Thank you, Mark and John for your helpful comments:
As I know both of you well and have worked with/do work with both of you, I
probably will say more to both of you privately. However, what I do want to
say is that at the heart of what John raises the very important question of
institutionalised oppression. He emphasises in his description of his
experience how it has become ritualised and touches all of tose who dare to
associate themselves with 'the social model'. I think he also informs the
debate around academic integrity, standards and quality.
It has worried me for a very long time that those on whom we depend as
academics - funders, publishers and universities - support 'personalities'
rather than good scholarship. It's the old adage 'its who you know not what
you know and how you use it.'
It worries me because I can see a decline in standards which, I feel, is
heavily influenced by monetarism. It worries me even more that in spite of
the huge wealth of knowledge generated by the kind of disability studies
that Mark is talking about and that challenges the traditional way of
exploring and defining disability, projects of the kind to which John
refers still get funded. These projects are based on shoddy scholarship if
they make no mention of or no understanding of the work to which Mark
refers. Who referees these projects? Who agrees with funding being
allocated? Is there something wrong with the system of being able to choose
one's referees, knowing that funders don't necessarily approach them but
use their hand-picked ones instead? However, make no mistake about it - it
is the shoddy scholarship that gets at me most of all - because I think
quality and standards are very important in how useful research is to
anyone, be they theoreticians or pragmatists. That should apply to
disability studies as much as to any discipline.
I have my own issue which is very similar to John's. While doing research
in the way that I had been asked to do it by my employers, there were
complaints about research methods and the way I wrote a report (which
actually used language that was used in many other publications on that
topic). The complainants, who felt very threatened by some of the things I
said, instead of complaining directly to me, told their line manager who
told their line manager who told my line manager. This means that the
message I got at the end was inevitably distorted - well I mean I do know
something about communication even if I am deaf! Of course the delivered
criticism, which seemed very personal, hurt and, yes, it felt disablist.
But the minute you suggest that it's twisted so that you become the
perpetrator of some unnamed 'evil'.
I read somewhere recently that European laws that are supposed to ban
incitement to racial hatred have, in British experience, been used more
against Black nationalist and Black racist speakers, than across the board.
I think the same thing happens with disabled people in academia (though we
do not have the same 'protection' under law) because as van Dijk has
written, 'hate speech' is very well connected - it finds its hegemonic
expression in the standard discourse of educated and seemingly responsible
sectors of the elite - and is closeted by strict adherence to 'academic
freedom.' That is, for the benefit of those in the US - 'academic freedom'
is a bit like your First Amendment!
I very much respect what Mark is saying in relation to the politicisation
of disability studies, and I also agree with him about the necessity for
it. However, when he writes that there are two debates:
>One is about the right of disabled
>people to pursue legitimate careers as independent academics (in
>whatever discipline). The other is about the different paradigms for
>disability research and about the politically engaged nature of
>disability studies (or not). Perhaps we might consider them separately.
I have difficulty with this separation because ALL of my work, inside and
outside of 'disability studies' is about disability because I am an
interdisciplinarian and because I'm a disabled academic. What I don't want
to see is a situation where these 'paradigms' are used as a rod to beat
disabled academics with when they don't 'toe the line'. The 'political'
nature of my own work is not always evident immediately because I work with
theory, but I believe this work is political and always informed by and
involves disabled people's experience, not just my own. However I am not
only interested in those who have already self-organised into a movement,
but also in those who haven't or can't. To ignore them is to construct WHO
is disabled with conditions attached.
Though I struggle day after day to try to make theory accessible, I am not
always successful and I get very frustrated and angry with myself over
that. What I mean by 'critical friends' is people who will look at my work
and say 'I think it may make it clearer if you did this....' or 'I don't
understand that .. what does it mean?' or even 'I don't agree with you so
let's try to hash it out or be reflexive about it' rather than saying
'you're wrong' or 'I know you better than you know yourself' or 'you don't
understand the social model.' Like Mark, I've met a few people through this
list who come under the former group, but I've met many more who are in the
latter group - and probably there are some who think I'm in the latter
group too!
What I want to ask disabled academics is: 'Whereas it's clear that everyone
who gets involved with disability studies is touched by the
institutionalised oppression of disability studies, would you say it's
harder for those who have impairments and work in the disability studies
field? If so, can you say why?'
Many thanks for the time!
Best wishes
Mairian
Mairian Corker
Senior Research Fellow in Deaf and Disability Studies
Department of Education Studies
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE
Address for correspondence:
111 Balfour Road
Highbury
London N5 2HE
U.K.
Minicom/TTY +44 [0]171 359 8085
Fax +44 [0]870 0553967
Typetalk (voice) +44 [0]800 515152 (and ask for minicom/TTY number)
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"To understand what I am doing, you need a third eye"
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