Sorry, lest this sound like a dialogue, but please allow me one more
point on a related topic. I also remember a posting on this list last
week, that said something like "countries where disability is not
socially constructed." I don't understand that statement (if I have it
accurately). It seems that what we have across countries are various
bewhaviors and practices, reflecting various constructions of
disability (or of other groupings, identities, soicial positioning).
The construction is the idea about the phenomenon. I believe that
disability (and pretty much everything we process mentally) is
constrtucted, by which I mean it is "read" in a particular way, and
that reading is determined by social forces. I understand that there
are many places, within the US, and outside of it, where the use of
social construction as a way of looking at the world is not employed.
By using it as a tool for looking at people's experience, I am not
imposing it on those who don't share my belief, anymore than I can say
that others use of their perspectives and beliefs about me impinges on
me. UNLESS - and this is an important unless, we apply those beliefs in
practices and soical interactions that DO impose, intrude, oppress,
discriminate etc.
Simi Linton
--- Mairian Corker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Simi wrote:
> >I'm glad that Mairian brought up the idea of social
> construction as a
> >*tool* for examination of a phenomenon. i haven't
> followed this whole
> >discussion, but the bits i've picked up seem to use
> the idea of social
> >construction as if it were a way of living, rather
> than as a
> >perspective for examining the ways that disability
> (or whatever
> >label/identity/social positioning is operative in
> the country under
> >discussion) functions in a certain place. i don't
> see how we can
> >evaluate whether a particular culture/copuntry
> "uses the social
> >construction model."
>
> Thanks Simi. I think I would want to add and maybe
> emphasise deconstruction
> also, because parts of disability studies have
> tended to give it a bad
> name. Deconstruction is also a methodological *tool*
> that is used by those
> of postructural orientation in looking at
> contextualised meaning in
> language - it is not a tool of destruction. It urges
> its practitioners be
> careful and rigorous in how they interpret things
> and why. Various
> postmodern writers have pointed out that there is no
> such thing as
> deconstructionISM, nor indeed is there any such
> thing as social
> constructionISM because these things are not
> doctrines or ideologies,
> unlike modernism and its associated *tool*
> structuralism, which have
> assumed the status of metanarrative. I get very
> frustrated when I read
> disability texts that damn posmodernISM without
> understanding that there is
> no such thing (and yes, I did use that term myself
> at one time, though I no
> longer do so and I'm also very capable of accepting
> SOME aspects of
> materialist writing). Poststructural writers aim to
> deconstruct
> oppositional categories and universal 'truths' by
> showing how the concept
> of 'voice' becomes meaningless within the framework
> of such categorising
> since these categories exclude large swathes of
> human experience. Yes, a
> lot of people feel threatened by that, because it
> means that nothing is as
> clear cut as it seems. But then, isn't that how the
> powerholders would like
> us to think, just because it makes life easier for
> them?
>
> 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)
>
> *********
>
> "To understand what I am doing, you need a third
> eye"
>
> *********
>
>
>
===
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Simi Linton
[log in to unmask]
212 580 9280 (phone and fax)
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