and animality studies, and the co-investigator, an expert in disability studies. A series of articles is planned, along with a monograph by the primary investigator, and other sub-projects: a study of the Norwegian public school system's didactic representations of disability and people with disabilities by a postdoctoral fellow in special needs education, a dissertation on representations of disability and illness in literature by a PhD student in the English-language literature program; an edited anthology of literature highlighting disability issues to be used in university-level teaching; and a public blog about cultural texts and representations of illness and disability.