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Claudia, I'll drink to that! rgds John who is not disabled, nor an academic, but is an activist and advocate ----- Original Message ----- From: <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2000 2:25 AM Subject: Re: Activists and academics > In a message dated 9/2/00 4:00:54 AM Pacific Daylight Time, > [log in to unmask] writes: > > << tension between activists and academics remains all too apparent >> > > Loved Mairian's post. As an activist and lawyer and non-academic and > feminist, I feel most alienated from this list and from disability studies > when there is what seems to me a kind of simplistic or knee jerk promotion of > unitary "models" of disability. In my world, people live with and discuss and > advocate around multiple "models" or aspects of disability, which are > coexisting and sometimes conflicting, and live with and embrace this > complexity. > > In the world of feminism and feminist scholarship, I think (at least from the > outside -- no scholar here) that that scholarship has responded to the > complexity of women's lives, but I don't necessarily see that disability > scholarship has yet done the same. I wish that disability scholarship would > look to other disciplines like feminist scholarship, and not reinvent the > wheel for the next 15 years. > > Also, as in all disciplines, the activists are, I think, more pragmatic and > political. A recent discussion on statistics reminded me of that. > Statistics on disability are problematic. We activists know that. But at > times we need statistics to do our political work. Depending on the issue. > So we use them, and to us it's important for the statistics to be out there, > even though we know they're problematic. Similar to the issue of "labels" -- > labels are problematic, but frequently rights and services are based upon > labels. > > Claudia > %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%