Returning to William Bromwichs' text 'The handcycle corpus' in Discourse, Identities and Roles in Specialized Communication, Bromwich wrote:
'... dating back to medieval times, we may speak of an exclusionary response in which people with impaired mobility were labelled as "cripples", to be kept outside the city gates and relegated to marginal locations, such as Cripplegate in London, or Bettlerkreuz in the german-speaking states where, cap in hand, they relied on charity.' p. 255 Bettlerkreuz translates as beggar cross.
One of the mistakes those new to Disability Studies often make is that the word "Handicap" is derived from begging, as in "cap in hand", (I have even heard this argument used by so-called Disability Awareness trainers). This is not true. Whilst the words "lame" and "cripple" have an Anglo-Saxon origin, the word "handicap" comes to us from the Medieval period and only in reference to games or sport. The 17th Century diarist Samuel Pepys enjoyed a game of Handicap.
The word "Handicap" in connection to people with impairments can only be traced back to the beginnings of the 20th Century and then derived from a sense of disadvantage, in the sense of inequalities of race or gender, in horse racing and the game of golf. And even then it has no historical association with begging.
Many beggars in the past did not have impairments. A simple search in Wikipedia will reveal that the term mendicant (from Latin: mendicans, "begging") refers to begging or relying on charitable donations, and is most widely used for religious followers or ascetics who rely exclusively on charity to survive. In principle, mendicant orders or followers do not own property, either individually or collectively, and have taken a vow of poverty, in order that all their time and energy could be expended on practising or preaching their religion or way of life and serving the poor. Many religious orders adhere to a mendicant way of life, including the Catholic mendicant orders, Hindu ascetics, some dervishes of Sufi Islam, and the monastic orders of Jainism and Buddhism.
It is also stereotypical to make the assumption that even in ancient times all people with physical impairments were beggars. Many people with physical impairments were metal workers highly praised in ancient times. In fact most of the ancient gods who primarily worked in metal were also depicted as having physical impairments including Ptah (Egyptian), Hephaistos (Greek), Vulcan (Roman), Wayland Smithy (Nordic) as well as the Celtic Gods in Ireland and Wales are all described as having some sort of physical impairment in their story.
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