The disabled as other in Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

In his famous book The Order of Things, Michel Foucault explores how the western mind identifies the self and the other in a binary opposition system and examines how relationships between different groups in social structures are affected by those identifications. The disabled people, as one of those differentiated groups, are also influenced by the juxtaposition and forced into otherness in society. In this study, a comprehensive thematological approach to Sharon Draper's latest and bestseller book Out of My Mind is provided. Our research consists of two parts: the first part relies on the critical theory concerning the traditional realist novel and the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin's definition and explanation of the Bildungsroman in order to reveal the thematic perspectives and narrative techniques used by Sharon Draper in her novel; in the second part, the author's way of textualizing and questioning the place of the disabled people in society is discussed through the view of the experience of the protagonist Melody. For this purpose, the concept of "episteme" is introduced, including the new perspectives that Michel Foucault brought to the concept in his work "The Order of Things" (1966), particularly with regard to the theory of "the self and the other". To this, Cripistemology is prompted as a new field of Epistemology, emphasizing the inadequacy of Epistemology to define the disabled. Finally, the thesis discusses the ways in which the contemporary societies marginalise disabled groups and place them into narrow templates as a result of the unconscious bulk of knowledge and for this; Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper provides various examples.