This book explores how being "disabled" originates in the physical world, social representations and rules, and historical power relations—the interplay of which render bodies "normal" or not.
Do parking signs that represent people in wheelchairs as self-propelling influence how we view dis/ability? How do wheelchair users understand their own bodies and an environment not built for them? By asking questions like these the authors reveal how normalization has informed people’s experiences of their bodies and their fight for substantive equality. Understanding these processes requires acknowledging the tension between social construction and embodiment as well as centering the intersection of dis/abilities with other identities, such as race, class, gender, sex orientation, citizen status, and so on.
Scholars and researchers will find that this book provides new avenues for thinking about dis/ability. A wider audience will find it accessible and informative.
Author(s): Micky Lee, Frank Rudy Cooper, Patricia Reeve
Series: Interdisciplinary Disability Studies
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 266
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Figures
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Foreword
References
1. Introduction: Dis/abilities at the Intersections
From medical model to synthesis
Rejection of a medical model by both approaches
The embodiment critique of social construction
Reconciliation of embodiment theory and social constructivism
This volume's intersectional approach to CDS
The figuring of dis/abilities in media studies, critical legal theory, and the cultural and social histories of embodiment
Media studies
Critical legal theory
Cultural and social histories of embodiment
Summaries of chapters
Foundations: experience and theories
Rehabilitation, disablement, and the state
Representation, liminality, and resistance
The political embodiment of personhood
Notes
References
Part I: Foundations: Experience and Theories
2. The Art of Regarding Still Life
Still life as object
Still life as in coming to a stand still
Still life as possibility
Summary
References
3. Embodiment's Contributions to Appreciating Life with Dis/ability and to Advancing Justice
Introduction: wondering about the body
Medicine's continued attachment to biological understandings
Racial profiling in medicine
Medical commitment to "fixing" dis/ability
Embodiment's contribution
Embodiment, subjectivity, and equal humanity
Embodiment, emergent disability, and justice
Race as a determinant of dis/ability?
Emergent disability: implications for justice
Conclusion
Notes
References
Part II: Rehabilitation, Disablement, and the State
4. Subjects of Industry: Craft Therapy, Its Photography, and Healing American Soldiers of World War I
Introduction
Craft as therapy
Revising dis/ability? Craft and the "new industrialism"
Crafting ability through occupation
Conclusion
Notes
References
5. Medical Discourses on Dis/ability in State Socialist Romania: A Critical Genealogy
Introduction
Social constructivism, embodiment theory, and the dis/abled body
Soviet thought styles
The defective body
Romanian trajectories
Deflating the Soviet appeal
Dis/ability through the lens of labor productivity
Dis/ability and work capacity in the Romanian state
Work as therapy
Conclusion
References
6. Embodied Inequalities: Intersections of Dis/abilities and Gender in West Germany (1950-1990)
Intersectionality, intracategorial and intercategorial complexity
Honorary Germans? War-dis/abled men in postwar Germany
The thalidomide transformation
Dis/abled housewives: impairment, gender, and the body
Those who had no lobby: persons with mental impairment
Conclusion
References
7. Policing Dis/ability
Introduction
Embodiment and dis/ability
The nature of the police
A nightstick is a weapon with a dis/ability issue at both ends
What the police do
Policing dignity
Conclusion
Notes
References
Part III: Representation, Liminality, and Resistance
8. Reassessing Japanese Radical Feminism from the Vantage Point of Dis/ability
Introduction
The Eugenic Protection Law, its purpose and bio-politics
Yonezu Tomoko and the Japanese student movement—catalyst for the ribu movement
1972—revision attempts of the EPL and ribu's intervention into bio-politics
Ribu's opposition to the proposed revisions
Ribu and the dis/ability movement
Incorporating dis/ability into the reproduction debate
1981—calls to revise the EPL resurface again
Opposing revision attempts after ribu
Conclusion
Notes
References
9. Sayōnara CP: The First Filmic Representation of the Japanese Dis/ability Rights Movement
Aoi shiba no kai: the first self-advocacy group of dis/abled people in Japan
Exposing bodies, exposing problems?
Challenging conceptions of the "normal body"
Challenging the medicalization of dis/ability
Hara Kazuo's gaze: from ableism to abuse?
Creating a freak show?
Looking at the individual rather than the group
Looking at dis/abled men
Conclusion
Notes
References
10. Voltron: Legendary Defender and Compulsory Able-Bodiedness
Introduction
Background
Voltron: Legendary Defender
Methodology
Tagging
Close reading: disability tropes and plot-telling
Shiro, "noble crip"
Shiro/Keith: lovers and brothers in arms
Shiro/Adam: bury your gays
Conclusion
Notes
References
11. Corrective Lens: Dis/abilities and the Materiality of Media
Introduction
How media studies scholars conceptualize dis/abilities and technologies
Materiality in assistive technology
The slash: myopia, between ability and dis/ability
Myopia and eyeglasses: first, there is a problem, then there is a solution?
Superhuman abilities for a body with limits
Wearable technology: questioning bodily normalcy
Conclusion
Notes
References
Part IV: The Political Embodiment of Personhood
12. Dis/ability and Race in American History: Rhetoric and Reality in the Civil War and Post-Emancipation South
No whit less brave: race, dis/ability, and military service
Reconstruction and relief: dis/ability and in/dependence in freedom
The politics of pity and fear: dis/ability and the roots of lost cause ideology
Conclusion
Notes
References
13. Bending the Laws of Nature: DNA Literacy and the Coding of the Perfect Human Being
Introduction
The idea of the perfect human being and its link to eugenics: a historical overview
DNA literacy or the capacity to read and edit human genomes
Designer babies
Un/natural Selection (2019)
Conclusion
Notes
References
14. Deconstructing Rules for Proof of Cognitive Impairments
Theoretical underpinnings of rules governing proof of mental capacity
Current rules for proving mental incapacity cause hardship for neurodivergent litigants and witnesses, particularly in criminal cases
Standards of proof for mental incapacity
Procedural rules for proof of mental incapacity
Reforms to provide consistent protections for neurodivergent people
Notes
References
15. So That Playing to Win Is Not Playing to Die: Constructing Legal Recourse for Athletes with Sickle Cell Trait Laboring in the Actor-Networks of the Brown Commons
What is SCT?
Dis/ability is socially constructed
Dis/ability as ambiguous
The Bragdon Framework
The athletes
Conclusion
Acknowledgement
Notes
References
Index
