Don't make excuses you are all as bad as each other, you can justify it how you will, but if it were
the other way around you might be agreeing with me. Your ideology and disability rights agenda only
seems to go so far. Have you forgotten all about nothing about us without us, well it seems you
have, and I am there to remind you.
For the most part it seems just like it was with physical impairment in the past, the parents get to
do all the talking as if that experience is the same, well it is not. That is second hand
legitimacy.
It is like getting up on a platform to speak, and saying I am speaking today, because I want to talk
about wheelchair users who can't climb onto this platform, that is what it is.
You are justifying yourselves out of survival necessity but you are trampling on us when you do it,
you are perpetuating mythologies and half truths all the time, you are outsiders, lady bountifuls if
you want me to put it that way with a charity mentality more than a rights mentality.
You think you have progressed beyond all that with your high flown discourse and thery?
Well I am telling you that you have not and you need to listen, because you are part of the
machinery, who hold onto your priveleged access to the things that are denied us, all the more so
because people become accustomed to hearing your supposedly superior, more literary, more learned
voices.
And to anser Mark Priestleys point, I am not being reductio ad absurdist about this, I am saying
that at this point in time there is not a sufficient literature out there for outsiders to be
"allowed" to comment and write on it, when the genre has matured somewhat, yes then you can come in
as a bunch of Tom Shakespeare's with a bit of knock about critique, now is not the time however.
It is again one thing to write about representation, and quite another to be the subject of that
representation and the disbeneficiary of it. If you can put this into a historical context you will
see what you are all doing.
Yes I feel strongly about this but let's get one thing clear, I don't have any personal animosities
or hates, I am not going to burn anyones books or shun them, I just want you all to realise what
this means.
Larry
> -----Original Message-----
> From: The Disability-Research Discussion List
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Irene Rose
> Sent: 23 June 2008 16:17
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: new book - Representing Autism
>
> Hello Larry and all,
> I have ordered this book today and would like to say that
> knowing the author's work and the perspective from which he
> writes, I expect that this book aims, like many other texts
> authored by humantities academics not to speak for others but
> to open up access for inclusion to enable to us to listen and
> hear other's voices and persepectives.
> I am an non autistic academic who writes on autistic
> autobiography not to speak for others but to draw attention
> to the fact that others are speaking and that we need to pay
> attention to that. I also write to understand what may
> prevent some people being heard and how we can work to
> mitigate that within academia.
> At the end of the day if humanitites academics want to
> discuss disability and disabiling discourses and
> representations in our classes and invite participation from
> advocate groups and diabled people - we have to write books on it.
> It's how we tackle the system from the inside. It is our form
> of resistance :) Best wishes, Irene.
>
>
________________End of message________________
This Disability-Research Discussion list is managed by the Centre for Disability Studies at the University of Leeds (www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies).
Enquiries about list administration should be sent to [log in to unmask]
Archives and tools are located at:
www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html
You can VIEW, POST, JOIN and LEAVE the list by logging in to this web page.
|