Hi All
Ive only just caught up with my email from the last week - hope my
comments aren't too cold.
Mairian's complainant stated:
>My concern with the disability movcement is that I find them more
>patronalising, discriminatory, imitatory and even bullying. I have
>been told by 'disabled people', what I ca and can not say, what I
>must do and even I must feel oppressed otherwise I am a traitor. This
>is exactly what is likely to happen now, you have put a value
>judgement into my actions.
I know Mairian is perfectly capable of mailing for herself, however
I feel the need to point out that anyone who as read Mairian's
work (especially the recent article in Disability and Society;
'Differences, Conflations and foundations: the limits to 'accurate'
theoretical representation of disabled people's experience? (1999)
vol 14 pp627-642) should know that she along with others, like Sally
French and Carol Thomas, have consistenly raised concern over the
way disability studies is policed. This might have been one of the
things, amongst many others which she was suggesting when she said:
>It is perhaps unhelpful to resort to personal attacks and to make
>claims about allegiance and representation without checking our
>facts first.
I would add to this that my own personal experience is that
reponding to oppression by being oppressive only reproduces the very
conditions/power relations which you seek to change. It reinforces
concepts of them and us which underpin conflict. It doesn't requre
either side to understand, egage, or change - it just creates winners
and loosers. A more productive approach has been outlined by Mairian
herself. She argues that Bakhtin alerts us to the possibility that,
through dialogue, mutual recognition and co-understanding can be
achieved in a way which enables different people (oppressors and
oppressed) to grow through mutual exchange of view points.
My advice to Mairian's complainant would be to enter into further
dialogue - you may have more in common than you think.
It may be that my email got too overloaded and I've missed other
replies to Mairian's comments about the posters, however, if this is
not the case - why did this subject run dry so quickly? Is it
becasue the list is now dominated by North American issues? Is it
becaswue the issue was done already in the print media? Or is it
something completely different?
Cheers
John
Dr John M Davis
Department of Public Health Sciences/
Research Unit in Health and Behavioural Change
The University of Edinburgh
Medical School
Teviot Place
Edinburgh
EH8 9AG
tele 0131 650 3244/6197
fax 0131 650 6909
email [log in to unmask]
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