Viewing the Spectacular Body of Modernity: Bourgeois Identity and the Body of the Other

This thesis is concerned with the visual culture of the deviant Other—those whose bodies transgressed what was considered normative or natural based on race, gender, sexuality, disability, madness, or physiological difference—in modernity. My research will examine how those who were considered physiologically, mentally, and culturally different became a central object in the cultural consciousness of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by viewing how these bodies were exhibited and engaged across a wide range of discursive domains. Following the theory of the grotesque body set out by Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, I will examine how deviant, or grotesque, bodies were negotiated and displayed in medical discourse, popular spectacles, such as the circus and the world fair, and in transgressive avant-garde arts. Through this multi-textual analysis, I will examine both the cultural significance of these representations and of the relations of viewership that were arranged across these domains.