Mark, you raise so many interesting points in this message. For me, this is
the fun of teaching; theoretical questions get raised in ways which are very
immediate and direct. For example, the minority/majority rights conflict
your student pointed to is an interesting aspect of identity politics which
hasn't arisen in my own classes.
My colleague and I used some of Tom Shakespeare's work critiquing the
"disability rights critique" of prenatal testing and selective abortion,
setting it against other work by disability activists and academics so that
students could see that there was no unified position, and that they
themselves should be critical and careful in assessing what ever they read,
however the authors identify or categorize themselves and their work. I
found his work very useful, but many students had trouble with the idea that
people with disabilities -- and even their two teachers -- might disagree
amongst themselves.
If you have references for new sources on the politics of cochlear implants,
I would love to get them.
I think that discussions of impairment, disability and the relationship
between them are always fraught and usually productive. Teaching in an area
where there is no accepted wisdom and where none is immediately forthcoming
-- your students are right that we need a sociology of impairment and a
sociology of disability to really inform these discussions -- can be
treacherous and interesting. The fact is that we have these discussions
anyway (in the classroom and outside it) and, at some level, they're all
part of doing this work.
I've been very interested to read the responses you've had on your students'
attitudes to work by disabled people vs. those they perceive as nondisabled.
I have to say I'm a little wary of the suggestion that students be put into
groups and given different information about authors' disability or other
status, in order to demonstrate to students how these claims to authority
work. It might be interesting to withhold this information, but I would be
reluctant to give students false information for any exercise. My sense is
that my undergraduates, many of whom were new to disability politics and
disability studies, already felt that as nondisabled people, they had no
right to express their opinions on the issues we were dealing with. Related
to this, I think, was a reluctance to take responsibility for what might be
framed as "privilege" in being nondisabled -- although we didn't use this
language. We tried to encourage them to recognize that everyone has opinions
on these issues and needs to engage with the fact that they are part of a
world in which disability and impairment have important effects, and to take
responsibility for what ever their opinions are.
That said, my experience was that, as one of two people at the front of
every class, the students tended to defer to my colleague's (Catherine
Frazee's) opinion. I think Catherine would agree that this was not because
she has more experience in activism and rights work, while I do more
academic work -- certainly both of us work in both these areas -- but
because Catherine's disability is more visible. Having said that, I'm
copying this message to her to see whether she agrees or not! The ways
visibility play out in the classroom are complicated and my sense is that
it's better to let things be complicated than to encourage students to
identify what seem to be stable subject positions (disabled/nondisabled,
etc.).
Kate
-----Original Message-----
From: The Disability-Research Discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mark Sherry
Sent: November 9, 2004 9:53 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: On teaching Reeve, Shakespeare and Johnson
Hi
I am currently teaching two undergraduate disability courses at The
University of Toledo where the topic of discussion has sometimes been
Christopher Reeve. The results have been fascinating, and I would like to
share them with you.
In one, a group of students did a research project on Reeve and also the
criticisms which Mary Johnson has made in her book, Make Them Go Away. This
discussion occurred two weeks before Reeve died. One of the disabled
students in my class argued that Reeve was the most famous disabled person
alive, and that she understood Johnson is a nondisabled person, and that
this impacted on the way she read Johnson's criticisms of Reeve. She felt
that Reeve's lived, embodied experience of impairment and disability gave
him more credibility in these debates than Johnson, who she understood was
nondisabled. This was bringing an issue associated with identity politics
into the "cure" debate -- and that is something we have not discussed much
so far on this list. She added that she felt that Johnson's likening of
Reeve to Clint Eastwood, who has waged a pulblic battle against the ADA, was
also unfair, given the support which Reeve gave to a number of disability
organisations that addresse!
d both
disability and impairment - such as the National Organization on Disability
and the Spinal Cord Injury Association. She also discussed the comments
Reeve made at a Democratic Convention about disability rights.
Another student said that a rights movement such as the disability movement
can often experience a conflict between minority and majority rights. So for
instance, she likened a person who chooses to work as a "freak" and another
who chooses to abort a disabled fetus, as two individuals who might be
pursuing their own rights, even though they might conflict with the broader
rights of other disabled people. I wonder if this is a topic that often
comes up in other discussions about these issues?
Another interesting thread of the discussion involved the
impairment/disability distinction.
What my class discussed was this - even accepting the social model as simply
a heuristic device - that a thorough discussion about either prevention or
cure cannot be conducted in the absence of a sociology of impairment as well
as a sociology of disablement. In this regard, they found a number of social
issues (such as war, poverty, domestic violence) where it seemed rather
unproblematic to them to argue for prevention of impairment... and of
course, disability scholars in general work for the prevention of
disability.
Another week, the class discussed the large numbers of D/deaf people who
have chosen to have cochlear implants as a problematic development in the
"cure" debate. In the US, national Deaf organisations originally regarded
these implants as a form of eugenics, but more and more Deaf people have
come to regard them as similar to a prosthetic, rather than a cure - or a
"cure" that did not take their D/deaf identity away. So they seemed to
believe that issues of identity were more complex than some of the
discussions of "cure" might have us believe.
In these discussions, the students in my class seemed to find that the
rhetoric which sometimes pervades activist discussion of these issues rather
shallow.
Within a week of one of these classes, Reeve died, and I personally was
really disappointed that few American scholars expressed the sadness about
his passing that Tom Shakespeare did. Almost immediately, attention was
diverted to a discussion of the media representation of Reeve's death,
rather than any genuine empathy for the loss of a life. I was personally sad
to hear that he had died, but also sad that there seemed little empathy for
Reeve as a human being.
Another class I taught actually engaged with Tom Shakespeare's work - and
many students were incredibly impressed by his balanced and careful approach
to these issues. In fact, they probably related better to his work than many
other scholars they examined. He offers careful analysis, rather than
diatribes, and they were impressed by that. His work really did seem to
challenge them to move beyond the binaries. I wonder what other teachers
have experienced in their classrooms? Have your students had similar
reactions? What teaching techniques or strategies have you used to engage
them in these discussions?
Cheers
Mark
Mark Sherry
Ability Center of Toledo Endowed Chair in Disability Studies
University of Toledo
University Hall, Room 2100
Mail Stop 920
Toledo, Ohio 43606-3390
Phone: 419 530 7245 (w) 419 297 7026 (cell)
Fax 419 530 7238
email: [log in to unmask]
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