'Don't Touch, Don't Leave' : Leprosy and Intimacy in Rowena Ivers' 'The Spotted Skin'

'Don't Touch, Don't Leave' : Leprosy and Intimacy in Rowena Ivers' 'The Spotted Skin' single work criticism

Author:agent Luisa Percopo

Issue Details: First known date: 2005... 2005 'Don't Touch, Don't Leave' : Leprosy and Intimacy in Rowena Ivers' 'The Spotted Skin'

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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

In this essay, Luisa Percoco speculates 'on how notions of intimacy are negotiated and produced in Western and colonial discursive constructions of disease' (39). With regards to The Spotted Skin, she asks: 'How is identity, together with intimate perceptions of who we are, informed, and often distorted by strict racial and gender divisions? What constitutes a leprous body? How is it defined?' (39).

Notes

Epigraphs:
- I feel discomfort, therefore I am alive. Graham Greene
- Loneliness, / an uncomfortable word. / It has a sour smell / as of unwashed intimacy. / It curls the lip, / corrugates the nose / like menstrual sops / exposed. / How shameful, / how indiscrete, / for the inflicted, / rings a bell / as surely as a leper. Joy Reid
- Today the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced the creation of a Global Alliance which will eliminate leprosy as a public health problem from every country by the end of 2005. World Health Organisation Press Release WHO/70 1999

Affiliation Notes

Writing Disability in Australia:

This work has been affiliated because it is a criticism focused on the depiction of leprosy in Ivers' The Spotted Skin.