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Sept 5- Douglass Bayton
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-Disability history
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-Not just “finding disabled people in history” but “how has disability shaped history”
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-How have conceptions of disabilities shaped us
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-His parents were deaf
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Forbidden Signs: ASL and the campaign against sign language (1996)
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-Plains Indians had developed sign language as a linga Franca across Indigenous languages- encounter another group with which you did not share a language
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could still converse (Hand talk)
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-Stigma about learning a ‘primitive’ language among western communities
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Disability
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racism and eugneics
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-When ASL was introduced resistance to it- disability was a form of atavism and that encouraging it was primitive
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-A term for Down Syndrome used to Mongoloidism
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-Accompanied by fears that creating deaf education leading to deaf culture would be dysgenic: deaf people marrying each other was a no no
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-Fear these ‘evolutionery throwbacks’ would bring society backwards
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-Christians like sign language though- “Everyone deserves to hear the words of god”
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-Often traditional cultures in this time were more accommodating than ‘modern’ folks
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-First generation suffragettes also were outspoken for ASL education
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Baynton noticed that disabilities role in American History
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-Was pervasive rather than marginal
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-So what may have seemed narrow. Obscure
monograph (“history of ASL”) led outward not inward
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-Was no longer a niche subject- all encompassing
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Rhetorical Role of disability in US history
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-Women are not weak- Traditional beliefs about fragility
low energy
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-”We dont have a disability!”
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Repeated pattern
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-Non-white people do not have low intellectual capability!
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-Du bois wrote rejected the notion of sending African Americans to trade school
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-Again rejects the idea that black people are disabled
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-Gay and Lesbian people are not mentally ill!
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-”we dont have a disability”
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In Each instance these decalrations of independence
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-Got a lot of their force by disavowing disability
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-Meant disability got more and more stigmatized
as every liberation movement used disability as a springboard
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-They didnt intend to hurt disabled people
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But..
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-What is you *are physically weak
cognitively impaired
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-When every previous liberation movement built its claims around implicitly saying “if we *were those things you could discriminate against us. But we are not
so you mustn't"
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Earlier civil rights movements were both a model and a challenge for disability rights
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-A model in the form of: hey
you are being unfair
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-A challenge in the form of: you’ve honed an argument that cuts against us
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-Women are x
y
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-Built on rejection of x
y
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Disability rights movements emerges from
but also poses a more profound political challenge than prior social movements
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-Advocacy for “independent living” for example- also means advocating for more and better support. Real resistance to hearing that message if it is framed in those terms tho
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-”You think I am not capable but I am…” is kinda flawed
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-” I am a tender
flawed human who needs a little help” is truer and all encompassing for everyone
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-However modernity rejects this thinking- No one wants to be needy!
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-Slogans like: “the only disability is a bad attitude” Means well but misses the point
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Not Just North America… To modernity generally
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-The throwing off of old forms of dependency: patriarchy
slavery
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-Genuinely liberating. However
the “Fraternite” but often ignored (or criticized for sexism) and the “egalite” bit is complicated
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Sept 8- Tom Shakespeare
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-British bioethicist
sociologist
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-Also a hereditary peer. Though a baronetcy created only in the 19th century
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Social Model of Disability
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-Has been hugely important and influential
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-Developed by what Shakespeare calls “hardline” male diability activists
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History of disability rights
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-smt that was unusual and helpful (with some drawbacks) was that people with high social status can become disabled
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-Particulary men
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-Soldiers after WW1 and WW2
athletes
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-Created demands for disability from people who were ‘deserved’ at the time to be listend to
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Social Model Distinguishes
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-Impairment: which is biological
physical or cognitive individual
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-Disability: which is socially constructed
systemic
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-Social model suggests that impairment is made to be disability by society
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-There are 2 separate things
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-Medical model suggests disability= impairment
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Superman Controversy
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-Christopher Reeve- the actor who played superman addressed the DNC in 1996
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-Called for increased funding for medical research on spinal cord injuries (medical model)
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-Many disability activists were critical
saying what we need is not an emphasis on a potential cure but more funding for say
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-Fix the long term for all right now!! Not the short term for a few ppl 20 years from now
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Frame
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-The focus on impairment is the “march of dimes” approach: how sad for you excluded by your limitations. If I send $50 to your cause and cross my fingers
Ive done all I can
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-The focus on disability says: many social policies are disabling me. Build a ramp. Fund sign language interpretation. My exclusion is not a cruel fate but a choice society is making. I can do a lot more
you can do a lot more
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Iocus
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-Disablement is something society is doing to me
its not something that is a problem with me. More akin to racism or sexism
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-A lack of ramps is a disabling condition for me the way a lack of lighting would be a disabling condition for you. Society can change and ameliorate
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-The demand from say
ex- soldiers- a powerful one in the 40s 50s 60s
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Strengths of the Social Model: Political
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-The “big idea” of the disability movement not just in Britain but around the world
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Strengths of the Social Model: instrumentally
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-Places the focus on barriers and makes it clear what the job is: remove them
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-The world is full of adaptive technologies for able-bodied people (escalators! Elevators!) Brightness settings on computer screens! Ear Buds!
so why not adaptive tech for disabled people
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Strength of Social Model: phychological
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-Rather than feeling self-pity
she can feel anger and pride
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-It also has had an important effect on everyones psychology: see the absence of fate and now choice
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Weaknesses…
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-”The social model so strongly disowns individual and medical approaches… For those who have degenerative conditions which may cause premature death
or any condition which involves pain and dscomfort
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-The idea that “my impairment is not the problem
society’s attitudes and policies are the problem” is unevenly sustainable
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What might work for Amputees…\
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Probably wont work for MS or lupus or arthritis
and does not apply with ease to those with intellectual disability
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Universal Design?
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-Spaces that work for “every body”
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-Important principles. But for example “what would it mean to create a barrier free utopia for people with learning disabilities?
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Need to account for
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-Discrimination and Intrinsic limitations
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-The way disability is both particular and universal
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For example
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-debates over whether or not to use “person first” or “identity first”
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-”you have a down syndrome brother?” “No i have a brother with down syndrome”
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-However
would we ever say “this is my friend with lesbianess” or “thats my uncle with blackness”
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-Should we use a descriptor at all?
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-All sides do have a point so is there a reason we have to choose one? Personal preference is probably key
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Sept 10
Davis- Normalcy
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Discourse of Normalcy
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-Discourses are “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak”
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-Michelle Fouccau (big discourse guy)
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-Was a gay man in a time where gay men weren’t really a thing (was just homosexual tendencies)
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-So the discourse of homosexuality forms a gay or lesbian person (now this is a title)
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-ex) the discourse of whiteness did not include italians originally
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Taking this idea of discourse
think about ‘normal’
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-Was anyone ‘normal’ before the 20th century?
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-Not really… (google engram)
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-Late 19th century
we see the word ‘normal’ gaining traction in popular culture
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-Medival peasants knew what a “man of middling size was” (normalcy was a thing)
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What changed?
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-Invention of statistics
systematic recording and analysis of many kinds of data (Focceau Power/ knowledge)
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-Statistics
crunching statistical data (Can we tweak the population)
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-Very startling new insights about society as a collective beast
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-Could study society scientifically (social sciences created)
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-Emile Durkheim
1897: Suicide. Has a rate; is consistently highest among French Protestants
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-French protestants were a minority in society and were often isolated from each other. Their religion was a bit more lax ‘figure it out’
allows existentialism
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-Jewish on the other hand were often a community and supportive of each other
avoiding existentialism
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-Durkheim noticed this and decided community determined the suicide rates
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-Created what is ‘normal’ for these individual communities
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Industrialization and the emergence of the middle class
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-Factories were designed around the average worker… (taylorism)
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-Previously some people were recognized at better than others at tasks (shepards
blacksmiths etc)
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-Taylorism promoted moving at a normal speed constantly (not too fast or slow)
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“Marx foresaw a utopia of the norm in so far as wealth and production is concerned”
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-Again this was the *progressive* view at the time. Normies for the win
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Such that the vision of perfect justice
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-Was that of ordinary people
being equal
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-(a lot to be said of course)
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-No more aristocracy down with the bourgeoisie
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Alternative in the premodern west: The ideal
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-Which no one can attain: a kind of equality to it. Every mortal shares in the state of being sub-ideal
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-”the discus thrower” embodies this ideal… Even though the position achieved is impossible for a real person
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-Actually: originally the head for this statue looked back toward the discus. Balance
counterpoise
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-All of us are beings that actually need help
everyone falls short of it
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-in a sense
more forgiving
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Interesting that what started out as
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-The “Law of error” (average all measurements of star plotting the middle of the distribution is probably the real location)
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-Taking all the calculations and creating a likely area
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-Became the “Normal distribution” or Bell Curve
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-Normalcy vs. Deviance (diseased or crippled or depraved” (pg 7)
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-Eugenics as a “rank and yank” (Rank employees and fire bottom 5% Enron style) project: norming toward the ideal
an impossible task
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-What if we manipulate the population and creating a ‘better norm’
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Modern Novel as a creation of this ethos
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-the bildungsroman
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-The formative years of somebody ordinary
told in a sensitive and thoughtful way
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-Normal person dealing with the normal stuff. Definition would expand to include women
gay and lesbian coming of age
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-”Write what you know” creative writing class advice
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Older/ other narrative forms
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-The epic
the romance; the mythical culture hero
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-Figure at the heart of these never “normal” Always unusual
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ex) think “The Odyssey
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Something intersting happening right now
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-Fantasy fiction everywhere; wildly popular recent example had a disabled character at its heart
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-Anyway: all of this is what social scientists might call a “discourse” of normalcy. See it across multiple domains (cultural/ politically/ economic/ social). Is shifting at present (as we have already noted)
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Think Harry Potter and Percy Jackson being the bestsellers of our generation
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-Disability of character is being brought to the forefront of characters
ANTHR 235 1
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