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The Disability

Studies Reader

Second Edition

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The Disability

Studies Reader

Edited by

Lennard J. Davis

Second Edition

Routledge is an imprint of the

Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

New York London

Routledge

Taylor & Francis Group

270 Madison Avenue

New York, NY 10016

Routledge

Taylor & Francis Group

2 Park Square

Milton Park, Abingdon

Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

Printed in the United States of America on acid‑free paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

International Standard Book Number‑10: 0‑415‑95334‑0 (Softcover) 0‑415‑95333‑2 (Hardcover)

International Standard Book Number‑13: 978‑0‑415‑95334‑4 (Softcover) 978‑0‑415‑95333‑7 (Hardcover)

No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or

other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any informa‑

tion storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers.

Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for

identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data

The disability studies reader / edited by Lennard J. Davis. ‑‑ 2nd ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 0‑415‑95333‑2 (hardback : alk. paper) ‑‑ ISBN 0‑415‑95334‑0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. People with disabilities. 2. Sociology of disability. 3. Disability studies. I. Davis, Lennard J.,

1949‑ .

HV1568.D5696 2006

362.4‑‑dc22

2006007500

Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at

http://www.taylorandfrancis.com

and the Routledge Web site at

http://www.routledge‑ny.com

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface to the Second Edition

xiii

Introduction

Part I Historical Perspectives

1 Constructing Normalcy: The Bell Curve, the Novel, and the Invention

of the Disabled Body in the Nineteenth Century

Lennard J. Davis

Deaf and Dumb in Ancient Greece

M. Lynn Rose

“A Silent Exile on This Earth”: The Metaphorical Construction of Deafness

in the Nineteenth Century

Douglas

Baynton

The Other Arms Race

David

Serlin

(Re)Writing the Genetic Body-Text: Disability, Textuality, and the Human Genome Project

James

Wilson

Part II The Politics of Disability

Construction of Deafness

Harlan

Lane

Abortion and Disability: Who Should and Who Should Not Inhabit the World?

Ruth

Hubbard

Disability Rights and Selective Abortion

105

Marsha

Saxton

Universal Design: The Work of Disability in an Age of Globalization

117

Michael Davidson

Part III Stigma and Illness

Selections from Stigma

131

Erving

Goffman

Stigma: An Enigma Demystiﬁ ed

141

Lerita M. Coleman

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AIDS and Its Metaphors

153

Susan

Sontag

Part IV Theorizing Disability

Reassigning Meaning

161

Simi

Linton

Disability in Theory: From Social Constructionism

173

to the New Realism of the Body

Tobin

Siebers

On the Government of Disability: Foucault, Power, and the Subject of Impairment

185

Shelley

Tremain

The Social Model of Disability

197

Tom

Shakespeare

Narrative Prosthesis and the Materiality of Metaphor

205

David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder

The Dimensions of Disability Oppression: An Overview

217

James I. Charlton

Part V The Question of Identity

The End of Identity Politics and the Beginning of Dismodernism:

231

On Disability as an Unstable Category

Lennard J. Davis

Toward a Feminist Theory of Disability

243

Susan

Wendell

Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory

257

Rosemarie

Garland-Thomson

Introducing White Disability Studies: A Modest Proposal

275

Chris

Bell

“When Black Women Start Going on Prozac . . . ”: The Politics of Race, Gender, and

283

Emotional Distress in Meri Nana-Ama Danquah’s Willow Weep for Me

Anna

Mollow

Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence

301

Robert

McRuer

The Vulnerable Articulate: James Gillingham, Aimee Mullins, and Matthew Barney

309

Marquard Smith

Interlude 1: On (Almost) Passing

321

Brenda

Brueggeman

Deaf People: A Different Center

331

Carol Padden and Tom Humphries

A Mad Fight: Psychiatry and Disability Activism

339

Bradley

Lewis

Contents

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vii

Part VI Disability and Culture

Toward a Poetics of Vision, Space, and the Body: Sign Language and Literary Theory

355

H-Dirksen L. Bauman

The Enfreakment of Photography

367

David

Hevey

Blindness and Art

379

Nicholas

Mirzoeff

Blindness and Visual Culture: An Eye Witness Account

391

Georgina

Kleege

Disability, Life Narrative, and Representation

399

Thomas

Couser

Part VII Fiction, Memoir, and Poetry

34 Helen and Frida

405

Anne

Finger

Poems

411

Cheryl

Marie

Wade

Poems

413

Kenny

Fries

Selections from The Cry of the Gull

417

Emmanuelle

Laborit

Contributors

435

Index

441

Contents

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Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 reprinted by permission of Lennard J. Davis, Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness,

Chapter 3 reprinted with permission of Th

e Johns Hopkins University Press from Douglas Bayn-

ton, “A Silent Exile on this Earth” in American Quarterly 44:2 (1992), 216-243, © Th

e American

Studies Association.

Chapter 4 reprinted by permission of the publisher and the author David Serlin, Replaceable You:

Engineering the Body in Postwar America, pp. 21–56, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Copy-

e University of Chicago Press.

Chapter 5 reprinted by permission of the University of Minnesota Press from James C. Wilson,

“(Re)Writing the Genetic Body-Text: Disability, Textuality, and the Human Genome Project,” in

Minnesota.

Chapter 6 reprinted with permission of Taylor & Francis Group, from Harlan Lane, “Construc-

& Francis Group.

Chapter 7 reprinted from Ruth Hubbard, Th

Rutgers, the State University. Reprinted by permission of Rutgers University Press.

Chapter 8 reprinted from Martha Saxton, Abortion Wars: A Half Century of Struggle, 1950–2000,

Regents of the University of California.

Chapter 10 reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from

Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Chapter 11 reprinted by permission of Plenum Publishing Corporation from Lerita M. Coleman,

“Stigma: An Enigma Demystifi ed” in S. Ainlay, G. Becker, and L.M. Coleman, Eds., A Multidisci-

Corporation.

by Susan Sontag. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, LLC.

Chapter 13 reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher from Simi Linton, Claiming

Disability: Knowledge and Identity (New York and London: New York University Press, 1998), pp.

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Chapter 14 reprinted by permission of the author and publisher from Tobin Siebers, “In Th

eory: From

Social Constructionism to Realism of the Body,” American Literary History 13:4, 2001, pp. 737–754.

Chapter 15 revised and reprinted by permission of Florida State University, from “On the Govern-

ment of Disability” by Shelley Tremain from Embodied Values: Philosophy and Disabilities, a special

issue of Social Th

State University Press.

Chapter 17 reprinted by permission of the authors and publisher from David Mitchell and Sharon

Snyder, Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse (Ann Arbor: Th

e University

Chapter 18 reprinted by permission of the publisher from James I. Charlton, Nothing About Us With-

out Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment (Berkeley, California: University of California Press,

Chapter 19 reprinted by permission of the author and publisher from Bending Over Backwards: Dis-

ability, Dismodernism, and Other Diffi

cult Positions (New York: New York University Press, 2002), pp.

Chapter 20 reprinted by permission of the author from “Towards a Feminist Th

eory of Disability” in

Chapter 21 reprinted by permission of the author and publisher from Rosemarie Garland-Th

omson,

“Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Th

eory,” NWSA Journal 14:3 (2002), pp. 1–32. Copy-

Chapter 23 reprinted with revised title by permission of the author and publisher from Anna Mollow,

“ ‘When Black Women Start Going on Prozac . . . ’: Th

e Politics of Race, Gender, and Mental Illness in

Meri Nana-Ama Danquah’s Willow Weep for Me,” MELUS Vol. 31, 2006.

Chapter 24 reprinted by permission of the author and publisher from Robert McRuer, “Compulsory

Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence,” Brenda Jo Brueggemann, Sharon L. Snyder, and

Rosemarie Garland-Th

omson, Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities (New York: Modern Lan-

gauge Association, 2002), pp. 88–100.

Chapter 25 “Th

e Vulnerable Articulate: James Gillingham, Amiee Mullins, and Matthew Barney,” by

Marquard Smith, reprinted with permission of Th

e MIT Press, from Th

e Prosthetic Impulse: From a

e MIT Press.

Chapter 26 reprinted by permission of the publisher from Brenda Brueggeman, Lend Me Your Ear:

e Rhetorical Construction of Deafness (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1999), pp.

Chapter 27 reprinted by permission of the authors and publisher from Carol Padden and Tom

Humphries, Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University

Chapter 30 reprinted by permission of David Hevey from David Hevey, Th

e Creatures Time Forgot:

1992 by David Hevey.

Acknowledgments

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Chapter 31 reprinted by permission of the author from Bodyscape: Art, Modernity and the Ideal Figure

Chapter 32 revised and reprinted by permission of the author and publisher from “Blindness and Vi-

sual Culture: An Eye-Witness Account,” Journal of Visual Culture 4:2 (2005), pp. 179–190. Copyright

Chapter 33 revised and reprinted by permission of the Modern Language Association of America from

G. Th

omas Couser, “Disability, Life Narrative, and Representation,” PMLA (2005): 602–606.

Chapter 37 reprinted with the permission of the publisher from Emmanuelle Laborit, Cry of the

University Press.

Acknowledgments

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xiii

Preface to the Second Edition

When I wrote the introduction to the Disability Studies Reader about ten years ago, I was announc-

ing the appearance of a new fi eld of study. I dourly noted that “it has been virtually impossible to

have a person teaching about disability within the humanities. No announcements of jobs in the

area of disability studies yet appear in the professional journals of English, history or philosophy.”

I rued the diffi

culty of doing research on disability studies noting, “If one looks up ‘disability’ or

‘disability studies’ in a database or library catalogue, one will fi nd slim pickings . . . .”

It is gratifying to note that aft er less than a decade, all that has changed. Disability studies is

taught throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, and the world. Each year there are more

and more disability studies degree-granting programs in the United States, the United Kingdom,

Australia, and Canada. And disability courses are taught in departments throughout the university.

e eff orts of many scholars and activists have come to fruition in the birth of a fully legitimate

area of study and discussion.

But just because disability studies is on the map doesn’t mean that it is easy to fi nd. We should

not downplay the fact that disabilities are still oft en forgotten when the litany of race, class, gender,

sexual orientation, and so on are articulated. Most people still give me puzzled looks when I tell

them that I teach disability studies in a way that they don’t when I mention feminist studies or race

and ethnic studies—or even queer studies. Th

at means there is a lot more education and outreach

that needs to be done.

Ten years ago we were trying to articulate the central concerns and defi nitions in the fi eld of

disability studies. Th

is was part of what I’d call a fi rst-wave approach to the subject. Th

at fi rst-wave

involved foundational ideas, assembling a coherent identity for a wide range of impairments, and

pushing for respect, recognition, and research. I would say that this phase of the knowledge pro-

duction and group solidifi cation has been largely accomplished. We know more about disability;

we have a strong sense of identity; and we are well on the way to recovering history, literature, and

art that was lost in the able-bodied march of time.

Now we confront the second-wave of disability studies. In this era, the foundational “truths”

come under new scrutiny. A second-wave of scholars, many of them younger, is coming into the

fi eld with the safety and security of having a fi eld to enter, having an identity to discuss, and having

a body of knowledge with which to deal. But there will always be contradictions and disparities in

any fi eld of investigation. Th

e second-wavers will ask questions and make new assertions about the

“truths” of the fi eld. We can see this questioning already occurring in the areas of identity forma-

tion, the diff erences (rather than the similarities) between impairments, the seeming incompat-

ibility between models (notably those of the United Kingdom and the United States), questions

about the relation of theory to praxis, and the role of the intellectual vis à vis the activist. Th

ere are

further questions about who has the right to articulate, represent, and lead disability studies and

organizations. Among the paramount issues is a questioning of the biases, prejudices, and ideol-

ogy of disability studies toward minorities, ethnicities, and racialized groups. Linked to all this is

questioning whether one can actually have a monolithic view of disability or whether the varieties

and peculiarities of impairments, beliefs, ideologies and so on can be completely represented by

a singular model. Debates are now developing over notions of cure, genetic testing and prenatal

technologies, cochlear implants, abortion, and end-of-life issues. It is still very possible to articulate

what disabilities studies is and does, and who is a person with disabilities, but it is equally possible

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xiv

to interrogate the presumptions and presuppositions that go along with those defi nitions. In many

ways, disability studies, like other area studies, is dealing with and processing the complexities of

postmodern theory and its assumptions.

Revising the Disability Studies Reader was an exciting project for exactly those reasons I’ve given

above. I’ve had to think through the changing issues and theoretical frameworks, trying to guess

what kinds of works should be added. I consulted members of the disability community online and

in person, and I received many helpful suggestions. Of course, it is inevitable that I’ve missed great

essays or important areas of interest. Editing a reader is a doubtful enterprise in which you have to

combine the ability to assess the past, look at the present, and think about the future. As they say, the

more things change, the more they stay the same. In that spirit, the second edition has retained many

early essays but added or replaced a substantial number. New topics of interest include cognitive and

aff ective disabilities, queerness, race, theory, globalization, sexualities, memoir, genetics, prosthetics,

and Foucault.

As I wrote ten years ago, “Th

is reader is only a beginning, the thin edge of a wedge which will

change” the way we think. Now in its second incarnation, the book is able to present a thicker edge,

but there is still a lot more wedging to go.

I would like to give particular thanks to my research assistant Alice Haisman who helped me at

every stage of the way. Without her support, the second edition would have taken much longer to get

into your hands. I would also like to thank David McBride, Stephanie Drew, and Brendan O’Neill at

Routledge. And fi nally, I’d like to thank my many colleagues and students in the disability community

who are constantly teaching me new things to think and new ways to think them.

Preface to the Second Edition

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Introduction

is reader is one of the fi rst devoted to disability studies. But it will not be the last. Disability studies

is a fi eld of study whose time has come. For centuries, people with disabilities have been an oppressed

and repressed group. People with disabilities have been isolated, incarcerated, observed, written about,

operated on, instructed, implanted, regulated, treated, institutionalized, and controlled to a degree

probably unequal to that experienced by any other minority group. As 15 percent of the population,

people with disabilities make up the largest physical minority within the United States. One would

never know this to be the case by looking at the literature on minorities and discrimination.

Now the impetus to recognize the level of oppression, both overt and by marginalization, is being

organized by people with disabilities and other interested parties. Th

e exciting thing about disability

studies is that it is both an academic fi eld of inquiry and an area of political activity. Th

e act of as-

sembling a body of knowledge owned by the disability community as opposed to one written about

that community by “normals” is part of an ongoing process that includes political actions involving

the classroom, the workplace, the courts, the legislature, the media, and so on.

So, this volume appears at the moment that disability, always an actively repressed memento mori

for the fate of the normal body, gains a new, nonmedicalized, and positive legitimacy both as an

academic discipline and as an area of political struggle. As with any new discourse, disability studies

must claim space in a contested area, trace its continuities and discontinuities, argue for its existence,

and justify its assertions.

To do this, the case must be made clear that studies about disability have not had historically the

visibility of studies about race, class, or gender for complex as well as simple reasons. Th

e simple reason

is the general pervasiveness of discrimination and prejudice against people with disabilities leading to

their marginalization as well as the marginalization of the study of disability. Progressives in and out

of academia may pride themselves on being sensitive to race or gender, but they have been “ableist”

in dealing with the issue of disability. While race, for example, has become in the past twenty years a

more than acceptable modality from which to theorize in the classroom and in print, a discourse, a

critique, and a political struggle, disability has continued to be relegated to hospital hallways, physical

therapy tables, and remedial classrooms. Th

e civil rights movement, a long history of discussion of

the issues around slavery, the attention demanded by the “problem” of inner cities, and governmental

discrimination have created a consciousness among progressives that legitimizes ethnicity as a topic

for cultural study. It is possible to have a Henry Louis Gates or a bell hooks in a literature faculty,

but it has been virtually impossible to have a person teaching about disability within the humanities.

No announcements of jobs in the area of disability studies yet appear in the professional journals of

English, history, or philosophy. In other words, disability has been seen as eccentric, therapeutically

oriented, out-of-the-mainstream, and certainly not representative of the human condition—not as

race, class, or gender seem representative of that condition.

But, how strange this assumption. What is more representative of the human condition than the

body and its vicissitudes? If the population of people with disabilities is between thirty-fi ve and forty-

three million, then this group is the largest physical minority in the United States. Put another way,

there are more people with disabilities than there are African Americans or Latinos.

But why have

the disabled been rendered more invisible than other groups? Why are not issues about perception,

mobility, accessibility, distribution of bio-resources, physical space, diff erence not seen as central to

the human condition? Is there not something to be gained by all people from exploring the ways that

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Introduction

xvi

the body in its variations is metaphorized, disbursed, promulgated, commodifi ed, cathected, and

de-cathected, normalized, abnormalized, formed, and deformed? In other words, is it not time for

disability studies to emerge as an aspect of cultural studies, studies in discrimination and oppression,

postmodern analyses of the body and bio-power?

e fi rst assumption that has to be countered in arguing for disability studies is that the “normal”

or “able” person is already fully up to speed on the subject. My experience is that while most “nor-

mals” think they understand the issue of disability, they in fact do not. When it comes to disability,

“normal”

people are quite willing to volunteer solutions, present anecdotes, recall from a vast array

of fi lms instances they take for fact. No one would dare to make such a leap into Heideggerian phi-

losophy for example or the art of the Renaissance. But disability seems so obvious—a missing limb,

blindness, deafness. What could be simpler to understand? One simply has to imagine the loss of the

limb, the absent sense, and one is half-way there. Just the addition of a liberal dose of sympathy and

pity along with a generous acceptance of ramps and voice-synthesized computers allows the average

person to speak with knowledge on the subject.

But disability studies, like any other discourse, requires a base of knowledge and a familiarity with

discursive terms and methodologies, as well as, most oft en, some personal involvement. Th

e apparent

ease of intuitive knowledge is really another aspect of discrimination against people with disabilities.

How could there be anything complex, intellectually interesting, or politically relevant about a miss-

ing limb or a chronic impairment? Pity or empathy do not lend themselves to philosophy, philology,

or theoretical considerations in general.

But, far from pity or empathy, people working in the fi eld of disability are articulating and theoriz-

ing a political, social, and ideological critique. Th

e work contained in this reader, only a sampling of

the many articles and books published on the subject, is representative of this growing specialization

as it spans the human sciences—literary studies, art history, anthropology, sociology, post-colonial

studies, theory, feminist studies, and so on. But be aware: Th

is book is not a collection of articles

about how people feel about disability; nor is it designed to “sensitize” normal readers to the issue

of disability; nor is it a collection of pieces focusing on the theme of disability in literature, fi lm, or

television. Rather, this is a reader that places disability in a political, social, and cultural context, that

theorizes and historicizes deafness or blindness or disability in similarly complex ways to the way

race, class, and gender have been theorized.

It is not as if disability studies has simply appeared out of someone’s head at this historical moment.

It would be more appropriate to say that disability studies has been in the making for many years,

but, like people with disabilities, has only recently recognized itself as a political, discursive entity.

Indeed, like the appearance of African-American studies following rapidly on the heels of the civil

rights movement, there is a reciprocal connection between political praxis by people with disabilities

and the formation of a discursive category of disability studies. Th

at is, there have been people with

disabilities throughout history, but it has only been in the last twenty years that one-armed people,

quadriplegics, the blind, people with chronic diseases, and so on, have seen themselves as a single, al-

lied, united physical minority.

Linked to this political movement, which is detailed in Joseph Shapiro’s

No Pity, David Hevey’s Creatures Time Forgot, and Oliver Sacks’ Seeing Voices, among other works,

has been the political victory of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990,

which guarantees the civil rights of people with disabilities.

Disability studies, as did cultural studies, unites a variety of ongoing work. Th

at this work was largely

hidden from view is a telling fact. If one looks up “disability” or “disability studies” in a database or

library catalogue, one will fi nd slim pickings, particularly if the areas of medical treatment, hospital

or institutional management, and out-patient treatment are eliminated. Th

e reason for this dearth

of reference is complex. First, there is the historical absence of a discursive category. When I tried to

locate a copy of my recent book Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body in a university

bookstore, I was told to look under “self help.” Currently, there is no area in a bookstore where works

on disability studies can be placed. Th

is absence of a discursive category was more tellingly revealed

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xvii

Introduction

at a meeting of the Committee on Academics with Disabilities at the Modern Language Association

headquarters. A bibliographer of the MLA Bibliography informed the committee that there was almost

no way of retrieving articles or books on the cultural history of disability since proper categories did

not exist. For example, an article on “crippled saints” could not be searched by computer because the

word “crippled” was disallowed by MLA regulations as constituting discriminatory language. Th

bibliographer therefore fi led the article under “saints” thus rendering it unretrievable by anyone with

an interest in disability.

Further, until now, American Sign Language was listed in the database as

an “invented language” along with the language of the Klingons of Star Trek. Th

anks to the eff orts of

activists, this categorization will no longer be the case and American sign language will be listed as a

legitimate language. Th

is absence of a discursive category is as much as function of discrimination and

marginalization as anything else. If one had tried to fi nd the category “composers, female” in music

history thirty years ago, there would have been no such category. Th

e category of “African-American

literature” would not have existed. In the late 1990s disability studies has been “disappeared.” As of

1997, the MLA is redressing this absence in its database.

e absence of categories is only one reason that disability studies has been suppressed. Th

e second

reason is the erasure of disability as a category when other “stronger” categories are present. So, un-

less a writer, artist, or fi lmmaker is known for his or her disability, as was Beethoven or Helen Keller,

he is not thought of as a person with disabilities. Th

erefore, the work is not included in any canon

of cultural production. How outrageous this is can be understood if we made the analogy with the

suppression of the gender, color, race, ethnicity, or nationality of a writer. How many people realize

that included in the category of people with disabilities are: John Milton, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Alex-

ander Pope, Harriet Martineau, John Keats, George Gordon Byron, Toulouse-Lautrec, James Joyce,

Virginia Woolf, James Th

urber, Dorothea Lange, José Luis Borges, John Ford, Raoul Walsh, André

de Toth, Nicholas Ray, Tay Garnett, William Wyler, Chuck Close, and many others? Moreover, the

work of many talented writers, artists, photographers and so on who were disabled have had their

work minimalized or suppressed in the same way that people of color or women have experienced.

e recovery of this work is only now beginning.

e work of many scholars who have investigated aspects of the body is now being reassembled

into the fi eld of disability studies. So for example, Sander Gilman’s work on disease, David Rothman

on asylums, Erving Goff man on stigma, Leslie Fieldler on freaks, Susan Sontag on the metaphors of

illness, Mikhail Bakhtin on the grotesque, followed by postmodern work like Michel Foucault on dis-

ease, mental illness, and sexuality, Jacques Derrida on blindness, Kaja Silverman on deformity in fi lm,

Judith Butler and Susan Bordo on anorexia—all of these works might not have been seen as existing

under the rubric of disability studies, but as the fi eld evolves, it recuperates and includes this earlier

work as a retrospectively organized set of originating documents much in the way that structuralism

turned back to the work of Saussure or that Marx relied on Hegel.

While this historical reserve of writings on disease, the body, freakishness and so on exists, the

work of a newer generation of writers and scholars looks toward feminist, Marxist, postmodern, and

cultural studies models for understanding the relation between the body and power. Th

is next genera-

tion of writing tends to be created from within the boundaries of disability. While many earlier writers

had an anthropological approach, with the weakness and imperial quality of anthropological work,

others wrote from the perspective of “having” a disability. Th

at type of work tended to be written so

that “normal” people might know what it is like to be blind, crippled, deaf, and so on. Th

e danger of

that kind of project is that it is embarked on with the aim of evoking “sympathy” or “understanding.”

e dialectical relation of power involved in such a transaction ultimately ends up having the writing

be for the “normal.” Th

e inappropriateness of such “sensitizing” work can be seen in works written,

for example, to whites explaining what it is like to be black or to men explaining what it is like to be

female. Disability studies, for the most part, shuns this unequal power transaction in favor of advocacy,

investigation, inquiry, archeology, genealogy, dialectic, and deconstruction. Th

e model of a sovereign

subject revealing or reveling in that subjectivity is put into question.

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Introduction

xviii

In this anthology, scholars discuss the construction of disability in ancient Greece, in the English

Renaissance and Enlightenment, in nineteenth-century France, as well as the creation of the concept

of “normalcy” in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe and America. Th

is work is refl ective of

the new historical revisionism allowed by the introduction of the concept of disability into practices of

Marxist, feminist, queer, ethnic, postcolonial, and postmodern criticism. Previous work on the body

can now be amplifi ed and expanded. In addition, works that theorize disability and Deafness look at

the notion of diff erence as an opportunity to defamiliarize received truths about culture and the body.

I have also reprinted some fi ction and poetry. Th

is literary work is not here to “sensitize” readers but

to explore the richness of experience and creativity off ered by the opportunity of disability. Th

e writers

are aggressive about their insight, not defensive. Th

ey have a constitutive experience of disability and

use that knowledge within their aesthetic ability. But these works should not be ghettoized as “disability

literature” any more than T. S. Eliot should be used as an example of able-bodied writing.

In assembling this reader, I have selected only some material and some representative impairments,

but much more work is being done and needs to be done in this major project of reconceiving his-

tory through the lens of disability studies. Many will fi nd their impairments missing. I can only plead

limited resources, limited space, and probably limited imagination.

A fair number of articles deal with deafness. Th

e reason for this focus is twofold: (1) personal

interest, and (2) the rather large body of historical materials on the history of deafness. My apolo-

gies to whomever does not fi nd this fi eld of inquiry interesting. Th

is reader is only a beginning, the

thin edge of a wedge which will change the normative way we conceive of the world, of literature, of

cultural production, of voice, of sight, of language. In its broadest application, disability studies aims

to challenge the received in its most simple form—the body—and in its most complex form—the

construction of the body. Since we can no longer essentialize the body, we can no longer essentialize

its diff erences, its eccentricities, its transgressions. Perhaps disability studies will lead to some grand

unifi ed theory of the body, pulling together the diff erences implied in gender, nationality, ethnicity,

race, and sexual preferences. Th

en, rather than the marginalized being in the wheelchair or using

sign language, the person with disabilities will become the ultimate example, the universal image, the

modality through whose knowing the postmodern subject can theorize and act.

Notes

1. African Americans make up 11.8 percent of the U. S. population. Latinos comprise 9.5 percent, and Asians are 3.1 percent

of the general population (U. S. Census Bureau statistics cited in the New York Times (March 25, 1996; A15).

2. I will refrain from putting “normal” in quotation marks henceforth, but I do so as long as readers will recall that I am

always using this term with the complex set of ironies and historic specifi cities the term carries. I will assume, perhaps

problematically, an agreement on the fact that not one of us is, or can be, normal, nor can anyone describe what a normal

person is.

3. I have deliberately left the Deaf off of this list. (I use the capitalized term to indicate the culturally Deaf, as opposed to the

simple fact of physical deafness.) Th

e reason is that many Deaf do not consider themselves people with disabilities but

rather members of a linguistic minority. Th

e Deaf argue that their diff erence is actually a communication diff erence—they

speak sign language—and that their problems do not exist in a Deaf, signing community, whereas a group of legless people

will not transcend their motor impairments when they become part of a legless community. Th

e argument is a serious

one and, although I personally feel that the Deaf have much to gain by joining forces with people with disabilities, I honor

the Deaf argument in this reader. See Harlan Lane’s article “Construction of Deafness” (in this volume).

4. Th

is victory is in some sense a pyrrhic one since the letter of law is easier to manifest than the spirit, and so the number of

people with disabilities who are unemployed, for example, remains as high if not higher than before the Act was passed.

(New York Times October 23, 1994 A: 22). In addition, the Act has no enforcement mechanism or agency, so it relies on

individuals bringing lawsuits on their own—a method that for most people with disabilities is not a practical remedy. Most

recently, the budget and tax cuts of 1994–96 have sliced dramatically into entitlements for special education, home-care,

and many of the other programs that people with disabilities rely on to provide access and support.

5. Th

e MLA is now beginning to redress this problem. Presumably, other databases and catalogues will follow suit.

6. Work that does this recovery includes Nicholas Mirzoeff , Silent Poetry: Deafness, Sign, and Visual Culture in Modern

France, Martin Nordern, Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies, and various articles and books

by John S. Schuchman.

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