Anita wrote:
I am getting a feeling that there is a need for a fundamental
clarification regarding use of narratives as a tool of social inquiry and
an end in themselves. If the real solution lies within us and if personal
is political, then where is the harm in listening to the voices of the
fellow disabled. I will stand corrected, but aren't we assuming that the
social model will not or has not posed problems of its own. Aren't we
referring to a classical issue of subjectivity vs collectivity and the
problem of engaging and negotiating with one at the cost of another. Like
individual realities have the potential of taking us backward by virtue of
their variation, the nuances of social realities may pose the same
dilemma. For a disabled woman and academician from the third world an
absolute stance is rather confusing.
There is so much in this short message that resonates extremely powerfully.
Although I'm not usually given to 'me too' messages, I want to say that I'm
absolutely behind Anita's thinking. What is particularly important for me
is her final comment because the third world is the Majority World and we
in the West are intent on colonising it instead of learning from it. When I
was working on my book 'Deaf Transitions', one of the narratives I included
was from a Deaf, Indian Hindu woman. She too was struggling with absolutes
because she was being forced (by Western approaches to deaf education) into
an absolute way of thinking that incorporated only Deaf and hearing. This
did not resonate with her cultural history. It interests me that when the
book was reviewed, as its author, I was criticised for not toeing the line
in relation to 'accepted theories' and models of 'deaf' development and the
life course. Whose theories and models, I wonder? Isn't this one way in
which narratives are censored? I think most absolutes are a product of
cherry-picking narratives that fit 'expert knowledge'. That is why we don't
like individual narratives. They destabilise 'accepted' ways of thinking.
Best wishes
Mairian
Mairian Corker
Senior Research Fellow, School of Education and Social Science, UCLAN;
Visiting Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, Kings College London.
Address for correspondence:
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"To understand what I am doing, you need a third eye"
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