DISABLING CURE IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICA: DISABILITY, IDENTITY, LITERATURE AND CULTURE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Johnson Fan Cheu, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2003 Dissertation Committee: Professor Brenda Jo Brueggemann, Co-director Professor Debra Ann Moddelmog, Co-director Professor Thomas Piontek Approved by _______________________ Adviser English Graduate Program Copyright by Johnson Fan Cheu 2003 ABSTRACT My dissertation argues that Disabled people have a culture and that “disability” is a cultural experience. Scholars in the emerging field of Disability Studies have made the distinction between the “medical model” of disability that focuses on bodily materiality/impairment and a “social constructionist model” where identity is culturally constructed. One place where these two models converge is at the point of cure. This is where I enter, as I argue that cure is a socially constructed concept. Though my recurring theme in this dissertation revolves around the concept of cure, I have chosen frameworks that critique disability and the construction of cure from a position of marginality, i.e. the construction of disability as both a minority group and a minority discourse. I investigate the concept of cure in some prominent sites where theories of science and culture and their impact on disability are examined — in twentieth-century fiction, film, memoir, and performance. I argue that cure is a scientific construction applied to medical impairment, but that disability is a cultural experience and a potential identity, independent of cure. My argument that medical cure is a specific construction applied to disabled bodies and identities has implications for other fields besides disability — fields that ii I draw upon: medicine, sociology, and queer studies — in the ways that both disability and medical cure are configured. Theorizing cure as a cultural concept in literature and film changes our understanding of disabled bodies and thus of how we read and view them. By looking at disability from a constructionist viewpoint, I hope that we understand not only the way(s) that disability is positioned in relation to a dominant discourse of medical cure, but also the constructedness of medical cure itself. iii For my family: who let me follow my own path iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To undertake work in a new field is a risky move, but to have done so back in 1995 when I started graduate school and Disability Studies was merely a whispered dream among some scholars was even more of a risk. I am grateful to my committee —Brenda Jo Brueggemann, Debra Ann Moddelmog, and Thomas Piontek — for wanting to take this journey with me, for always wanting and expecting the best I had to offer. Other professors at Ohio State gave of their time and wisdom and will find themselves here: Georgina Dodge, Jon Erickson, Leigh Gilmore, Kay Halasek, Nan Johnson, Georgina Kleege, Valerie Lee, Kitty O. Locker, Linda Mizejewski, Jim Phelan, Amy Shuman, Jennifer Terry, and Julia Watson. My thanks to David Citino, Kathy Fagan and Steve Kuusisto who understand that the scholarly and the creative work are fueled by each other. I am indebted to the Department of English for the award of two fellowships and the Corbett grant during which much fruitful work was done. I thank Ohio State for the award of the University Dean’s Fellowship as well. Also, thanks to NIDIRR [National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research] for a travel grant. v These last two years I have been a curriculum consultant for the OSU LEND Program that has provided me both steady employment and a different perspective on my work. Thanks to Dr. Ron Lindsay, Dr. Paula Rabidoux, Sherry Rosensweig, and all my students at LEND and in the English Department. I have been fortunate to have some of the work here accepted for publication in anthologies and journals so I thank the editors: Philip Auslander, Sally Chivers, Mairian Corker, Nicole Markotic, Bob McCranie, Carrie Sandhal, Tom Shakespeare, and Jessica Shaw. The work here has grown because of your feedback. Also, Elaine Makas, book review editor for Disability Studies Quarterly should know that the reviews I did helped shape things too. Thanks also to Ann Fox, Bob McRuer, Annette Oxindine, and Sue Schweik who had me out to their schools for lectures and readings from which I gleaned so much. Thanks also to all the conference organizers and fellow panelists I’ve presented material with. This project would not be what it is without my involvement on two listservs: Dis-Research and DS-Hum. There are too many people who’ve conversed and debated with me on everything to list here. But this project and my thinking wouldn’t be what it is without the exchanges I’ve had there. Good friends and colleagues have given their time and energy to this project and my writing, so thanks to Jaye Bausser, Chris Manion, John McCombe, Ben McCorkle, Rob Preissle, Kristin Risley, Lisa Tatonetti, Carolyn Tyjewski, and Matt Wanat. You guys kept me well loved and well fed. vi Robert Barbosa, Deirdre Semoff and Patrick Sullivan put up with numerous phone calls and provided endless moral support all the way from California, as did the Knopf-Goldner clan from Boston. Gay Hadley always gave it to me straight for which I’m grateful. Jason Krauss and Angela Zimmerman: you’ve been in my life for twenty years now. It was fate that brought us all to Columbus! Thanks for seeing me through these past eight years and for everything else. Where would I be without you all? Finally, to my family for the endless support and for reminding me always what’s truly important. vii VITA July 2, 1969 . Born – Warren, Michigan 1997 . M.A. English, Ohio State University 1993 . .M.A. Education, Stanford University 1991. .............B.A. English, University of California, Berkeley 1996 – present. .Graduate Teaching Associate/Lecturer; Department of English, Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio 2001-present. .....Curriculum Consultant; LEND Program, Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio PUBLICATIONS 1. Cheu, Johnson. “De-gene-eretes, Replicants, and Other Aliens: (Re) Defining Disability in Futuristic Films.” Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory. Eds. Mairian Corker and Tom Shakespeare. London: Continuum, 2002. 198-212. 2. Cheu, Johnson, and Brenda Jo Brueggemann, Patricia A. Dunn, Barbara Heifferon, and Linda Feldmeier White. “Becoming Visible: Lessons in Disability.” College Composition and Communication 52.3 (2001): 368-398. viii 3. Cheu, Johnson, and Carolyn Tyjewski. “Learning Within the Lines: Disability, Education and Possibilities.” Delirium: An Interdisciplinary Webzine of Culture and Criticism. Disability Culture Issue. 1.4 (May 2002) <http://www.deliriumjournal.org/writings/cheu-tyjewski/learning.htm>. 4. Cheu, Johnson. “Special Education, 1976.” Red River Review (May 2002) <http://www.redriverreview.com>. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ………………………………………………………………...………… ii Dedication ………………….………………...……………………………..…… iv Acknowledgments ..……………...…….....……………………………………… v Vita …………………….………...……………….………………………….…....vii Chapters: 1. Introduction……………. ………………………………………………… 1 Finding Cure: Disability in Medical and Cultural Discourse 2. Wait Until Cure:............................................................................................29 Disability and Film 3. And the Lame Shall Not Enter:.....................................................................71 Literature of O’Connor and Morrison 4. Home of the Self:.........................................................................................102 Cure Autism Now and Autism Memoir x 5. The “Other” Side of the Line:.....................................................................134 A Memoir 6. Performing Disability, Problematizing Cure...............................................148 7. Afterword:...................................................................................................172 Where from Here? Bibliography ……………..…………..…………………………..…………….. 181 xi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION FINDING CURE: DISABILITY IN MEDICAL AND CULTURAL DISCOURSE For it is the body’s world they are trying to destroy forever The best world is the body’s world filled with creatures filled with dread misshapen so yet the best we have our raft among the abstract worlds and how I longed to live on this earth walking her boundaries never counting the cost —Adrienne Rich “Contradiction: Tracking Poems XVIII” WHY CURE MATTERS Adrienne Rich is speaking about the state of our environmental world, and not the physical body as we know it. However, for me, her poem holds particular weight when it comes to speaking of people with disabilities. For many of us, we’ve been called 1 misshappen, or worse. Historically, like the plight of those exterminated in Nazi Germany for being physically misshapen, or thought mentally unstable, the “cost” has been our very existence. 1 For others, the “cost” of being thought misshapen has taken form in this concept called medical “cure.” For indeed, if you are thought “misshapen,” then there must be a solution to that, a way to alter that form, that state of being. The solution lies in the idea of medical cure of disabled bodies, an idea that is as culturally pervasive as it is personally damaging. A personal example: As I was beginning work on this dissertation, my father gave me an article. The article detailed a new