The Violent ‘Trojan Horse’: a Comparative, Transnational Reading of Two Paralysis Narratives

This article proposes a comparative analysis of two ALS narratives: one written in 2017 by the Spanish businessman and author Francisco Luzón, El Viaje es la recompensa (The Trip is the Reward) and the other published in 1999 by American sociologist Albert B. Robillard, Meaning of a Disability: The Lived Experience of Paralysis. Both ‘autopathographies’ present detailed testimonies of the increasing emotional crisis, stigmatization, and feeling of helplessness of two powerful and eminent men left paralyzed in mid-life by a cruel illness. The European and the American outlook on this perverse malady, as experienced on two different continents, will enable us to explore issues related to wasted bodies, the daily struggle against a body and a mind bent on destroying themselves, the battle against fear and anger, the memories of an intense life and of a life journey worth travelling, even when narrated from ‘the kingdom of the ill.’