CHAPTER27
CompulsoryAble-Bodiedness and Queer/DisabledExistence RobertMcRuer
SUMMARY
When lesbian existence is imagined as a marginal alternative to the centrality of heterosexuality , it reinforces the notion that heterosexuality is naturally dominant. In this essay , Robert McRuer applies Adrienne Rich 's idea about lesbian identity to disability studies . If thinking about lesbian existence reveals " compulsory heterosexuality, " so too can we analyze "compulsory able-bodiedness " from the perspective of disability . Queer and feminist theorists have long critiqued the definition of heterosexuality as "normal relations between sexes" and insisted that homosexuality is subordinated because of the standard of normalcy. Disability studies also draws on critiques of normalcy , as demonstrated by Lennard Davis , and McRuer suggests that able-bodiedness is seen as even more " natural " than heterosexuality. Because able bodiedness is considered a " normal" requirement for life in the industrial capitalist system , having an " able body " becomes compulsory . Like heterosexuality , able-bodied identity is defined by its repeated performances , and McRuer points out that many cultural institutions are dedicated to showcasing these bodily performances . There is a constant need to affirm able-bodied identity because able-bodied norms are in reality impossible to embody, and even the status of being able-bodied is only a temporary part of a human life . Since both queerness and disability have the potential to disrupt the performance of able-bodied heterosexuality , both must be contained and embodied by queer/disabled figures that "can be tolerated" in popular imagination. McRuer argues that like being "critically queer ," being " severely disabled " can foster a sharp critique of compulsory able-bodiedness . He suggests that the commonly marginalized bodies are the best positioned to refuse the " mere toleration " that keeps those bodies at the margins.
CONTEXTUALIZING DISABILITY ways in which lesbian identities are made visible (or, we might say, comprehensible) In her famous critique of compulsory as on the ways in which they are made heterosexuality Adrienne Rich opens with invisible or incomprehensible. She writes: the suggestion that lesbian existence has often been "simply rendered invisible" (178), Any theory of cultural/political creation that but the bulk of her analysis belies that treats lesbian existence as a marginal or less rendering. In fact, throughout "Compulsory "natural" ph enomenon, as mere "sexual pref Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," one erence," or as the mirror imag e of either of Rich's points seems to be that compulsory heterosexual or male homosexual relations is heterosexuality depends as much on the profoundly weakened thereby, whatever its COMPULSORY ABLE-BODIEDNESS AND QUEER /D ISABLED EXISTENCE I 397
other contributions. Feminist theory can no contextualizes disability in the root sense longer afford merely to voice a toleration of of the word, because I argue that the system "lesbianism " as an "alternative life-style," or of compulsory able-bodiedness that pro make token allusion to lesbians. A feminist duces disability is thoroughly interwoven critique of compulsory heterosexual orien with the system of compulsory heterosexu tation for women is long overdue. ality that produces queerness, that-in (178) fact-compulsory heterosexuality is contin gent on compulsory able-bodiedness and The critique that Rich calls for proceeds not vice versa. And, although I reiterate it in through a simple recognition or even my conclusion, I want to make it clear at valuation of "lesbian existence" but rather the outset that this particular contextualiz through an interrogation of how the system ing of disability is offered as part of a much of compulsory heterosexuality utilizes that larger and collective project of unraveling existence. Indeed, I would extract from her and decomposing both systems .4 suspicion of mere "toleration" confirmation The idea of imbricated systems is of for the idea that one of the ways in which course not new-Rich's own analysis heterosexuality is currently constituted or repeatedly stresses the imbrication of founded, established as the foundational compulsory heterosexuality and pat sexual identity for women, is precisely riarchy. I would argue, however, as others through the deployment oflesbian existence have, that feminist and queer theories (and as always and everywhere supplementary cultural theories generally) are not yet the margin to heterosexuality 's center, the accustomed to figuring ability/ disability mere reflection of (straight and gay) pat into the equation, and thus this theory of riarchal realities. Compulsory heterosexu compulsory able-bodiedness is offered as a ality's casting of some identities as preliminary contribution to that much alternatives ironically buttresses the ideo needed conversation. 5 logical notion that dominant identities are not really alternatives but rather the natural 1 ABLE-BODIED order of things. HETEROSEXUALITY More than 20 years after it was initially published, Rich's critique of compulsory In his introduction to Keywords: A Vocabu heterosexuality is indispensable, the criti lary of Culture and Society, Raymond cisms of her ahistorical notion of a "lesbian Williams describes his project as continuum" notwithstanding.2 Despite its continued relevance, however, the realm of the record of an inquiry into a vocabulary. a compulsory heterosexuality might seem to shared body of words and meanings in our be an unlikely place to begin contextualizing most general discussions, in English, of the disability.3 I want to challenge that by con practices and institutions which we group as sidering what might be gained by under culture and society. Every word which I have included has at some time, in the course of standing "compulsory heterosexuality" as some argument, virtually forced itself on my a key concept in disability studies. Through attention because the problems of its mean a reading of compulsory heterosexuality, I ing seemed to me inextricably bound up with want to put forward a theory of what I call the problems it was being used to discuss . compulsory able-bodiedness . The Latin (15) root for contextualize denotes the act of weaving together, interweaving, joining Although Williams is not particularly con together, or composing. This chapter thus cerned in Keywords with feminism or gay 398 I ROBERT MCRUER
and lesbian liberation, the processes he Compulsion is here produced and covered describes should be recognizable to femin over, with the appearance of choice (sexual ists and queer theorists, as well as to scholars preference) mystifying a system in which and activists in other contemporary move there actually is no choice. ments, such as African American studies or A critique of normalcy has similarly been critical race theory. As these movements central to the disability rights movement have developed, increasing numbers of and to disability studies, with-for words have indeed forced themselves on example-Lennard Davis's overview and our attention, so that an inquiry into not critique of the historical emergence of just the marginalized identity but also the normalcy or Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's dominant identity has become necessary. introduction of the concept of the The problem of the meaning of masculinity "normate" (Davis 23--49;Garland-Thomson (or even maleness), of whiteness, of hetero 8-9) . Such scholarly and activist work sexuality has increasingly been understood positions us to locate the problems of able as inextricably bound up with the problems bodied identity, to see the problem of the the term is being used to discuss. meaning of able-bodiedness as bound up One need go no further than the Oxford with the problems it is being used to discuss. English Dictionary to locate problems with Arguably, able-bodied identity is at this the meaning of heterosexuality. In 1971 the juncture even more naturalized than het OED Supplement defined heterosexual as erosexual identity. At the very least, many "pertaining to or characterized by the nor people not sympathetic to queer theory will mal relations of the sexes; opp. to homosex concede that ways of being heterosexual ual." At this point, of course, a few decades of are culturally produced and culturally vari critical work by feminists and queer theorists able, even if and even as they understood have made it possible to acknowledge quite heterosexual identity itself to be entirely readily that heterosexual and homosexual natural. The same cannot be said, on the are in fact not equal and opposite identities . whole, for able-bodied identity. An extreme Rather, the ongoing subordination of homo example that nonetheless encapsulates sexuality (and bisexuality) to heterosexuality currently hegemonic thought on ability allows for heterosexuality to be institutiona and disability is a notorious Salon article lized as "the normal relations of the sexes," attacking disability studies that appeared while the institutionalization of heterosexu online in the summer of 1999. Norah Vin ality as the "normal relations of the sexes" cent writes, "It's hard to deny that some allows for homosexuality (and bisexuality) to thing called normalcy exists. The human be subordinated. And, as queer theory con body is a machine, after all-one that has tinues to demonstrate, it is precisely the evolved functional parts: lungs for breath introduction of normalcy into the system ing, legs for walking, eyes for seeing, ears that introduces compulsion: "Nearly every for hearing, a tongue for speaking and one," Michael Warner writes in The Trouble most crucially for all the academics con with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of cerned , a brain for thinking. This is science, Queer Life, "wants to be normal. And who not culture." 6 In a nutshell, you either have can blame them, if the alternative is being an able body, or you don't . abnormal, or deviant, or not being one of Yet the desire for definitional clarity might the rest of us? Put in those terms, there unleash more problems than it contains; if doesn't seem to be a choice at all. Especially it's hard to deny that something called in America where [being] normal probably normalcy exists, it's even harder to pinpoint outranks all other social aspirations" (53). what that something is. The OED defines COMPULSOR Y ABLE-BODIEDNESS AND QUEER / DISABLED EXISTENCE I 399 able-bodied redundantly and negatively as from everywhere and nowhere. Able-bodied "having an able body, i.e. one free from dilutions and misunderstandings of the physical disability, and capable of the phys minority thesis put forward in the disability ical exertions required of it; in bodily health; rights movement and disability studies have robust ." Able-bodiedness, in turn, is defined even , in some ways, strengthened the vaguely as "soundness of health; ability to system : the dutiful (or docile) able-bodied work; robustness." The parallel structure of subject now recognizes that some groups of the definitions of ability and sexuality is people have chosen to adjust to or even take quite striking: first, to be able-bodied is to pride in their "condition," but that recog be "free from physical disability," just as to nition, and the tolerance that undergirds it, be heterosexual is to be "the opposite of covers over the compulsory nature of the homosexual." Second, even though the able-bodied subject 's own identity. 7 language of "the normal relations" expected Michael Berube's memoir about his son of human beings is not present in the defi Jamie, who has Down syndrome , help s nition of able-bodied , the sense of "normal exemplify some of the ideological demands relations" is, especially with the emphasis currently sustaining compulsory able on work: being able-bodied means being bodiedness. Berube writes of how he "some capable of the normal physical exertions times feel[s] cornered by talking about required in a particular system of labor. It Jamie's intelligence, as if the burden of is here, in fact, that both able-bodied iden proof is on me, official spokesman on his tity and the Oxford English Dictionary betray behalf. " The subtext of these encounters their origins in the nineteenth century and always seems to be the same: "In the end, the rise of industrial capitalism. It is here as aren't you disappointed to have a retarded well that we can begin to understand the child? . . . Do we really have to give this person compulsory nature of able-bodiedness: in our full attention?" (180). Berube 's exca the emergent industrial capitalist system, vation of this subtext pinpoints an important free to sell one's labor but not free to do common experience that links all people anything else effectively meant free to with disabilities under a system of compuls have an able body but not particularly free ory able-bodiedness-the experience of the to have anything else. able-bodied need for an agreed-on common Like compulsory heterosexuality, then, ground. I can imagine that answers might be compulsory able-bodiedness functions by incredibly varied to similar questions-"In covering over, with the appearance of the end, wouldn't you rather be hearing?" choice, a system in which there actually is and "In the end, wouldn't you rather not no choice. I would not locate this compul be HIV positive?" would seem, after all, to sion, moreover, solely in the past, with the be very different questions, the first (with rise of industrial capitalism. Just as the its thinly veiled desire for Deafness not to origins of heterosexual/homosexual iden exist) more obviously genocidal than tity are now obscured for most people so the second. But they are not really different that compulsory heterosexuality functions questions, in that their constant repetition as a disciplinary formation seemingly eman (or their presence as ongoing subtexts) ating from everywhere and nowhere, so too reveals more about the able-bodied culture are the origins of able -bodied/ disabled doing the asking than about the bodies being identity obscured, allowing what Susan interrogated. The culture asking such ques Wendell calls "the disciplines of normality" tions assumes in advance that we all agree: (87) to cohere in a system of compulsory able-bodied identities, able-bodied perspec able-bodiedness that similarly emanates tives are preferable and what we all, 400 I ROBERT MCRUER
collectively, are aiming for. A system of com slightly paraphrased excerpt from Gender pulsory able-bodiedness repeatedly Trouble might suggest (I substitute, by demands that people with disabilities bracketing, terms having to do literally embody for others an affirmative answer to with embodiment for Butler's terms of gen the unspoken question, Yes, but in the end, der and sexuality): wouldn't you rather be more like me? It is with this repetition that we can begin [Able-bodiedness] offers normative ... posi to locate both the ways in which compulsory tions that are intrinsically impossible to able- bodiedness and compulsory hetero embody, and the persistent failure to identify sexuality are interwoven and the ways in fully and without incoherence with these which they might be contested. In queer positions reveals [able-bodiedness] itself not theory, Judith Butler is most famous for only as a compulsory law, but as an inevitable comedy . Indeed, I would offer this insight into identifying the repetitions required to main [able-bodied identity] as both a compulsory tain heterosexual hegemony: system and an intrinsic comedy, a constant parody of itself, as an alternative [disabled] The "reality" of heterosexual identities is perspective. performatively constituted through an imita (122) tion that sets itself up as the origin and the ground of all imitations . In other words, heterosexuality is always in the process of In short, Butler's theory of gender trouble imitating and approximating its own phantas might be resignified in the context of queer/ matic idealization of itself-and failing. Pre disability studies to highlight what we cisely because it is bound to fail, and yet could call "ability trouble"-meaning not endeavors to succeed, the project of hetero the so-called problem of disability but the sexual identity is propelled into an endless inevitable impossibility, even as it is made repetition of itself. compulsory, of an able-bodied identity. ("Imitation" 21) QUEER/DISABLED EXISTENCE If anything, the emphasis on identities that are constituted through repetitive perform The cultural management of the endemic ances is even more central to compulsory crises surrounding the performance of able- bodiedness-think, after all, of how heterosexual and able-bodied identity many institutions in our culture are show effects a panicked consolidation of hege cases for able-bodied performance. More monic identities. The most successful het over, as with heterosexuality, this repetition erosexual subject is the one whose sexuality is bound to fail, as the ideal able-bodied is not compromised by disability (meta identity can never, once and for all, be phorized as queerness); the most successful achieved. Able-bodied identity and hetero able-bodied subject is the one whose ability sexual identity are linked in their mutual is not compromised by queerness (meta impossibility and in their mutual incompre phorized as disability). This consolidation hensibility-they are incomprehensible in occurs through complex processes of con that each is an identity that is simul flation and stereotype: people with disabil taneously the ground on which all identities ities are often understood as somehow supposedly rest and an impressive achieve queer (as paradoxical stereotypes of the ment that is always deferred and thus never asexual or oversexual person with disabil really guaranteed . Hence Butler's queer ities would suggest), while queers are often theories of gender performativity could be understood as somehow disabled (as easily extended to disability studies, as this ongoing medicalization of identity, similar COMPULSOR Y ABLE-BODIEDNESS AND QU EER/ DISABLED EXIST ENCE I 401 to what people with disabilities more Simon, disability, and queerness are all generally encounter, would suggest). Once hustled offstage together. The film con these conflations are available in the pop cludes with a fairly traditional romantic ular imagination, queer/ disabled figures reunion between the (able-bodied) male can be tolerated and, in fact, utilized in and female leads.8 order to maintain the fiction that able bodied heterosexuality is not in crisis. As CRITICALLY QUEER, SEVERELY lesbian existence is deployed, in Rich's DISABLED analysis, to reflect back heterosexual and patriarchal "realities," queer/disabled exist The crisis surrounding heterosexual identity ence can be deployed to buttress compuls and able-bodied identity does not automati ory able-bodiedness. Since queerness and cally lead to their undoing . Indeed , as this disability both have the potential to disrupt brief consideration of As Good As It Gets the performance of able-bodied heterosexu should suggest, this crisis and the anxieties ality, both must be safely contained that accompany it can be invoked in a wide embodied-in such figures. range of cultural texts precisely to be (tem In the 1997 film As Good As It Gets, for porarily) resolved or alleviated. Neither gen example, although Melvin Udall (Jack der trouble nor ability trouble is sufficient in Nicholson) , who is diagnosed in the film as and of itself to unravel compulsory hetero obsessive-compulsive, is represented visu sexuality or compulsory able-bodiednes s. ally in many ways that initially position Butler acknowledges this problem: "This him in what Martin F. Norden calls "the failure to approximate the norm ... is not cinema of isolation " (i.e., Melvin is rep the same as the subversion of the norm. resented in ways that link him to other rep There is no promise that subversion will fol resentations of people with disabilities), the low from the reiteration of constitutive trajectory of the film is toward able-bodied norms; there is no guarantee that exposing heterosexuality. To effect the consolidation the naturalized status of heterosexuality of heterosexual and able-bodied norms, dis will lead to its subversion" (" Critically ability and queerness in the film are visibly Queer" 22; quoted in Warner, "Normal and located elsewhere , in the gay character Normaller" 168-169, n. 87). For Warner, this Simon Bishop (Greg Kinnear). Over the acknowledgment in Butler locates a poten course of the film, Melvin progressively tial gap in her theory, "let us say, between sheds his own sense of inhabiting an anom virtually queer and critically queer" (Warner, alous body, and disability is firmly located "Normal and Normaller" 168-169 , n. 87) . in the non-heterosexual character, who is In contrast to a virtually queer identity, initially represented as able-bodied, which would be experienced by anyone but who ends up , after he is attacked and who failed to perform heterosexuality with beaten by a group of burglars, using a wheel out contradiction and incoherence (i.e., chair and cane for most of the film. More everyone), a critically queer perspective important, the disabled/ queer figure, as in could presumably mobilize the inevitable many other contemporary cultural rep failure to approximate the norm, collectively resentations , facilitates the heterosexual "working the weakness in the norm ," to use romance: Melvin first learns to accept the Butler's phrase ("Critically Queer" 26).9 differences Simon comes to embody, and A similar gap could be located if we Simon then encourages Melvin to reconcile appropriate Butler's theories for disability with his girlfriend, Carol Connelly (Helen studies . Everyone is virtually disabled, both Hunt) . Having served their purpose , in the sense that able-bodied norms are 402 I ROB ERT MC RUER
"intrinsically impossible to embody'' fully, positioned to refuse "mere toleration" and in the sense that able-bodied status is and to call out the inadequacies of compuls always temporary, disability being the one ory able-bodiedness. Whether it is the "army identity category that all people will embody of one-breasted women" Audre Larde ima if they live long enough. What we might gines descending on the Capitol; the Rolling call a critically disabled position , however, Quads, whose resistance sparked the would differ from such a virtually disabled independent living movement in Berkeley, position; it would call attention to the ways California; Deaf students shutting down in which the disability rights movement Gallaudet University in the Deaf President and disability studies have resisted the Now action; or ACTUP storming the National demands of compulsory able-bodiedness Institutes of Health or the Food and Drug and have demanded access to a newly Administration , severely disabled/ critically imagined and newly configured public queer bodies have already generated ability sphere where full participation is not con trouble that remaps the public sphere and tingent on an able body. reimagines and reshapes the limited forms We might, in fact, extend the concept of embodiment and desire proffered by the and see such a perspective not as critically systems that would contain us all.10 disabled but rather as severely disabled, Compulsory heterosexuality is inter with severe performing work similar to the twined with compulsory able-bodiedness; critically queer work of fabulous. Tony both systems work to (re)produce the able Kushner writes: body and heterosexuality. But precisely because these systems depend on a queer/ Fabulous became a popular word in the queer disabled existence that can never quite be community - well, it was never unpopular, contained , able- bodied heterosexuality 's but for a while it became a battle cry of a new hegemony is always in danger of being queer politics, carnival and camp , aggressively disrupted . I draw attention to critically fruity, celebratory and tough like a streetwis e queer, severely disabled possibilities to drag queen: "FAAMABULOUS!" ... Fabulous is one of thos e word s that provid e a measur e further an incorporation of the two fields, of the degree to which a person or event mani queer theory and disability studies , in the fests a particular, usually oppressed , subcul hope that such a collaboration (which in ture 's most distinctive , invigorating features . some cases is already occurring, even when it (vii) is not acknowledged or explicitly named as such) will exacerbate, in more productiv e Severe, though less common than fabulous, ways, the crisis of authority that currently has a similar queer history: a severe critique besets heterosexual/able-bodied norms . is a fierce critique, a defiant critique , one that Instead of invoking the crisis in order to thoroughly and carefully reads a situation resolve it (as in a film like As GoodAs It Gets), I and I mean reading in the street sense of would argue that a queer/disability studies loudly calling out the inadequacies of a (in productive conversations with disabled/ given situation, person , text , or ideology . queer movements outside the academy) can "Severely disabled ," according to such a continuously invoke, in order to further the queer conception, would reverse the able crisis, the inadequate resolutions that com bodied understanding of severely disabled pulsory heterosexuality and compulsory bodies as the most marginalized , the most able-bodiedness offer us. And in contrast to excluded from a privileged and always elu an able-bodied culture that holds out the sive normalcy, and would instead suggest promise of a substantive (but paradoxically that it is precisely those bodies that are best always elusive) ideal, a queer I disabled COMPULSORY ABLE-BODIEDNESS AND QUEER / DISABLED EXISTENCE 403 perspective would resist delimiting the kinds theorizing outside of the academy (from drag of bodies and abilities that are acceptable or performances to activist street theater) has often that will bring about change. Ideally, a queer/ employed redundancy performatively to make a critical point . disability studies-like the term queer 2. In an effort to forge a political connection between itself-might function "oppositionally and all women, Rich uses the terms "lesbian" and "les relationally but not necessarily substan bian continuum" to describe a vast array of sexual tively, not as a positivity but as a positional and affectional connections throughout history, ity, not as a thing, but as a resistance to the many of which emerge from historical and cultural conditions quite different from those that have norm" (Halperin 66). Of course, in calling for made possible the identity of lesbian (192-199) . a queer/disability studies without a necess Moreover , by using "lesbian continuum " to affirm ary substance, I hope it is clear that I do not the connection between lesbian and heterosexual mean to deny the materiality of queer/ dis women, Rich effaces the cultural and sexual speci abled bodies, as it is precisely those material ficity of contemporary lesbian existence. 3. The incorporation of queer theory and disability bodies that have populated the movements studies that I argue for here is still in its infancy. It and brought about the changes detailed is in cultural activism and cultural theory about above. Rather, I mean to argue that critical AIDS (such as John Nguyet Erni's -Unstable Fron queerness and severe disability are about tiers or Cindy Patton's Fata/Advice) that a collab collectively transforming (in ways that can oration between queer theory and disability studies is already proceeding and has been for not necessarily be predicted in advance) the some time, even though it is not yet acknowledged substantive uses to which queer I disabled or explicitly named as such. Michael Davidson 's existence has been put by a system of com "Strange Blood: Hemophobia and the Unexplored pulsory able-bodiedness, about insisting Boundaries of Queer Nation" is one of the finest that such a system is never as good as analyses to date of the connections between dis ability studies and queer theory. it gets, and about imagining bodies and 4. The collective projects that I refer to are, of course, desires otherwise. the projects of gay liberation and queer studies in the academy and the disability rights movement and disability studies in the academy. This chapter NOTES is part of my own contribution to these projects and is part of my longer work in progress, titled 1. In 1976, the Brussels Tribunal on Crimes against De-Composing Bodies: Cultural Signs of Queerness Women identified "compulsory heterosexuality" and Disability . as one such crime (Katz 26). A year earlier, in her 5. David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder are in line with important article "The Traffic in Women: Notes on many scholars working in disability studies when the 'Political Economy' of Sex," Gayle Rubin exam they point out the "ominous silence in the human ined the ways in which "obligatory heterosexu ities" on the subject of disability (1). See, for other ality" and "compulsory heterosexuality" function examples, Simi Linton's discussion of the "divided in what she theorized as a larger sex/ gender system curriculum" (71- 116), and assertions by Rosemarie (179, 198; cited in Katz 132). Rich's 1980 article, Garland- Thomson and by Lennard Davis about the which has been widely cited and reproduced since necessity of examining disability alongside other its initial publication, was one of the most extensive categories of difference such as race, class, gender, analyses of compulsory heterosexuality in fem and sexuality (Garland-Thomson 5; Davis xi). inism. I agree with Jonathan Ned Katz's insistence 6. Disability studies is not the only field Vincent has that the concept is redundant because "any society attacked in the mainstream media ; see her article split between heterosexual and homosexual is "The Future of Queer: Wedded to Orthodoxy, " compulsory " (164), but I also acknowledge the his which mocks academic queer theory . Neither being torical and critical usefulness of the phrase. It is disabled nor being gay or lesbian in and of itself easier to understand the ways in which a society guarantees the critical consciousness generated split between heterosexual and homosexual is in the disability rights or queer movements, or in compulsory precisely because of feminist deploy queer theory or disability studies: Vincent herself ments of the redundancy of compulsory hetero is a lesbian journalist , but her writing clearly sup sexuality. I would also suggest that popular queer ports both able-bodied and heterosexual norms . 404 ROBERT MCRUER
Instead of a stigmaphilic response to queer/dis a movement of one-breasted women in The abled existence, finding "a commonality with those Cancer Journals. Joseph P. Shapiro recounts both who suffer from stigma , and in this alternative the history of the Rolling Quads and the Independ realm [learning] to value the very things the rest of ent Living Movement and the Deaf President Now the world despises" (Warner, Trouble 43). Vincent action in No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a reproduces the dominant culture 's stigmaphobic New Civil Rights Movement (41-5 8, 74-85). Deaf response . See Warner's discussion of Erving Goff activists have insisted for some time that deafness man 's concepts of stigmaphobe and stigmaphile should not be understood as a disability and that (41-45). people living with deafness, instead, should be 7. Michel Foucault's discussion of "docile bodies" seen as having a distinct language and culture. and his theories of disciplinary practices are in As the disability rights movement has matured, the background of much of my analysis here however, some Deaf activists and scho lars in (135-169). Deaf studies have rethought this position and have 8. The consolidation of able-bodied and heterosexu claimed disability (that is, disability revalued by a ality identity is probably most common in main disability rights movement and disability studies) stream films and television movies about AIDS, in an attempt to affirm a coalition with other even-or perhaps especially-when those films are people with disabilities . It is precisely such a marketed as "new and daring." The 1997 Christo reclaiming of disability that I want to stress here pher Reeve-directed HBO film In the Gloaming is with my emphasis on severe disability . an example. In the film, the disabled/queer char acter (yet again, in a tradition that reaches back to An Early Frost [1985]), is eliminated at the end but WORKS CITED not before effecting a healing of the heteronormative family. As Simon Watney writes about An Early As Good As It Gets. Dir. James L. Brooks . Perf. Jack Frost, "The closing shot . . . shows a 'family album' Nicholson, Helen Hunt , and Greg Kinnear. picture. . .. A traumatic episode is over. The family TriStar, 1997. closes ranks, with the problem son conveniently dis Berube, Michael. Life As We Know It: A Father, a Fam patched, and life getting back to normal" (114). I am ily, and an Exceptional Child. New York: Vintage focusing on a non-AIDS-related film about disability Random House, 1996. and homosexuality, because I think the processes I Butler, Judith. "Critically Queer." GLQ: A Journal of theorize here have a much wider currency and can Lesbian and Gay Studies 1.1 (1993): 17-32 . be found in many cultural texts that attempt to rep -- . Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of resent queerness or disability . There is not space Identity . New York: Routledge, 1990. here to analyze As Good As It Gets fully; for a more - - . "Imitation and Gender Insubordination ." comprehensive close reading of how heterosexual/ Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories. Ed. able-bodied consolidation works in the film and Diana Fuss. New York: Routledge, 1991. 13-31. other cultural texts, see my article "As Good As It Crimp, Douglas and Adam Rolston. AIDS Demo Gets : Queer Theory and Critical Disability." I do Graphics. Seattle: Bay Press, 1990. not , incidentally, think that these processes are Davidson , Michael. "Strange Blood: Hemophobia and unique to fictional texts: the MlA's annual Job Infor the Unexplored Boundaries of Queer Nation. 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Discipline and Punish : The Birth temporary American Literature and the Reinven of the Prison. Trans . Alan Sheridan. New York: tion of Lesbian and Gay Identities (149-153). Vintage-Random House, 1977 . 10. On the history of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Garland-Thomson , Rosemarie. Extraordinary Bodies: Power (ACT UP). see Douglas Crimp and Adam Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture Rolston 's AIDS DemoGraphics. Lorde recounts and Literature. New York: Columbia University her experiences with breast cancer and imagines Press, 1997. COMPULSORY ABLE - BODIEDNESS AND QUEER / DISABLED EXISTENCE 405
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