Hi Mairian,
OK, I think we need a moment of levity here. What strikes me as funny is
that this debate began when someone on the list suggested I debate Singer.
I said I would love to, and I've ended up debating you instead. I think
that's pretty funny. So, the first thing I want to do is add you to the my
PR list of debaters and speakers. I should have done so earlier, but
clearly you are up there with arguers.
I was being mischievious, which I think is somewhat difficult for anyone
over 50 to do successfully. But actually the point I was upset about
wasn't the one you highlighted but another one. I'll copy the letter I
sent you at the time:
Hi Mairian,
I'm reading your DEAF AND DISABLED and enjoying it. But I wanted to
complain about your treatment of me. You use me as the guy who said "You
are either disabled or you are not." That is kind of unfair since what I
said was that "The term 'disability,' as it is commonly and professionally
used, is an absolute category." I don't say that "I" use it that way, and
indeed I follow that statement with the caution "One must view with
suspicion any term of such Procrustean dimensions," and I describe it as "a
concept with such a univalent stranglehold o meaning must contain within it
a dark side of ower, control, and fear." I thought it was pretty clear
that the point of my book is to debunk such an arbitrary binary. So, in
your book you set me up as the straw guy who thinks that "you're either
disabled or you are not."
Other than that carp, I'll get back to you when I finish the book.
Best,
Lenny
As I recall, and I don't have your letter, you wrote back to me and
acknowledged that you had taken the quote out of context.
At this point, I'm not sure if this debate is of any interest to anyone
besides you and me. I don't want to take up the time and energy of the
list with our disagreements if there is no general interest or if people
want to move on.
Since I'm an inveterate summarizer, I'll cystalize the things we are
arguing about:
1) Should non-disabled people be included in disability studies. Should
non-disabled people be in leadership positions?
2) Should Deaf people consider themselves not disabled?
I'd like to be clear on these points. As for the first, I think that
inevitably all kinds of people will become involved in dis. studies and
dis. activism. We should not create "hierarchies of pain" and "mimic the
exclusionary nature of the dominant culture" with disability-related
endeavors (here I'm quoting and adapting this phrase from my son, Carlo
Mirabella-Davis, who is involved in transgendered politics). I believe
that dis. studies offers the opportunity to re-analyze identity politics
and to create a new political movement that can transcend the previously
effective but now limited politics around individual identities. I think
that disability is by definition an unstable category that can never really
be an identity in the older essentialist sense. As Phyllis and others
point out, there is tremendous differences within types of
disability--chronic, invisible, motor, sensory, etc. To insist that all
these constitute one thing seems to me wrong, and rests its error on trying
to adapt disability to earlier models set set out by feminist,
anti-racistst, etc. theories which involve binaries. The bed is
procrustrean, and disability doesn't really fit. The British model offers
us a way of transcending the differences by focusing on oppression, and, as
a Marxist, I accept this viewpoint, although I also see the value of the
American way of putting things (which recognizes a difference between body
politics and other kinds of politics).
I'd like to recount something anecdotally that tells me that your, and
others, insistance on some kind of tally or testimony of disability status
is not a good idea. I've asked my graduate course on disability to sign
onto this list (Hello class!) and their reaction to this debate has been
instructive. Two students mentioned that they felt that they should resign
from the list because they were not disabled. This, to me, is exactly what
we don't want. Isn't the goal of dis. studies and dis. activism to educate
people to the extent that they accept disability studies and disability
activism as actually about themselves? Their relation to the body, civil
rights, human rights, injustice, etc.?
As for point 2--on Deafness and deafness. I've said on many occasions
(most recently at the Smithsonian Institution's conference on disability
and history which had a good attendance by Deaf and deaf people) that the
problem we face in the US at least is that the Deaf community is ableist
and the disability community is audist. The Deaf community is ableist
because, as you said, it accepts the dominant notion of disability or
impairment as a negative. But, likewise, the disability community is
audist in the sense that it hasn't, by and large, engaged much in the Deaf
World and its issues. Both sides have much to learn and gain from each
other. I do also recognize that non-signing and/or hard of hearing people
have not been well served by the Deaf community. Here, again, is the
difficulty of claiming that disability or deafness is one thing.
So that's it for me.
Best,
Lennard J. Davis
Professor and Graduate Director
Department of English
Binghamton University
Binghamton, NY 13902
607-777-2770 Fax: 607-777-2408
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