Abstract
Abstract
This chapter draws out the implications of the book as a whole, especially the work’s contribution towards understanding disabilities previously unrecognized in the ancient world. It highlights how the ancient analysis of previously unrecognized disabilities can help interrogate ableist and dehumanizing cultures in our world today, and focuses especially intactivism (the idea that circumcision is a form of infant genital mutilation) and the religious treatment of those who are perceived to be ‘demonized,’ in other words, those who are thought to be possessed or inhabited by demonic forces. By analysing disabilities based on relative bodily ideals we are able to interrogate conditions that today would not be considered disabilities by medicalized taxonomies.
Publisher
Oxford University PressOxford
Reference673 articles.
1. Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh: A Messenger of Satan?;Neot,2001
2. Adams, Ellen. ‘Fragmentation and the Body’s Boundaries: Reassessing the Body in Parts.’ Pages 193–213 in Bodies of Evidence: Ancient Anatomical Votives Past, Present and Future. Edited by Jane Draycott and Emma-Jayne Graham. Medicine and the Body in Antiquity. London: Routledge, 2017.
3. Adamson, Grant. ‘The Old Gods of Egypt in Lost Hermetica and Early Sethianism.’ Pages 58–86 in Histories of the Hidden God: Concealment and Revelation in Western Gnostic, Esoteric, and Mystical Traditions. Edited by April D. DeConick and Grant Adamson. Gnostica. London: Routledge, 2014.