ABSTRACT
Idiocy and Cultural Representation This book explores the cultural representation of idiocy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is concerned primarily with the ways in which writers and filmmakers have been simultaneously attracted by visual images of idiocy and drawn to the idiot figure as a symbol for that which cannot be expressed or represented through other means. The book pursues two main arguments. The first proposition is that idiocy cannot be easily defined as a specific ‘condition’; as the discussion below demonstrates, scientific attempts to do so have usually foundered. Idiocy can more accurately be said to refer to a range of human experiences and traits that are difficult to classify, ultimately deriving from neurological impairment, but often reflected in forms of asocial behaviour that can be visually mimicked. The second argument is that visual images usually precede and often complicate an understanding of idiocy, serving to stigmatize the idiot in a discrediting way, or presenting characters as idiot figures that do not have appropriate cerebral limitations.1 While it may be difficult to conceptualize literature in visual terms, the physical depiction of idiot figures in fiction and film often fixes them with a particular image or ‘look’, which writers and directors often go on to problematize in the narrative.
