Posthuman ve engelli bedenlerin Joseph Fink ve Jeffrey Cranor'ın Welcome to Night Vale eserindeki rolü

In 2013, the bi-monthly podcast Welcome to Night Vale ascended to the number one spot on the online platform iTunes and opened a way to a new generation of creative content. As a new way of storytelling and as a renewed version of radio dramas, Welcome to Night Vale is a production that consists of more than 200 radio episodes, three stand-alone novels, and four script books since its first airing in June 2012. Created by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, the main story is about a fictional radio show from a bizarre desert town. This strange town is home to many citizens and beings, who are going along with the extraordinary happenings around them. Throughout this fictional community radio programme, hosted by the main character Cecil, who gives information to the citizens and follows the stories through their daily life, the listener or the reader comes across with some side characters that are not able-bodied, some that have abnormal bodies, and some that have no bodies. A teenage girl who is a wheelchair user, a child who only exists as a hand, a faceless old woman who is not limited by time and space are some of these characters who all exist in the same society. This brings out the question of what it means to be human in this town. Night Vale is a town in which the socially formed prejudices, the norms that are set by the ideals of Humanism are evaded. The argument of this study is that through the various stories of the town dwellers, creators Fink and Cranor produce an affirmative posthuman community where everyone has a chance to be accepted and represented. To illustrate, the citizens of Night Vale are analysed in terms of how their bodies affect their value and their humanity. Having non-normative bodies is demonstrated through Rosi Braidotti's theories on Posthumanism, which are also used as a reference in Dan Goodley's Posthuman Disability Theory. The fight against normalcy and surpassing the humanistic, able-bodied, anthropocentric ideals are revealed in references to some of the citizens of Night Vale, namely Janice Palmer, Josh Crayton, Megan Wallaby, the Computer, Fey, Faceless Old Woman, Hiram McDaniels, and the Angels.