INDISPENSABLE IDIOCY: COGNITIVE DISABILITY AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT By Stacy Clifford Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Political Science December, 2011 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Professor Brooke A. Ackerly Professor W. James Booth Professor Emily C. Nacol Professor Susan Saegert i Copyright © 2011 by Stacy Anne Clifford All rights reserved ii In memory of my cousin Courtney Clifford. “Tough times don’t last; tough people do.” iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of my dissertation committee: Brooke Ackerly, James Booth, Emily Nacol and Susan Saegert. Their feedback and commitment to my project have been invaluable. I am especially indebted to my advisor, Brooke Ackerly, who has worn many mentoring hats during my graduate career and has read and listened to many half-baked and completely unbaked versions of this dissertation. Thanks. I owe a special thanks to the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, especially Marc Hetherington, Jon Hiskey, Darlene Davidson, and Natasha, who have helped me at all stages of graduate school. Surviving grad school, however, would have been impossible without my graduate cohort, especially Gbemende Johnson, Ying Zhang, John Judak, Jason Husser, Miguel Cruz, and Grace Jenson. The Robert Penn Warren Center, which provided financial support and invaluable free time during this last year of writing, enabled me to complete this dissertation. The director, Mona Frederick, welcomed me to the Warren Center during my first year at Vanderbilt and has continued to show her support of my project. My fellow Fellows at the Warren Center have made this year enjoyable, fun, and rewarding. Each of the Fellows has shared incredible work of their own and they have encouraged me to improve my own scholarship. I have also benefited from a range of faculty members, staff, and programs across Vanderbilt’s campus. Laura Carpenter and Monica Casper in the Women & Gender Studies Department, the MIND program at Vanderbilt’s Kennedy Center, the Writing Studio, and the members of the GFC have all supported my scholarship and personal growth. Thanks. iv My analysis has been forged and revised by the many self-advocates, allies, and disability rights activists that graciously allowed me to observe their meetings, activities, daily operations and parties. Their insight not only provided vital information to my project, but also provided me with essential tools to navigate my own life and disability related issues. I owe a great debt to my family. My parents have given me their encouragement and support throughout graduate school; my sisters have listened to my worries; and my Grandmother has provided the laughs. And, of course, I owe a deep gratitude to my brother Matt. If given the chance, I hope that you would think this project worthwhile. Thanks to all the staff at CDC for keeping you safe for the last two years and keeping me informed. My wide network of friends deserves thanks, especially Amy Love, Ted Ford and Rita Escue. Thanks for keeping me going. Finally, I’d like to thank Rudy, Cody and Casey for forcing me away from a computer screen and outside to enjoy life. Without Rudy, I would never have made it back to school; my parents are eternally grateful. Writing a dissertation and having twins have both presented a set of challenges, but it’s been worth it. Thanks for reminding me to practice my own tools: alliance, dance and a sense of humor. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................... vi Chapters I. INTRODUCTION: THE PARADOX OF PERSONHOOD AND A FEMINIST RESEARCH ETHIC ....................................................................................... 1 Social Contract Theory & the Paradox of Personhood ................................................... 6 An Essentially Contested Concept: Cognitive Disability ............................................. 12 Feminist Theory, Ethics & Research Methods.............................................................. 22 Roadmap of Dissertation ............................................................................................... 34 II. INDISPENSABLE IDIOCY: LOCKE, EQUALITY AND DISABILTY ....................................................................... 38 Idiocy in Context ........................................................................................................... 41 Idiocy in the Essay ........................................................................................................ 45 Idiocy’s Threat to Liberal Equality in the Social Contract ........................................... 59 Conclusion: The Origin of the Disabled Contract ......................................................... 63 III. DISABILITY AS THREAT: JOHN RAWLS AND THE DISABLED CONTRACT.................................................... 65 Ideal Theory and the Problem of Normalization ........................................................... 67 Rawls’s Disabled Contract ............................................................................................ 71 Epistemology of Disavowal .......................................................................................... 87 Conclusion: Implication of the Disabled Contract for Liberal Theory ......................... 90 IV. THE DISABLED CONTRACT IN PRACTICE: RUPTURES AND REINFORCEMENTS ........................................................................ 94 Torturous Interventions: Race & Disability in the Wild Boy of Aveyron .................... 97 Unjust Orderings: Idiocy: Race, Gender and Primates ............................................... 103 Eugenics: The Disabled Contract’s Deadly Culmination ........................................... 111 Seduction of the Disabled Contract ............................................................................. 119 Conclusion: The Disabled Contract as Inescapable .................................................... 126 V. SELF-ADVOCATES WITH DISABILITIES: CLAIMING AND CONTESTING THE SOCIAL CONTRACT .................................. 128 vi Overview of Self-Advocacy Movement ..................................................................... 131 People First: Paradoxes in Self Advocacy .................................................................. 137 SABE & Personhood: Disrupted, Displaced, and Destabilized .................................. 153 Conclusion: A Paradox of Personhood ....................................................................... 162 VI. THE DISABLED SOCIAL CONTRACT AND THE PARADOX OF PERSONHOOD ................................................................. 166 Paradoxes of Personhood in Social Contract Theory .................................................. 168 Paradox of Personhood in Self-Advocacy .................................................................. 171 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 174 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 176 vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: THE PARADOX OF PERSONHOOD AND A FEMINIST RESEARCH ETHIC My dissertation examines the role of cognitive disability within social contract theory. Like many versions of social contract theory, my dissertation has a story about its origin. And like the origin stories of social contract theorists, it is part fact, part fiction. Years ago on a warm spring day, long before I entered graduate school, I sat outside with a professor discussing John Rawls, human rights, and my brother’s autism. Explaining the severity of his autism is difficult, but I attempted to describe his behavior to my teacher: a complete loss of language, self-injurious behavior that often resulted in trips to the emergency room, an erratic desire for socialization, and an inability to register normal feelings of pain which, at his worst, rendered him immune and unstoppable. And yet I was determined to configure him within a rights community even though he lacked many of the primary attributes that equal moral status requires. At this juncture between reconciling my brother’s disabled identity with a full spectrum of rights, my teacher interjected a suggestion: since my brother lacked a normal range of human abilities, perhaps it would be easier to think of him as having the same rights as the most intelligent ape or a beloved domesticated animal, like my dog. She continued to make parallels between my brother’s low functioning autism and highly intelligent dogs: neither my dog nor my brother could speak through language, but they could both establish emotional bonds through a limited form of communication with others. The association between autism and canines was 1 familiar to me, made at times by autistic people themselves,1 but it jarred with my sense of justice. For me, the assumption that my brother could be accommodated within a schema of rights more easily as my dog or at least dog-like said something irretrievably wrong—not with my brother, but the way we do justice. My origin story captures the puzzle at the heart of my dissertation. It is the same dilemma that feminist