Disability in an Age of Environmental Risk by Sarah Gibbons a Thesis

Disablement, Diversity, Deviation: Disability in an Age of Environmental Risk by Sarah Gibbons A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2016 © Sarah Gibbons 2016 I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii Abstract This dissertation brings disability studies and postcolonial studies into dialogue with discourse surrounding risk in the environmental humanities. The central question that it investigates is how critics can reframe and reinterpret existing threat registers to accept and celebrate disability and embodied difference without passively accepting the social policies that produce disabling conditions. It examines the literary and rhetorical strategies of contemporary cultural works that one, promote a disability politics that aims for greater recognition of how our environmental surroundings affect human health and ability, but also two, put forward a disability politics that objects to devaluing disabled bodies by stigmatizing them as unnatural. Some of the major works under discussion in this dissertation include Marie Clements’s Burning Vision (2003), Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People (2007), Gerardine Wurzburg’s Wretches & Jabberers (2010) and Corinne Duyvis’s On the Edge of Gone (2016). The first section of this dissertation focuses on disability, illness, industry, and environmental health to consider how critics can discuss disability and environmental health in conjunction without returning to a medical model in which the term ‘disability’ often designates how closely bodies visibly conform or deviate from definitions of the normal body. It shows how inadequate medical care, heavily polluted environments, and negative social attitudes might be understood as barriers to access that create disability. The second section of this dissertation focuses on disability, neurological difference, and ‘ecological othering’ as it considers how autistic artists and writers offer an alternative to the belief that their communicative practices are unnatural. This section argues that metaphors linking ecological devastation to changes in human neurology promote fear, and suggests that exploring the parallels between understandings of iii neurological diversity and understandings of biological diversity would allow for a more nuanced means of pursuing efforts to link disability rights and environmental justice. An important aspect of this project involves a critique of the impetus to celebrate the promise of technology for solving social issues, as it brings critiques of the technological fix approach to environmentalism into conversation with critiques of the medical cure as a techno- fix for disability. With the introduction of concept of critical ecologies of embodiment, a concept that unites these two critiques, this dissertation offers insight into how disability studies scholars and environmental justice scholars might further collaborate. iv Acknowledgments I would like to thank everyone who has supported me during the intellectually stimulating and emotionally challenging process of writing of this dissertation. During my time at the University of Waterloo, Dr. Jay Dolmage has been an incredibly dedicated and encouraging supervisor, whose guidance and support has been integral to the successful completion of this project. Jay is always generous with his time and thoughtful with his feedback. I am very thankful to have had the opportunity to work with such an accomplished and accountable disability studies scholar and teacher. Jay, I cannot thank you enough. I would like to extend a warm thank you to Dr. Heather Smyth for her early encouragement of my scholarship during her graduate course, and for her confidence in this project. I am grateful for the insight that she provided to my dissertation as an expert in postcolonial studies. I would also like to extend a sincere thank you to Dr. Andrew McMurry for his dedication to my committee, as his expertise in environmental criticism was of central importance to this project. Thank you to Dr. Kathleen Rybczynski, from the Department of Economics, for joining my committee and for providing generous and helpful feedback. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Nicole Markotić of the University of Windsor for reading my work and travelling to the University of Waterloo for my examination. I am very grateful for her thoughtful questions, comments, and suggestions. As a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo, I have had the opportunity to study with many excellent scholars and teachers whose guidance and direction shaped my research program; I am very thankful for the opportunities afforded to me by the inspiring and collegial faculty in the Department of English. I would specifically like to thank Dr. Aimée Morrison and Dr. Randy Harris, who both served as graduate coordinators during my PhD. I would also like to thank Margaret Ulbrick, Tina Davidson, and the rest of the administrative staff for their tireless v support of graduate students in the Department. Before coming to the University of Waterloo, I studied at Queen’s University and the University of Ottawa. I am thankful for the excellent mentorship that I received at these institutions as well, particularly from Dr. Molly Wallace and Dr. Sylvia Söderlind. I am grateful for the incredible support from, and fascinating conversations with, all graduate students that I had the good fortune to meet and befriend along the way, including Débora Antunes, Lacey Beer, Natalee Blagden, Betsy Brey, Lauren Burr, Adam Cilevitz, Keely Cronin, Stephen Fernandez, Kim Garwood, Michael Hancock, Naj Khatami, Shannon Maguire, Phil Miletic, Tommy Mayberry, Jaime McGrane, Ciara O’Shea, Quinn Powell, Dani Stock, Elise Vist, Emma Vossen, Steve Wilcox, and many, many others. I am also very grateful to the wonderful people at the University of Waterloo Writing Centre, including Clare Bermingham and Dr. Nadine Fladd, who helped me to develop an effective writing schedule. My time at Waterloo was also enriched by my interactions with my undergraduate students. I am thankful, both for the opportunity to have been an instructor at the University of Waterloo, and for the students themselves, who were motivated and passionate individuals from a variety of programs who brought to my courses their own disciplinary knowledge, critical perspectives, and strategies for social change. Along the way, I also benefitted from the support of the members of the Canadian Disability Studies Association, who first encountered these chapters as conference papers. I am also extremely thankful for my Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and for my Joseph-Armand Bombardier Doctoral Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council that made this research possible. I would also like to extend a special thanks to the Bloomfield family in Guelph, and specifically to my friend Andrew Bloomfield, who created the Bridges-Over-Barriers Communication Initiative. His important advocacy for communication rights and individualized vi housing options has increased my knowledge of the specific challenges facing many Ontarians with disabilities. Thank you for the excellent conversations, and for sharing your book collection with me. A major thank you is also in order for my closest friends, including Aasma Alam, Haider Khawaja, Duke Patrick Sonsing, and Megan Stanford-Jones. Finally, I would like to thank both my immediate family and my large extended family for their love and support. I would especially like to thank my long-time partner and occasional science advisor, Adam Potter, for supporting my decision to return to graduate school for my PhD, and for his efforts to relocate to Waterloo. I am also grateful for the continued support of my parents, with whom I was able to have many interesting and thoughtful conversations about my research. My mother, Diana Gibbons, and my father, Michael Gibbons, have fostered my passion for reading, writing, and research through their own intellectual curiosity; their genuine interest in my project was invaluable. My brother, Christopher Gibbons, a talented painter, accomplished athlete, and the best Super Mario 64 player I have yet to meet, helped me to relax and stay motivated. Thank you for all the hikes in the woods, Chris. vii To Christopher Gibbons viii Table of Contents Author’s Declaration……………………………………………………………………….ii Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………….iii Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………………v Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………viii Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………..ix An Introduction to the Problem of Environmental Inaccessibility: Contemporary Issues in Disability Studies, Ecocritical Studies, and Postcolonial Studies………………………1 Chapter One Staging Slow Violence: The Temporalities of Disabling Illness…………………………..36 Chapter Two Novel Embodiments: Deviation, Disability, and Industrial Disaster………………………82 Chapter Three Documenting Global Connections: Autistic Self Advocacy and its Reframing of Awareness Discourse …………………………………………………………………………………..133 Chapter Four Alternative Futurities: Neurological Difference and Environmental Diversity……………189 Toward Critical Ecologies of Embodiment: Concluding Remarks………………………...251 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………..293 ix An

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