>The vast majority of disabled people simply do not have a problem with a
>definition based on bio-medical impairment, and are also keenly interested
>in the medical side of disability. Moreover they experience disability at
>this level in exclusively pathological terms: as loss, as something which is
>inherently and unavoidably negative. They are, in a phrase, grown-up about
>it, and moreover view insistence on the social nature of disability with
>suspicion, as evidence of psychosocial denial.
Dear Brennen, Michael and all:
There's much I could comment on here as this thread has taken on enormous
proportions and dimensions, but it would take me all day, and I have a
dissertation to write, poetry and art to make, classes to teach and other
things to do, so:
1) We could go round and round about the value of academic work
(particularly for Humanists and Social Scientists) and as much of the
non-academic world doesn't understand what it is we do, I certainly
understand that debate, and though people certainly have a right to
critique the "academic psycho-babble" as its been called, the reality is
that the social attitudes of people towards PWD -- the demeaning pats on
the head, having other nondisabled people asked at my table in a restaurant
what it was I wanted to eat (and at 32, I have long since passed kid
stage) and all that must arise from someplace. And no study that I've
read, done by the medical establishment, including the ones that attempt to
look at social causes for such things as our high unemployment rate,
account well for social causes and prejudice. They objectify and localize
the "problem" of unemployment in the individual, by interviewing a "sample"
of folks. So if not the social model, then what?
2) RE: Disability Studies as a useless degree: the same argument has been
made ad nauseam re: GLBT (Queer) Studies, Ethnicity/Race Studies,
Gender/Feminist Studies, at one point or another, yet people still want and
get degrees in those fields. (And jobs too) Gee, I wonder why?
3) I've clipped your last paragraph here Michael because, again, it smacks
of what many nondisabled people think about disability. I'm not in denial
about impairment (I have one) and yes, some days dealing with it sucks
rocks, but the presumption of my experience of it as "loss" at whatever
level, is YOUR assumption about my PATHOLOGY (and a medical one at that)
not mine. I don't like, personally, those folks who want to talk about it
as a gift, as a "superiority", myself, just as much as I don't like it
being touted in purely negative terms. Yep, I understand that not having
the freedom to move my body in a certain way can be defined by some as a
"loss", but most days I don't even think much about it; it's just the way
that I am. (I simply get in my wheelchair and go to my job) It is neither
positive nor negative; simply a part of my life. Contrary to what many
folks believe, I don't spend every waking moment of my life dwelling on it
or wishing that I wasn't X, that I could do X. In the same way that I
don't view ethnicity negatively-- I don't spend time wishing that I was
White, and I both believe in and live with While Male Heterosexual
Privilege, (and there are days where encountering *that* in the world sucks
rocks too,) and in that context, understand that ethnicity can be a
societal liability, but I refuse to think of my "skin color" as solely
that, a color without social implications, and likewise, I refuse to belive
that having a particular skin color (and yes, "White" is a color too in my
book), is inherently, in and of itself, a negative.
Johnson
Johnson Cheu
http://people.english.ohio-state.edu/cheu.1
The Ohio State University, Dept. of English
421 Denney Hall, 164 W. 17th. Ave.
Columbus, OH 43210
(614) 292-1730 (Office); (614) 292-6065 (Dept.); (614) 292-7816 (Fax)
****************
Curriculum Consultant, Project LEND
http://www.osu.edu/units/osunc
Nisonger Center, McCampbell Hall
The Ohio State University
1581 Dodd Drive, Columbus, OH 43210
(614) 247-6073 (Office); (614) 292-3727 (Fax)
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