Thank you Johnson for opening a window to your mind and letting some
thoughts about what really matters to you, out; and I assume some fresh
air in. It is a beautiful and clear, sunny day here, I hope you will
enjoy it to.
rgds John
Johnson Cheu wrote:
>
> Mairian asks:
>
> 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!
>
> My musings for the day:
>
> In some ways I think it's easier in that we don't get questioned in the way
> that an AB who does this would-- the same phenom. for race studies/queer
> studies/gender studies whatever where it's all a matter of someone's
> positioning (and academics love questions of positions).
>
> Where I see chasms and where I sometimes get lost is when it comes to the
> issue of representation. I know enough to know that I don't represent eons
> of disabled people and the diversity of the community, a fact that's
> pointed out to me again and agin from al over-- "The privilidged" work in
> academe which has a certain amount of economic and social mobility ( such
> as it is), the "real disabled people" are on welfare, Of course you could
> do it, you have supportive family and the brains (and when it comes to the
> creative writing, the talent) not like some. Here people wax into "not
> disabled enough" phrasing, irksome, but you get the idea.
>
> Be that as it may, where the chasm lies for me is that in my day-to-day
> worklife, I understand that I do "represent" (whether I mean to or not)
> disability. The university perpetutates this too-- somebody's having a
> heyday with the disversity quotas and minority related funding because they
> get to check off two of those boxes with me. And certainly within my own
> department my visibility-- of both impairment and skin-- well, all anybody
> needs to say is "Asian guy in a chair" and everyone knows. And always in
> my teaching where I get asked alot of questions about disability and
> impairment regardless of the actual content I am teaching, and where some
> students admit that I'm the first they've met (what they mean often is I'm
> the first who'll talk about it, but some literally do mean the first. So
> the chasm between the smaller fishpound of academic and the diversity of
> the disability community at-large becomes awfully blury. I think though
> that it was worse when I was teaching high school where I'd get requests to
> speak to Sp.Ed. classes and people would want to to trot out as the
> "inspirational" poster child who's "Made it". Here at least people are
> used to questions and boundry blurring. My point is that people do make
> assumption about who or what I represent based not just on what I claim to
> do "disability studies" , but on the actual impaiment itself.
>
> And at least when it comes to publishing, from a creative standpoint, I
> often wonder if more of my poetey isn't out there because
> publishers/editors just don't "get it" because I don't tell the
> stereotypical stories that AB editors, puiblishers know-- "it makes me
> uncomfotable J, It's good, but we just don't know what to *do* with it."
> But if a book ever coming out of this, that's the world I have to play in.
>
> Ok, enough musing....
>
> --Johnson
>
> Johnson Cheu
> [log in to unmask]
> http://people.english.ohio-state.edu/cheu.1
> The Ohio State University*English Dept.*421 Denney Hall*164 W. 17th. Ave.*
>
> Columbus, OH 43210*(614) 292-1730 (O)*(614) 292-6065 (D)*(614) 292-7816 (Fax)
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