AustLit

'Science can illuminate the shot of dopamine in a brain’s pathway; the delicate interconnections of the nervous system; the ways eyes and ears process sound and light; the role of the gut in immunity. Writing alchemises these marvels, using science as metaphor, inspiration and reflection. In this issue on Disability and the Body, our writers explore bodies that are cyborgs, bodies that wrestle with the 21st century’s competing demands, with cancer or particle accelerators, bodies that share relationships with tubes or beds, bodies that are forced to conform or are misunderstood, bodies that are X-rayed or are intricately folded, bodies that care for other bodies, bodies that navigate the world using sound, or bodies that prompt relationships beyond death. They show that, far from being a deficit, bodies that are disabled or ill generate creativity. Heather Taylor-Johnson’s essay ‘Ears’, like the shell-shaped cochlea it describes, spirals through art and science to Van Gogh, the moon, and deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie. Co-editor Jessica White’s extract from her hybrid memoir Hearing Maud details how deafness lies at the heart of her storytelling. Co-editor Amanda Niehaus’s essay ‘Pluripotent’ braids her experiences as a mother, a cancer survivor, and a woman in science, with an examination of the history of science and the pluripotency of stem cells. It demonstrates how, when our cells change, we change too. This concept is echoed in Lauren Poole’s ‘Trauma Time is Crip Time’, which contemplates the narration of a self that is never just itself, due to cell renewal and the destabilisation of trauma. Similarly, in ‘Grief, Loss and the Injured Brain’, Michele Saint-Yves searches for her self in the wake of her mother’s death, exploring the relationship between trauma, acquired brain injury, and the neuroanatomy of dreammaking.' (Editorial introduction)