Mad in Court: Mentally Disabled Pro Se Litigants and the Complex Embodiment of Mind
Prof. Catherine Prendergast
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Date: Wednesday 3 October 2012
Time: 2.15pm–3.45pm
Place: Eden 109, Liverpool Hope University, UK
Despite the recent increase in self-advocacy by people who are mentally impaired, the legal realm is still considered a risky area for self-representation, as though “nothing about us without us” should stop at the courthouse door. To complicate this notion, Prof. Catherine Prendergast presents two cases that demonstrate both the persuasive force and jurisprudential significance of mentally impaired pro se litigation. The contention is that these litigants offer something akin to Tobin Siebers’s notion of “complex embodiment” in the sense that they lend concrete form to the oppressive and flattening abstraction of mental illness. They also provide first-hand accounts of the barriers that hamper inmate efforts to engage in self-expression and advocacy, including limitations on publication rights, and lack of access to materials for writing and research. These accounts finally question the mind-body dualism implied in the notion of “embodiment” itself.
Catherine Prendergast is Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she teaches courses in disability studies, rhetoric, and writing. Her articles on the subject of mental impairment have appeared in SAQ: South Atlantic Quarterly, College English, and The Disability Studies Reader (3rd edition). She has co-edited (with Elizabeth Donaldson) a special issue of the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies on the topic of Representing Disability and Emotion.
For more information, please contact:
Dr. David Bolt
Director, Centre for Culture & Disability Studies
ccds.hope.ac.uk
Editor, Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies
http://JLCDS.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk
Lecturer, Education and Disability Studies
http://www.hope.ac.uk/boltd
Founder, International Network of Literary & Cultural Disability Scholars
http://www.facebook.com/pages/International-Network-of-Literary-and-Cultural-Disability-Scholars/174137315933446
http://twitter.com/#!/INLCDS
Email: [log in to unmask]
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