Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence Robert Mcruer

CHAPTER 27

Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence Robert McRuer

CONTEXTUALIZING DISABILITY existence. Indeed, I would extract from her suspicion of mere “toleration” confirmation In her famous critique of compulsory het- for the idea that one of the ways in which erosexuality Adrienne Rich opens with the heterosexuality is currently constituted or suggestion that lesbian existence has often founded, established as the foundational been “simply rendered invisible” (178), but sexual identity for women, is precisely the bulk of her analysis belies that render- through the deployment of lesbian exis- ing. In fact, throughout “Compulsory Het- tence as always and everywhere supple- erosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” one of mentary—the margin to heterosexuality’s Rich’s points seems to be that compulsory center, the mere reflection of (straight and heterosexuality depends as much on the gay) patriarchal realities. Compulsory het- ways in which lesbian identities are made erosexuality’s casting of some identities as visible (or, we might say, comprehensible) alternatives ironically buttresses the ideo- as on the ways in which they are made in- logical notion that dominant identities are visible or incomprehensible. She writes: not really alternatives but rather the natu- 1 Any theory of cultural/political creation that ral order of things. treats lesbian existence as a marginal or less More than twenty years after it was ini- “natural” phenomenon, as mere “sexual tially published, Rich’s critique of com- preference,” or as the mirror image of either pulsory heterosexuality is indispensable, heterosexual or male homosexual relations the criticisms of her ahistorical notion of is profoundly weakened thereby, whatever a “lesbian continuum” notwithstanding. 2 its other contributions. Feminist theory can Despite its continued relevance, however, no longer afford merely to voice a toleration the realm of compulsory heterosexuality of “lesbianism” as an “alternative life-style,” might seem to be an unlikely place to begin or make token allusion to lesbians. A femi- 3 nist critique of compulsory heterosexual ori- contextualizing disability. I want to chal- entation for women is long overdue. (178) lenge that by considering what might be gained by understanding “compulsory het- The critique that Rich calls for proceeds erosexuality” as a key concept in disability

Copyright © 2013. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. rights All Francis. and Taylor 2013. © Copyright not through a simple recognition or even studies. Through a reading of compulsory valuation of “lesbian existence” but rather heterosexuality, I want to put forward a through an interrogation of how the system theory of what I call compulsory able-bod- of compulsory heterosexuality utilizes that iedness. The Latin root for contextualize

The Disability Studies Reader, edited by Lennard J. Davis, Taylor and Francis, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/du/detail.action?docID=1125176. Created from du on 2018-01-08 06:49:30. 370 | ROBERT MCRUER

denotes the act of weaving together, inter- and lesbian liberation, the processes he de- weaving, joining together, or composing. scribes should be recognizable to feminists This chapter thus contextualizes disability and queer theorists, as well as to scholars in the root sense of the word, because I argue and activists in other contemporary move- that the system of compulsory able-bodied- ments, such as African American studies ness that produces disability is thoroughly or critical race theory. As these movements interwoven with the system of compulsory have developed, increasing numbers of heterosexuality that produces queerness, words have indeed forced themselves on that—in fact—compulsory heterosexuality our attention, so that an inquiry into not is contingent on compulsory able-bodied- just the marginalized identity but also the ness and vice versa. And, although I reiter- dominant identity has become necessary. ate it in my conclusion, I want to make it The problem of the meaning of masculinity clear at the outset that this particular con- (or even maleness), of whiteness, of hetero- textualizing of disability is offered as part of sexuality has increasingly been understood a much larger and collective project of un- as inextricably bound up with the problems raveling and decomposing both systems.4 the term is being used to discuss. The idea of imbricated systems is, of One need go no further than the Oxford course, not new—Rich’s own analysis re- English Dictionary to locate problems with peatedly stresses the imbrication of com- the meaning of heterosexuality. In 1971 pulsory heterosexuality and patriarchy. I the OED Supplement defined heterosexual would argue, however, as others have, that as “pertaining to or characterized by the feminist and queer theories (and cultural normal relations of the sexes; opp. to ho- theories generally) are not yet accustomed mosexual.” At this point, of course, a few to figuring ability/disability into the equa- decades of critical work by feminists and tion, and thus this theory of compulsory queer theorists have made it possible to able-bodiedness is offered as a preliminary acknowledge quite readily that heterosex- contribution to that much-needed conver- ual and homosexual are in fact not equal sation.5 and opposite identities. Rather, the ongoing subordination of homosexuality (and ABLE-BODIED HETEROSEXUALITY bisexuality) to heterosexuality allows for heterosexuality to be institutionalized as In his introduction to Keywords: A Vocabu- “the normal relations of the sexes,” while lary of Culture and Society, Raymond Wil- the institutionalization of heterosexuality liams describes his project as as the “normal relations of the sexes” al- the record of an inquiry into a vocabulary: a lows for homosexuality (and bisexuality) to shared body of words and meanings in our be subordinated. And, as queer theory con- most general discussions, in English, of the tinues to demonstrate, it is precisely the practices and institutions which we group as introduction of normalcy into the system culture and society. Every word which I have that introduces compulsion: “Nearly every- included has at some time, in the course of one,” Michael Warner writes in The Trouble some argument, virtually forced itself on my with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of attention because the problems of its mean- Queer Life, “wants to be normal. And who ing seemed to me inextricably bound up can blame them, if the alternative is be- with the problems it was being used to dis- Copyright © 2013. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. rights All Francis. and Taylor 2013. © Copyright cuss. (15) ing abnormal, or deviant, or not being one of the rest of us? Put in those terms, there Although Williams is not particularly con- doesn’t seem to be a choice at all. Especially cerned in Keywords with feminism or gay in America where [being] normal probably

outranks all other social aspirations” (53). OED defines able-bodied redundantly and Compulsion is here produced and covered negatively as “having an able body, i.e. one over, with the appearance of choice (sexual free from physical disability, and capable preference) mystifying a system in which of the physical exertions required of it; in there actually is no choice. bodily health; robust.” Able-bodiedness, A critique of normalcy has similarly been in turn, is defined vaguely as “soundness central to the disability rights movement of health; ability to work; robustness.” The and to disability studies, with—for exam- parallel structure of the definitions of abil- ple—Lennard Davis’s overview and critique ity and sexuality is quite striking: first, to of the historical emergence of normalcy or be able-bodied is to be “free from physical Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s introduc- disability,” just as to be heterosexual is to tion of the concept of the “normate” (Da- be “the opposite of homosexual.” Second, vis, 23–49; Thomson, 8–9). Such scholarly even though the language of “the normal and activist work positions us to locate the relations” expected of human beings is not problems of able-bodied identity, to see present in the definition of able-bodied, the problem of the meaning of able-bod- the sense of “normal relations” is, especial- iedness as bound up with the problems it is ly with the emphasis on work: being able- being used to discuss. Arguably, able-bod- bodied means being capable of the normal ied identity is at this juncture even more physical exertions required in a particular naturalized than heterosexual identity. At system of labor. It is here, in fact, that both the very least, many people not sympathet- able-bodied identity and the Oxford Eng- ic to queer theory will concede that ways of lish Dictionary betray their origins in the being heterosexual are culturally produced nineteenth century and the rise of indus- and culturally variable, even if and even as trial capitalism. It is here as well that we they understood heterosexual identity it- can begin to understand the compulsory self to be entirely natural. The same cannot nature of able-bodiedness: in the emer- be said, on the whole, for able-bodied iden- gent industrial capitalist system, free to sell tity. An extreme example that nonetheless one’s labor but not free to do anything else encapsulates currently hegemonic thought effectively meant free to have an able body on ability and disability is a notorious Sa- but not particularly free to have anything lon article by Norah Vincent attacking dis- else. ability studies that appeared online in the Like compulsory heterosexuality, then, summer of 1999. Vincent writes, “It’s hard compulsory able-bodiedness functions to deny that something called normalcy by covering over, with the appearance of exists. The human body is a machine, af- choice, a system in which there actually is ter all—one that has evolved functional no choice. I would not locate this compul- parts: lungs for breathing, legs for walking, sion, moreover, solely in the past, with the eyes for seeing, ears for hearing, a tongue rise of industrial capitalism. Just as the ori- for speaking and most crucially for all the gins of heterosexual/homosexual identity academics concerned, a brain for thinking. are now obscured for most people so that This is science, not culture.”6 In a nutshell, compulsory heterosexuality functions as a you either have an able body, or you don’t. disciplinary formation seemingly emanat- Yet the desire for definitional clarity ing from everywhere and nowhere, so too

Copyright © 2013. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. rights All Francis. and Taylor 2013. © Copyright might unleash more problems than it con- are the origins of able-bodied/disabled tains; if it’s hard to deny that something identity obscured, allowing what Susan called normalcy exists, it’s even harder Wendell calls “the disciplines of normality” to pinpoint what that something is. The (87) to cohere in a system of compulsory

able-bodiedness that similarly emanates identities, able-bodied perspectives are from everywhere and nowhere. Able-bod- preferable and what we all, collectively, ied dilutions and misunderstandings of the are aiming for. A system of compulsory minority thesis put forward in the disabil- able-bodiedness repeatedly demands that ity rights movement and disability studies people with disabilities embody for oth- have even, in some ways, strengthened the ers an affirmative answer to the unspoken system: the dutiful (or docile) able-bodied question, Yes, but in the end, wouldn’t you subject now recognizes that some groups rather be more like me? of people have chosen to adjust to or even It is with this repetition that we can begin take pride in their “condition,” but that rec- to locate both the ways in which compul- ognition, and the tolerance that undergirds sory able-bodiedness and compulsory het- it, covers over the compulsory nature of the erosexuality are interwoven and the ways able-bodied subject’s own identity.7 in which they might be contested. In queer Michael Bérubé’s memoir about his son theory, Judith Butler is most famous for Jamie, who has Down syndrome, helps identifying the repetitions required to exemplify some of the ideological de- maintain heterosexual hegemony: mands currently sustaining compulsory able-bodiedness. Bérubé writes of how The “reality” of heterosexual identities is he “sometimes feel[s] cornered by talking performatively constituted through an imi- about Jamie’s intelligence, as if the burden tation that sets itself up as the origin and of proof is on me, official spokesman on his the ground of all imitations. In other words, behalf.” The subtext of these encounters heterosexuality is always in the process of imitating and approximating its own phan- always seems to be the same: “In the end, tasmatic idealization of itself—and failing. aren’t you disappointed to have a retarded Precisely because it is bound to fail, and yet child? [. . .] Do we really have to give this endeavors to succeed, the project of hetero- person our full attention?” (180). Bérubé’s sexual identity is propelled into an endless excavation of this subtext pinpoints an repetition of itself. (“Imitation,” 21) important common experience that links all people with disabilities under a system If anything, the emphasis on identities that of compulsory able-bodiedness—the ex- are constituted through repetitive perfor- perience of the able-bodied need for an mances is even more central to compul- agreed-on common ground. I can imagine sory able-bodiedness—think, after all, of that answers might be incredibly varied to how many institutions in our culture are similar questions—“In the end, wouldn’t showcases for able-bodied performance. you rather be hearing?” and “In the end, Moreover, as with heterosexuality, this rep- wouldn’t you rather not be HIV positive?” etition is bound to fail, as the ideal able- would seem, after all, to be very different bodied identity can never, once and for questions, the first (with its thinly veiled all, be achieved. Able-bodied identity and desire for Deafness not to exist) more obvi- heterosexual identity are linked in their ously genocidal than the second. But they mutual impossibility and in their mutual are not really different questions, in that incomprehensibility—they are incompre- their constant repetition (or their presence hensible in that each is an identity that as ongoing subtexts) reveals more about is simultaneously the ground on which

Copyright © 2013. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. rights All Francis. and Taylor 2013. © Copyright the able-bodied culture doing the asking all identities supposedly rest and an than about the bodies being interrogated. impressive achievement that is always The culture asking such questions assumes deferred and thus never really guaranteed. in advance that we all agree: able-bodied Hence Butler’s queer theories of gender

performativity could be easily extended ongoing medicalization of identity, simi- to disability studies, as this slightly para- lar to what people with disabilities more phrased excerpt from Gender Trouble might generally encounter, would suggest). Once suggest (I substitute, by bracketing, terms these conflations are available in the popu- having to do literally with embodiment for lar imagination, queer/disabled figures can Butler’s terms of gender and sexuality): be tolerated and, in fact, utilized in order to maintain the fiction that able-bodied [Able-bodiedness] offers normative . . . po- heterosexuality is not in crisis. As lesbian sitions that are intrinsically impossible to existence is deployed, in Rich’s analysis, to embody, and the persistent failure to iden- reflect back heterosexual and patriarchal tify fully and without incoherence with these “realities,” queer/disabled existence can positions reveals [able-bodiedness] itself be deployed to buttress compulsory able- not only as a compulsory law, but as an in- bodiedness. Since queerness and disability evitable comedy. Indeed, I would offer this insight into [able-bodied identity] as both a both have the potential to disrupt the per- compulsory system and an intrinsic comedy, formance of able-bodied heterosexuality, a constant parody of itself, as an alternative both must be safely contained—embod- [disabled] perspective. (122) ied—in such figures. In the 1997 film As Good As It Gets, for In short, Butler’s theory of gender trou- example, although Melvin Udall (Jack ble might be resignified in the context of Nicholson), who is diagnosed in the film as queer/disability studies to highlight what obsessive-compulsive, is represented visu- we could call “ability trouble”—meaning ally in many ways that initally position him not the so-called problem of disability in what Martin F. Norden calls “the cinema but the inevitable impossibility, even as of isolation” (i.e., Melvin is represented in it is made compulsory, of an able-bodied ways that link him to other representations identity. of people with disabilities), the trajectory of the film is toward able-bodied heterosexuality. To effect the consolidation of hetero- QUEER/DISABLED EXISTENCE sexual and able-bodied norms, disability The cultural management of the endemic and queerness in the film are visibly locat- crises surrounding the performance of het- ed elsewhere, in the gay character Simon erosexual and able-bodied identity effects Bishop (Greg Kinnear). Over the course a panicked consolidation of hegemonic of the film, Melvin progressively sheds his identities. The most successful hetero- own sense of inhabiting an anomalous sexual subject is the one whose sexuality body, and disability is firmly located in the is not compromised by disability (meta- non-heterosexual character, who is ini- phorized as queerness); the most success- tially represented as able-bodied, but who ful able-bodied subject is the one whose ends up, after he is attacked and beaten ability is not compromised by queerness by a group of burglars, using a wheelchair (metaphorized as disability). This consoli- and cane for most of the film. More impor- dation occurs through complex processes tant, the disabled/queer figure, as in many of conflation and stereotype: people with other contemporary cultural representa- disabilities are often understood as some- tions, facilitates the heterosexual romance:

Copyright © 2013. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. rights All Francis. and Taylor 2013. © Copyright how queer (as paradoxical stereotypes of Melvin first learns to accept the differences the asexual or oversexual person with dis- Simon comes to embody, and Simon then abilities would suggest), while queers are encourages Melvin to reconcile with his often understood as somehow disabled (as girlfriend, Carol Connelly (Helen Hunt).

Having served their purpose, Simon, dis- ity studies. Everyone is virtually disabled, ability, and queerness are all hustled off- both in the sense that able-bodied norms stage together. The film concludes with are “intrinsically impossible to embody” a fairly traditional romantic reunion be- fully, and in the sense that able-bodied tween the (able-bodied) male and female status is always temporary, disability being leads.8 the one identity category that all people will embody if they live long enough. What we might call a critically disabled position, CRITICALLY QUEER, SEVERELY however, would differ from such a virtually DISABLED disabled position; it would call attention The crisis surrounding heterosexual iden- to the ways in which the disability rights tity and able-bodied identity does not au- movement and disability studies have re- tomatically lead to their undoing. Indeed, sisted the demands of compulsory able- as this brief consideration of As Good As bodiedness and have demanded access to It Gets should suggest, this crisis and the a newly imagined and newly configured anxieties that accompany it can be invoked public sphere where full participation is in a wide range of cultural texts precisely not contingent on an able body. to be (temporarily) resolved or alleviated. We might, in fact, extend the concept Neither gender trouble nor ability trouble and see such a perspective not as critically is sufficient in and of itself to unravel com- disabled but rather as severely disabled, pulsory heterosexuality or compulsory with severe performing work similar to able-bodiedness. Butler acknowledges this the critically queer work of fabulous. Tony problem: “This failure to approximate the Kushner writes: norm [. . .] is not the same as the subversion of the norm. There is no promise that Fabulous became a popular word in the subversion will follow from the reiteration queer community—well, it was never un- of constitutive norms; there is no guaran- popular, but for a while it became a battle cry tee that exposing the naturalized status of of a new queer politics, carnival and camp, aggressively fruity, celebratory and tough like heterosexuality will lead to its subversion” a streetwise drag queen: “FAAAAABULOUS!” (“Critically Queer,” 22; quoted in Warner, [. . .] Fabulous is one of those words that “Normal and Normaller” 168–169, n. 87). provide a measure of the degree to which a For Warner, this acknowledgment in Butler person or event manifests a particular, usu- locates a potential gap in her theory, “let us ally oppressed, subculture’s most distinctive, say, between virtually queer and critically invigorating features. (vii) queer” (Warner, “Normal and Normaller,” 168–169, n. 87). In contrast to a virtually Severe, though less common than fabulous, queer identity, which would be experi- has a similar queer history: a severe cri- enced by anyone who failed to perform tique is a fierce critique, a defiant critique, heterosexuality without contradiction and one that thoroughly and carefully reads a incoherence (i.e., everyone), a critically situation—and I mean reading in the street queer perspective could presumably mo- sense of loudly calling out the inadequacies bilize the inevitable failure to approximate of a given situation, person, text, or ideolo- the norm, collectively “working the weak- gy. “Severely disabled,” according to such a

Copyright © 2013. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. rights All Francis. and Taylor 2013. © Copyright ness in the norm,” to use Butler’s phrase queer conception, would reverse the able- (“Critically Queer,” 26).9 bodied understanding of severely disabled A similar gap could be located if we bodies as the most marginalized, the most appropriate Butler’s theories for disabil- excluded from a privileged and always

elusive normalcy, and would instead sug- And in contrast to an able-bodied culture gest that it is precisely those bodies that that holds out the promise of a substantive are best positioned to refuse “mere tolera- (but paradoxically always elusive) ideal, a tion” and to call out the inadequacies of queer/disabled perspective would resist compulsory able-bodiedness. Whether it is delimiting the kinds of bodies and abili- the “army of one-breasted women” Audre ties that are acceptable or that will bring Lorde imagines descending on the Capi- about change. Ideally, a queer/disability tol; the Rolling Quads, whose resistance studies—like the term queer itself—might sparked the independent living movement function “oppositionally and relationally in Berkeley, California; Deaf students shut- but not necessarily substantively, not as ting down Gallaudet University in the Deaf a positivity but as a positionality, not as President Now action; or ACT UP storm- a thing, but as a resistance to the norm” ing the National Institutes of Health or the (Halperin, 66). Of course, in calling for a Food and Drug Administration, severely queer/disability studies without a neces- disabled/critically queer bodies have al- sary substance, I hope it is clear that I do ready generated ability trouble that remaps not mean to deny the materiality of queer/ the public sphere and reimagines and re- disabled bodies, as it is precisely those shapes the limited forms of embodiment material bodies that have populated the and desire proffered by the systems that movements and brought about the chang- would contain us all.10 es detailed above. Rather, I mean to argue Compulsory heterosexuality is inter- that critical queerness and severe disabil- twined with compulsory able-bodiedness; ity are about collectively transforming (in both systems work to (re)produce the able ways that cannot necessarily be predicted body and heterosexuality. But precisely in advance) the substantive uses to which because these systems depend on a queer/ queer/disabled existence has been put by disabled existence that can never quite be a system of compulsory able-bodiedness, contained, able-bodied heterosexuality’s about insisting that such a system is nev- hegemony is always in danger of being dis- er as good as it gets, and about imagining rupted. I draw attention to critically queer, bodies and desires otherwise. severely disabled possibilities to further an incorporation of the two fields, queer NOTES theory and disability studies, in the hope that such a collaboration (which in some 1. In 1976, the Brussels Tribunal on Crimes against cases is already occurring, even when it is Women identified “compulsory heterosexuality” as one such crime (Katz, 26). A year earlier, not acknowledged or explicitly named as in her important article “The Traffic in Women: such) will exacerbate, in more productive Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex,” Gayle ways, the crisis of authority that currently Rubin examined the ways in which “obligatory besets heterosexual/able-bodied norms. heterosexuality” and “compulsory heterosexu- Instead of invoking the crisis in order to ality” function in what she theorized as a larger sex/gender system (179, 198; cited in Katz, 132). resolve it (as in a film like As Good As It Rich’s 1980 article, which has been widely cited Gets), I would argue that a queer/disability and reproduced since its initial publication, was studies (in productive conversations with one of the most extensive analyses of compul- disabled/queer movements outside the sory heterosexuality in feminism. I agree with Jonathan Ned Katz’s insistence that the concept Copyright © 2013. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. rights All Francis. and Taylor 2013. © Copyright academy) can continuously invoke, in or- is redundant because “any society split between der to further the crisis, the inadequate res- heterosexual and homosexual is compulsory” olutions that compulsory heterosexuality (164), but I also acknowledge the historical and and compulsory able-bodiedness offer us. critical usefulness of the phrase. It is easier to

understand the ways in which a society split be- Orthodoxy,” which mocks academic queer tween heterosexual and homosexual is compul- theory. Neither being disabled nor being gay sory precisely because of feminist deployments or lesbian in and of itself guarantees the criti- of the redundancy of compulsory heterosexu- cal consciousness generated in the disability ality. I would also suggest that popular queer rights or queer movements, or in queer theory theorizing outside of the academy (from drag or disability studies: Vincent herself is a lesbian performances to activist street theater) has often journalist, but her writing clearly supports both employed redundancy performatively to make a able-bodied and heterosexual norms. Instead of critical point. a stigmaphilic response to queer/disabled exis- 2. In an effort to forge a political connection be- tence, finding “a commonality with those who tween all women, Rich uses the terms “lesbian” suffer from stigma, and in this alternative realm and “lesbian continuum” to describe a vast array [learning] to value the very things the rest of the of sexual and affectional connections through- world despises” (Warner, Trouble, 43), Vincent out history, many of which emerge from histori- reproduces the dominant culture’s stigmapho- cal and cultural conditions quite different from bic response. See Warner’s discussion of Erving those that have made possible the identity of Goffman’s concepts of stigmaphobe and stigma- lesbian (192–199). Moreover, by using “lesbian phile (41–45). continuum” to affirm the connection between 7. Michel Foucault’s discussion of “docile bodies” lesbian and heterosexual women, Rich effaces and his theories of disciplinary practices are in the cultural and sexual specificity of contempo- the background of much of my analysis here rary lesbian existence. (135–169). 3. The incorporation of queer theory and disability 8. The consolidation of able-bodied and hetero- studies that I argue for here is still in its infancy. It sexuality identity is probably most common in is in cultural activism and cultural theory about mainstream films and television movies about AIDS (such as John Nguyet Erni’s Unstable Fron- AIDS, even—or perhaps especially—when tiers or Cindy Patton’s Fatal Advice) that a col- those films are marketed as new and daring.” laboration between queer theory and disability The 1997 Christopher Reeve-directed HBO film studies is already proceeding and has been for In the Gloaming is an example. In the film, the some time, even though it is not yet acknowl- disabled/queer character (yet again, in a tradi- edged or explicitly named as such. Michael tion that reaches back to An Early Frost [1985]), Davidson’s “Strange Blood: Hemophobia and the is eliminated at the end but not before effect- Unexplored Boundaries of Queer Nation” is one ing a healing of the heteronormative family. As of the finest analyses to date of the connections Simon Watney writes about An Early Frost, “The between disability studies and queer theory. closing shot [. . .] shows a ‘family album’ picture. 4. The collective projects that I refer to are, of [. . .] A traumatic episode is over. The family clos- course, the projects of gay liberation and queer es ranks, with the problem son conveniently dis- studies in the academy and the disability rights patched, and life getting back to normal” (114). movement and disability studies in the academy. I am focusing on a non-AIDS-related film about This chapter is part of my own contribution to disability and homosexuality, because I think the these projects and is part of my longer work in processes I theorize here have a much wider cur- progress, titled Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of rency and can be found in many cultural texts Queerness and Disability. that attempt to represent queerness or disability. 5. David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder are in line There is not space here to analyze As Good As It with many scholars working in disability stud- Gets fully; for a more comprehensive close read- ies when they point out the “ominous silence in ing of how heterosexual/able-bodied consolida- the humanities” on the subject of disability (1). tion works in the film and other cultural texts, See, for other examples, Simi Linton’s discussion see my article “As Good As It Gets: Queer Theory of the “divided curriculum” (71–116), and asser- and Critical Disability.” I do not, incidentally, tions by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and by think that these processes are unique to fictional Lennard Davis about the necessity of examining texts: the MLA’s annual Job Information List, for disability alongside other categories of differ- instance, provides evidence of other locations ence such as race, class, gender, and sexuality where heterosexual and able-bodied norms

Copyright © 2013. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. rights All Francis. and Taylor 2013. © Copyright (Garland-Thomson, 5; Davis, xi). support each other while ostensibly allowing 6. Disability studies is not the only field Vincent for tolerance of queerness and disability. The re- has attacked in the mainstream media; see cent high visibility of queer studies and disabil- her article “The Future of Queer: Wedded to ity studies on university press lists, conference

proceedings, and even syllabi has not necessar- Timothy Powell (39–60). New Brunswick: Rutgers ily translated into more jobs for disabled/queer UP, 1999. scholars. Davis, Lennard J. Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, 9. See my discussion of Butler, Gloria Anzaldua, Deafness, and the Body. London: Verso, 1995. and critical queerness in The Queer Renaissance: Erni, John Nguyet. Unstable Frontiers: Technomedi- Contemporary American Literature and the cine and the Cultural Politics of “Curing” AIDS. Reinvention of Lesbian and Gay Identities (149– Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1994. 153). In the Gloaming. Dir. Christopher Reeve. Perf. Glenn 10. On the history of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Close, Robert Sean Leonard, and David Strathairn. Power (ACT UP), see Douglas Crimp and Adam HBO, 1997. Rolston’s AIDS DemoGraphics. Lorde recounts Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of her experiences with breast cancer and imagines the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: a movement of one-breasted women in The Can- Vintage-Random House, 1977. cer Journals. Joseph P. Shapiro recounts both the Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. Extraordinary Bodies: history of the Rolling Quads and the Indepen- Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture dent Living Movement and the Deaf President and Literature. New York: Columbia UP, 1997. Now action in No Pity: People with Disabilities Halperin, David, Saint Foucault: Toward a Gay Histo- Forging a New Civil Rights Movement (41–58; riography, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. 74–85). Deaf activists have insisted for some Katz, Jonathan Ned. The Invention of Heterosexuality. time that deafness should not be understood as New York: Dutton, 1995. a disability and that people living with deafness, Kushner, Tony. “Foreword: Notes Toward a Theater instead, should be seen as having a distinct lan- of the Fabulous.” In Staging Lives: An Anthology guage and culture. As the disability rights move- of Contemporary Gay Theater, edited by John M. ment has matured, however, some Deaf activists Clum, vii–ix. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996. and scholars in Deaf studies have rethought this Linton, Simi. Claiming Disability: Knowledge and position and have claimed disability (that is, dis- Identity. New York: NYU Press, 1998. ability revalued by a disability rights movement Lorde, Audre. The Cancer Journals. San Francisco: and disability studies) in an attempt to affirm a Aunt Lute Books, 1980. coalition with other people with disabilities. It McRuer, Robert. “As Good As It Gets: Queer Theory is precisely such a reclaiming of disability that I and Critical Disability.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian want to stress here with my emphasis on severe and Gay Studies 9.1–2 (2003): 79–105. disability. ———. Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. New York: NYU Press, 2006. ———. The Queer Renaissance: Contemporary Ameri- WORKS CITED can Literature and the Reinvention of Lesbian and Gay Identities. New York: NYU Press, 1997. As Good As It Gets. Dir. James L. Brooks. Perf. Jack Mitchell, David T., and Sharon L. Snyder. “Introduc- Nicholson, Helen Hunt, and Greg Kinnear. TriStar, tion: Disability Studies and the Double Bind of 1997. Representation.” In The Body and Physical Dif- Berube, Michael. Life As We Know It: A Father, a Family, ference: Discourses of Disability, edited by Mitch- and an Exceptional Child. New York: Vintage-Ran- ell and Snyder, 1–31. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, dom House, 1996. 1997. Butler, Judith. “Critically Queer.” GLQ: A Journal of Norden, Martin F. The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1.1 (1993): 17–32 Physical Disability in the Movies. New Brunswick: ———. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion Rutgers UP, 1994. of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Patton, Cindy. Fatal Advice: How Safe-Sex Education ———. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination.” In Went Wrong. Durham: Duke UP, 1997. Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, ed- Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and ited by Diana Fuss, (13–31). New York: Routledge, Lesbian Existence.” In Powers of Desire: The Poli- 1991. tics of Sexuality, edited by Ann Snitow, Christine Crimp, Douglas, and Adam Rolston. AIDS Demo- Stansell, and Sharon Thompson, 177–205. New Graphics. Seattle: Bay Press, 1990. York: Monthly Review Press, 1983.

Copyright © 2013. Taylor and Francis. All rights reserved. rights All Francis. and Taylor 2013. © Copyright Davidson, Michael. “Strange Blood: Hemophobia Rubin, Gayle. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the and the Unexplored Boundaries of Queer Na- ‘Political Economy’ of Sex.” In Toward an Anthro- tion.” In Beyond the Binary: Reconstructing Cul- pology of Women, edited by Rayna R. Reiter, 157– tural Identity in a Multicultural Context, edited by 210. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975. .

Shapiro, Joseph P. No Pity: People with Disabilities ———. The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and Forging a New Civil Rights Movement. New York: the Ethics of Queer Life. New York: The Free Press, Times Books-Random House, 1993. 1999. Vincent, Norah. “Enabling Disabled Scholarship.” Watney, Simon. Policing Desire: Pornography, AIDS, Salon. Aug. 18, 1999. Available at http://www. and the Media. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: U of Minne- salon.com/books/it/1999/08/18/disability sota P, 1989. ———. “The Future of Queer: Wedded to Orthodoxy.” Wendell, Susan. The Rejected Body: Feminist Philo- The Village Voice 22 Feb. 2000: 16. sophical Reflections on Disability. New York: Rout- Warner, Michael. “Normal and Normaller: Beyond ledge, 1996. Gay Marriage.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture