Hi All,
In response to Beth's email, I think it's a very good example of what I was
trying to say about 'rules' being used to beat those whom they are supposed
to protect. Actually, when I referred to the First Amendment, it was in a
negative way because of what I've been reading recently about how it is
used, or rather misused in the States. Also, interestingly, I'm told that
it does not cover employment, so does that mean that invoking it would give
Beth very little protection?
However, can I just return to a couple of other things in connection with
this topic. Al's diversion into poetry and subsequent responses reminded me
that when we begin to address the 'real' issue of disability, the common
response is 'lighten up', 'be positive', 'see the person, not the
disability!!'. Actually, I grew up surrounded by people who wanted me to do
these things because it made it easier to forget that I had an impairment -
indeed, it allowed them to forget about me altogether because the humour
was mostly too fast for me to even begin to understand and so my laughter
was silenced by missing punch lines. That seems to link back to Alexa's and
related posts about the pressure to feel good about being disabled. I'm
afraid I find these issues very serious, Al (though I find a lot of other
things very amusing).
The second thing I wondered about (again) was Mark's comment:
>There seem to be two debates here. 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).
I wonder if it's not just about different paradigms, Mark, so much as
*dominant* or *privileged* paradigms, and the fact that these are not
consistent on an international or even a local basis? In the UK we've
spent a long time trying to establish ourselves in sociology and social
policy, though if the the BSA conference this year was any indicator, we
are still not welcome and extremely marginal. This focus is unsurprising
given that this discipline has been home to much of the exploration of
difference and oppression. However, there are other disciplines which are
related to sociology and which 'split off' presumably because they found
the sociology umbrella to be full of holes. These disciplines have now
themselves expanded to embrace huge bodies of work and have developed their
own research paradigms and methodologies.
Some of these paradigms are just as emancipatory and as politically engaged
as those used within sociological disability research, and some encompass a
recognition that social agency and political action is not confined to the
collective. Presumably, these paradigms might also yield a different
definition of 'who' is disabled. So when disability researchers talk about
the 'social relations of research production', does it not follow that
there might be different interpretations of 'social' within related,
'social' disciplines which emphasise research *process*, for example,
rather than production?
I find this focus on sociological disability studies attempts to translate
itself into the way disability studies approaches other disciplines such as
cultural studies, sociolinguistics, anthropology, without always
understanding that sociology and sociolinguistics, for example, embrace
very different views on language, and that sociology and cultural studies
interpret 'culture' in different ways. This lack of understanding can be
exclusive of academics trying to develop ideas about disability within
other disciplines, whilst trying to keep a 'social' conceptualisation of
disability to the fore, but it may happen because disability studies
remains marginal within its host discipline. So, when you say:
>At the same time we researchers need to make every effort to put our
>work 'out there', precisely so that people can make use of it and (yes)
>criticise it.
of course you are right. But there is a lot of work in disability studies
that gets criticised just because it's *not* sociology (or in the US,
maybe, *not* humanities), and because it's not sociology (or *not*
humanities), it's 'wrong'. I also frequently catch the comment 'but we've
looked at and/or resolved that before,' as a reason for rejecting a piece
of work. Surely there is a lot of work that may be useful to some and not
to others; there will always be some who see something as 'useful' because
it speaks to them in a way that resonates with their experience where other
work has silenced this experience. And surely re-examining a topic often
yields new pieces of knowledge which had not been thought about before.
(I'm not talking here about the kind of situation which I experienced at a
BPS conference three years ago where a speaker was talking about her 'new'
social model of disability without any reference at all to 'our' social
model, which is exactly what I mean by shoddy scholarship). Such attitudes
can mean that different ideas and ways of thinking are prevented from
reaching 'critical friends'. Is that not censorship? And if that work is
produced by disabled people, is that not disabling censorship?
When you write:
>To use an extended metaphor, this
>means that it can get very hot in the research kitchen. The usual
>research strategies are either to get out of the area or make salad.
>However, as social model researchers, I hope we'd all agree that
>ventilating the kitchen is a reasonable accommodation.
I think back to the comments made by Jennifer and Johnson doing something
'they are good at,' and I know that there are probably many other things
they have been prevented from doing precisely because of the kind of
experience Beth has had. As you rightly say, disabled people are attracted
to disability studies and often, I think, for different reasons to
non-disabled people (which may include misplaced expectations of
'understanding'). I think 'ventilating the kitchen' needs to accommodate an
understanding that some disabled academics would see 'getting out of the
area' as the equivalent to social death, for political as well as personal
reasons, and we also need to look at who decides when it's too hot in the
context of disability. A lot of non-disabled academics move on to other
areas and make very exotic salads of their lives without having experienced
being scorched.
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"
*********
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|
