Lennard J. Davis (Ed.)-The Disability Studies Reader-Routledge
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The Disability Studies Reader The Fourth Edition of the Disability Studies Reader breaks new ground by emphasiz- ing the global, transgender, homonational, and post-human conceptions of disability. Including physical disabilities, but exploring issues around pain, mental disability, and invisible disabilities, this edition explores more varieties of bodily and mental experi- ence. New histories of the legal, social, and cultural give a broader picture of disability than ever before. Now available for the first time in eBook format. Lennard J. Davis is Professor of Disability and Human Development, English, and Medi- cal Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of, among other works, Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body; Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism, and Other Difficult Positions; My Sense of Silence: Memoirs of a Childhood with Deafness; and Obsession: A History. The Disability Studies Reader Fourth Edition Lennard J. Davis First published 2013 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Taylor & Francis The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Davis, Lennard J., 1949– The disability studies reader / Lennard J. Davis.—4th ed. p. cm. ISBN 978–0–415–63052–8 (hardback)— ISBN 978–0–415–63051–1 (pbk.)— ISBN 978–0–203–07788–7 (ebook) 1. People with disabilities. 2. Sociology of disability. 3. Disability studies. I. Title. HV1568.D5696 2013 362.4—dc23 2012024747 ISBN: 978–0–415–63052–8 (hbk) ISBN: 978–0–415–63051–1 (pbk) ISBN: 978–0–203–07788–7 (ebk) Typeset in Utopia by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon CONTENTS Preface to the Fourth Edition xiii 1 Introduction: Disability, Normality, and Power 1 LENNARD J. DAVIS This essay lays out the way in which normality came to hold powerful sway over the way we think about the mind and body. Calling on scholars and students to rethink the disabled body so as to open up alternative readings of culture and power, Davis signals the critical approach to this Reader in general while discussing historical and social perspectives in particular. PART I: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES 2 Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History 17 DOUGLAS C. BAYNTON Baynton discusses how disability is used to justify discrimination against marginalized groups in America, surveying three great citizenship debates of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: women’s suffrage, African American freedom, and the restriction of immigration. 3 “Heaven’s Special Child”: The Making of Poster Children 34 PAUL LONGMORE This essay provides an examination of the history of telethons, describing them as cul- tural mechanisms that display poster children to evoke sympathy and profit. While the child becomes a celebrity in the eyes of the public, he or she also can be construed as an exploited spectacle. 4 Disabling Attitudes: U.S. Disability Law and the ADA Amendments Act 42 ELIZABETH F. EMENS vi | CONTENTS In light of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the more recent ADA Amend- ments Act (ADAAA), in which definitions of disability and impairment narrowed with the ADA and broadened with the ADAAA, this essay speculates on whether the broader vision of disability will survive in the court system. Considering social attitudes and connections between the private and public spheres of American culture and politics, Emens predicts that the courts will ultimately find new ways to narrow the scope of the law’s protections. PART II: THE POLITICS OF DISABILITY 5 Disabling Postcolonialism: Global Disability Cultures and Democratic Criticism 61 CLARE BARKER AND STUART MURRAY An exploration of the intersections of two major critical fields—Postcolonial Studies and Disability Studies—this essay discovers new approaches to literary and cultural criticism. Realizing that postcolonialism and disability are both tied to questions of power, Barker and Murray assert that Critical Disability Studies “needs to adapt its assumptions and methodologies to include and respond to postcolonial locations of disability.” 6 Abortion and Disability: Who Should and Should Not Inhabit the World? 74 RUTH HUBBARD This essay presents the problem of prenatal testing in relationship to disability and, while not opposing testing, raises concerns about the discrimination inherent in such interventions. 7 Disability Rights and Selective Abortion 87 MARSHA SAXTON Saxton alerts readers to the possible conflict between the goals of the abortion rights movement and that of the disability rights movement, and she proposes goals for both that might bring their aspirations in line with one another. 8 Disability, Democracy, and the New Genetics 100 MICHAEL BÉRUBÉ Bérubé considers whether prenatal testing for genetic diseases fits in with our notions of democracy. Would it be in the interests of a democratic culture to promote or restrict the rights of parents to select the child they want, particularly when it comes to disability? 9 A Mad Fight: Psychiatry and Disability Activism 115 BRADLEY LEWIS This essay locates disability activism in the Mad Pride movement, which fights for the rights of psychiatric survivors and consumers of mental health services. CONTENTS | vii 10 “The Institution Yet to Come”: Analyzing Incarceration Through a Disability Lens 132 LIAT BEN-MOSHE This essay analyzes the reality of incarceration through the prism of disability by con- necting prisons to psychiatric hospitals and other institutions that house people with cognitive, developmental, psychiatric and physical disabilities. Ben-Moshe therefore suggests the pressing need to expand notions of what comes to be classified as “incar- ceration.” The essay also highlights abolition, the call to close down prisons and other institutions, as a strategy to resist further incarceration. PART III: STIGMA AND ILLNESS 11 Stigma: An Enigma Demystified 147 LERITA COLEMAN BROWN This essay examines Erving Goffman’s key concept of “stigma” from a disability studies perspective. 12 Unhealthy Disabled: Treating Chronic Illnesses as Disabilities 161 SUSAN WENDELL Chronic illness is a major cause of disability, especially in women. Therefore, any ade- quate feminist understanding of disability must encompass chronic illnesses. Wendell argues that there are important differences between healthy disabled and unhealthy disabled people that are likely to affect such issues as treatment of impairment in dis- ability and feminist politics, accommodation of disability in activism and employment, identification of persons as disabled, disability pride, and prevention and “cure” of disabilities. PART IV: THEORIZING DISABILITY 13 The Cost of Getting Better: Ability and Debility 177 JASBIR K. PUAR Puar argues for a deconstruction of what ability and disability mean and pushes for a broader politics of capacity and debility that puts duress on the seamless production of able bodies in relation to disability. Examining the recent “It Gets Better” campaign against queer youth suicide, Puar links suicide to forms of slow death, asking which bodies are able to capitalize on their vulnerabilities in neoliberalism and which are not. 14 Enabling Disability: Rewriting Kinship, Reimagining Citizenship 185 FAYE GINSBURG AND RAYNA RAPP Anthropologists propose a new notion of kinship to see how cultures claim or reject disabled fetuses, newborns, and young children. viii | CONTENTS 15 Aesthetic Nervousness 202 ATO QUAYSON Coining a new term—“aesthetic nervousness”—the postcolonial critic theorizes the crisis resulting from the inclusion of disability in literary or dramatic works. 16 The Social Model of Disability 214 TOM SHAKESPEARE This essay includes a description of the social model and a criticism of some aspects of that paradigm. 17 Narrative Prosthesis 222 DAVID MITCHELL AND SHARON SNYDER The authors develop the idea that narrative requires disability as an essential component of storytelling, particularly so the plot can fix or cure the impairment. 18 The Unexceptional Schizophrenic: A Post-Postmodern Introduction 236 CATHERINE PRENDERGAST This essay argues that postmodernism has failed to deconstruct the schizophrenic, keeping a monolithic view based on some canonical writings rather than seeing the schizophrenic as part of a new emerging group that is active, multivocal, and seeking to fight for their rights. 19 Deaf Studies in the 21st Century: “Deaf-Gain” and the Future of Human Diversity 246 H-DIRKSEN L. BAUMAN AND JOSEPH J. MURRAY This essay offers a rhetorical shift from “hearing loss” to “Deaf-gain” by shedding light on the cognitive, creative and cultural contributions of Deaf communities to human diversity. PART