#disabilityfarr

Post 3

One of the most common strategies in representing varied embodiments is the redemption of the child’s perceived bodily defect through a narrative that stages the “overcoming” of the limitations of their embodiment as a “miracle.” While not always construed as miracles in the religious sense, these bodies achieve beyond the limits of what is thought possible given their embodied limitations through their innocence and industry. The image of “Heaven’s special child,” so coined by Paul Longmore in “Heaven’s Special Child”: The Making of Poster Children,” presupposes a certain unconscious, yet pervasive idea about the nature of the body and the meaning of “ability”: disabled children are the ultimate tragedy and unspoken fear of every vulnerable embodiment. They are the most tragic images for us to see because their condition cannot be explained away as some flaw of character. Thus, the mainstream culture cannot look the other way. Further, the image speaks to the universal fear, and eventual inevitability of one’s mortality and fragility. Quoting a film called The Crippler, Longmore highlights the anxiety which plays to the image’s success in drumming up charitable donations, telling us disability is cast as “a figure leaning on a crutch-sinister in its invisibility- [it] stalks the land like death itself… [its] ‘especially fond of children” (36). When “TinyTims” exert themselves to the extent that they pathetically perform “ability,” or plead for help in finding a cure so they can be “normal,” abled-bodied people are challenged to both seek personal excellence and lend their sympathy to an otherwise unbearable tragedy. As embodied “miracles,” the burden of navigating one’s way through the social and physical environment with a “disabling” embodied characteristic is shifted from the oppressive, “normative” identity to the disabled body through this narrative. In addition to “Heaven’s special child,” Longmore broadly terms this representational strategy as “poster children,” and “TinyTim.” The conflicting narrative aspects central to the poster child’s body mirrors the refusal of the “normative” body to acknowledge its own mortality and the temporality of one’s lived experience. All at once, the poster child’s body must be pitiable, lest the consumer be forced to despair when she recognizes the fragility of her own embodiment in that of the “Other”. The body must also be inspiring -worthy of praise or grief- but the performance of modal binaries implicitly acknowledges the “crippled” plight as an act of self-determination or total dependency; thus, representations are frequently depreciative and paternalistic. Bodies must also be negotiable, for any attempt identify with the “defective” body subverts the authority of “normative” embodiment’s preeminence. By pushing the limitations of the human body, the “cripple” is a site of self-evaluation, a critical exercise in questioning the limits of the consumer’s own abled-embodiment. On the other hand, it can be a site of grief, a site on which one can project unconscious anxieties about their lived experience. Both spur the obligation of the affected consumer to acknowledge their own failure to master the world around them, much less their own bodies, and to pay penitence to the “champion” of the afflicted in order to relieve their own anxiety. Longmore demonstrates how penitence is paid not only through charity, but also through the obliquity conferred on the disabled child’s body as a universal litmus test for one’s good character. Laws, entire agencies at every level of government, and national discussions on a range of issues often spring from the discursive site of the poster child.

Post 4

Post 2

According to Shakespeare’s “The Social Model of Disability,” notions about “disability” and “ability” have been crafted by medical interpretations of the body that have left variably embodied social locations on the fringes of acceptability and “worthiness” in almost every aspect of life. This view of the body, which categorizes bodies in accordance to their variation of “median” (or the unrealizable “normal”) body characteristics. This model has made disability a flaw of the individual, something to be negotiated and overcome on a case by case basis. The “social model” of disability emerges out of the Disability Rights movement, and argues, in contrast to the medical model, that disability is a factor of the environment, not the body. Instead, bodies may be “impaired,” or embodied in “non-normative” ways, which society excludes from participation.

Post 1

When I first told my brother I was taking a Disability Studies course, he was very skeptical that such a class had any merit in being the topic in a collegiate curriculum. He asked me: “How much more can you complicate the basic premise that it’s not ok to be mean to disabled people?” It seems to me like such a fundamental challenge deserves attention. Do Disability Studies have any place in scholastic conversation? If the purpose of scholarly work is to impact the “real world” in any pragmatic sense, the answer is a resounding “yes.”

One need not look any further than the 2016 Election to see why Disability Studies is a discipline deserving of its own study, ripe with opportunity to theorize broad social criticism on account of its subjects’ status as “Others.” If there was any doubt that discriminatory attitudes toward so-called “disabled people” are still prevalent in this day and age, Donald Trump put them to rest by publicly, and quite loudly, discrediting the credibility of a “disabled” journalist critical of his divisive rhetoric and misleading claims about his past performance and credibility as a candidate for leader of the “Free World.” With eyes squinted, and hands flailing wildly as he mimed rocking back in forth in a wheel-chair, he proceeded to cruelly mimic the speech impairments many disabled people overcome every day. If there was no need for Disability Studies, Donald Trump would have become a political pariah overnight, his followers abandoning ship by the thousands. Instead, Trump remained a beacon of hope to so many millions of disaffected (largely white) voters who dismissed any notion of Trump’s clearly troubling attitudes as the natural response of a “pampered snowflake,” who, unable to confront the “real world,” is obsessed with the ever-so-menacing “political correctness” that is characteristic of all that is socially liberal, empathetic, and equitable, or in other words “un-American,” if you take some pundits’ word as gospel. While this is a rather charged representation of how his voters, and Trump himself, explained the quagmire, I wonder if there’s much room for a reasoned, unbiased rebuttal. His only excuse, that he had no idea the reporter was “actually” disabled, does nothing to address the fundamental problem that he thought miming and mocking people in this way was even ok. That he did in fact know the reporter, as was quite quickly proven to be the case, confirms that he is both a liar and an unapologetic ableist. I would be delighted to hear any reasoned debate to this claim, but I suspect I would only be called a “snowflake” as semantics gave way to even the slightest rhetorical challenge. I won’t make any judgement on the eventual results of the contemptuous election season that spanned an unprecedented two plus years, for such a thing takes away from the purpose of this brief introduction to my journey in studying Disability Studies. I will, however, point out what is inescapable, and in need of immediate attention in light of Trump’s dramatic entrance to the political circus: there is something wrong with how we, collectively, conceptualize and treat “disabled” people.

             One could write an entire volume on Donald Trump’s bizarre rise to power, and no doubt such a work will be written almost as soon as the man has run his course through history and ceases living. There will be many different attempts to explain the society which allowed such a peculiar spectacle to flourish, and there will likely be few agreements from one commentator to the next. Our job, as critically thinking, informed participants in a democratic society, is to make sure the manner in which we respond to the social forces Trump seems to embody leads to histories we would be proud of our children’s children writing, and willing to inherent ourselves. If something seems unsettling to you about an old, rich, white, male candidate, and eventual victor, of a National election being revered by so many despite demonstrating such distasteful behavior, and feel obliged to act in defense of those who will one day inherent the dividends of our labors, buckle up, because this project is for you. Examining cultural objects and literature spanning thousands of miles (in some cases, literally) and situated in many different milieus, I will be looking at representations of Disability as its own category and at the intersections of other marginalized social locations. The lessons and observations that follow, if they succeed, should invite one to reevaluate their own ideas about self-embodiment and the lived experience of other bodies. If we scholars and students wish to inspire cultural and political change that impacts the subjects of our discourse, we must present a coherent narrative about the representation of disability which readily lends itself to empirically and rationally sound inquiry. At the same time, we must not let down our guard, and resist letting our emotions and interests build the framework through which we seek navigate this narrative. As such, one further condition for success then, is the extent to which the findings contained herein find applicability in any number of disciplines within the Social Sciences. I hope you enjoy reading this series, and that in bearing with my oftentimes inadequate attempts to frame Disability as a site of identity and social critique, you find yourself enriched, and inspired to act in defense of all your fellow humans. We won’t make it any other way.

I think therefore, I am, and I am a complicated being.

To understand or solve complicated situations inevitably involve complicated processes. It first involves understanding ourselves. 

I can say with confidence that I stepped away from Critical Approaches class realizing something new and different about myself, where I fit in the world, where I can fit in the world, and just how I think about myself in general. 

 It is not that uncommon for one to want to seek an easy solution to world problems like world hunger, or unfair treatment towards women, or even the prejudices against variably embodied people. However, only if we are passionate, willing to roll up our sleeves to do the dirty work and, most importantly, be comfortable learning from our mistakes along the way can we make a difference.  Not only would we be able to understand ourselves better, but improve ourselves as well. When we accomplish this, we can better understand and improve the world around us.