kharcler's Blog

I wanted to look at recently written young adult fiction because I think the genre affects the way young people learn to think about disability. Sometimes the young adult audience can have a lot of personal self-doubt or feelings of inadequacy themselves, and I’m sure I’ll be hypothesizing about how that kind of audience receives a disabled hero. Especially a hero like the one in Turner’s Queen’s Thief series, who actually spends the whole first book as an able-bodied thief. Shapeshifting goes on throughout the books, as the hero’s body changes drastically in the second book when he has his right hand cut off by a queen who catches him (repeatedly) stealing from her. The hero has freedom to shapeshift because he’s a member of the upper class. He goes from being a thief to a queen’s thief, to a courtier(?), and, after incuring his disability, he’s a librarian, then a thief again, then a king, then finally a public hero. The loss of the hand temporarily inhibits the shapeshifting that has been the primary use of the character’s body up until that point. I think the hero’s flexible identity appeals to young readers as well.

I also want to get at some of the intersections of mental disability caused by acquisition of physical disability, because I think some of that is going on with the character. The treatment of the hero’s sexuality is downplayed, in keeping with the young adult fiction genre, but the hero’s community within the novel is vocally doubtful about the “happiness” of the marriage because of the unsightliness of the hero’s disfigurement and the imposition of having a disabled leader of a country during wartime. They begrudge their queen’s having to put up with sharing power with him, when he’s not someone who is honest. The third book is fairly devoted to the disabled hero’s attempts to win over a society that is not accommodating.

So far I’ve found a few helpful psychological, mythological, and historical perspectives on amputeeism. I’m trying to find out if Turner’s representation of amputeeism is accurate in the ancient Greece-esque setting.  Apparently, in some minor stories, Persephone is called the “handless maiden,” which I may be able to relate to the hero’s nocturnalism and willingness to go live in the underworld with his mate. This form of punishment encouraged the assessment of a person’s character by observing his physical body as a signifyer. Obviously, in this time period there’s no option to transplant or hook on a bionic hand. For this character especially, the internal vs. external placement of blame is complicated because it’s the wife who is directly responsible for ordering his hand to be cut off, but he tries to keep her from blaming herself. There’s another book scheduled to come out next year.

Please check out the collective manifesto here.

Tori’s comment just before class ended got me thinking about the significance of metaphor in first person descriptions of disability; especially when the descriptions are written to an able-bodied audience, metaphor becomes the best or only way to illustrate an experience of disability. I started thinking more about some of the metaphors that Aron Ralston used throughout his memoirs and video interviews because they had implied some of his attitudes about what happened and his life now that he did not say explicitly–in fact, he avoided mentioning his experience of everyday life without a hand while hastily telling audiences that he has a girlfriend, gives motivational speeches to schoolchildren, and continues to climb only better than ever. Snyder and Mitchell point out that “[i]f the body is the Other of the text, then textual representation seeks access to that which it is least able to grasp” (64). I think, that Ralston’s metaphors are good clues to his conflicted, and perhaps, due to social pressures, inarticulable, feelings about his loss.

For example, Ralston calls the slot canyon where he lost his hand a “gash in the earth’s surface.” I thought this diction suggests that this setting is a violent place. He goes into the gash, the place of violence where he later becomes a self-amputee. This is a place that is already marked for him as a deep cut into a body of sorts. A place caused by violence that carries out violence against his body, requiring him later to enact further violence on himself in order to survive. In other comments about the canyon setting, he describes nature as benevolent, having given him the chance to live through the incident. But I gathered that his negatively-charged descriptions of the canyon itself denote an attitude toward it that is conflicted. Maybe it’s just foreshadowing, but it seems also to be a way of getting at his real experience of the ordeal.

Later, in his brief comments of what it’s like to be alive after the life-threatening experience, he says, “It’s like when your grandmother gives you a sweater for Christmas; you feel a lot of pressure to wear it.” So basically, he’s been given this gift of a life he doesn’t want, but feels obligated to make use of this life so as not to disappoint others. It’s understandable, I suppose, to imply that the life he has now is perhaps not one he would have chosen for himself, much like a Christmas sweater that’s just not “you,” but I think that this metaphor really showed the pressure he was feeling to make his life especially meaningful or noteworthy now that his previous trajectory for making his life worthwhile has been interrupted by amputation.

Those were the two I could think of…apart from when he pokes his crushed hand with a knife and says it slid right in like the hand was warm butter. Yikes. As noted by Snyder and Mitchell, “disability also serves as a metaphorical signifier of social and individual collapse,” and I think this is the case for Ralston (47). I’m convinced these metaphors are something to pay attention to.

It’s interesting that the word characteristic is mostly made up of the word character. And after reading about what happens when people try to infer character from characteristics, I think the relationship is uncomfortable. There was a lot of flawed reasoning showing up in these arguments, which I had always suspected and am glad now to know more examples of. I thought it odd that Ward calls the admission of so-called degenerates into the country a “crime against the future,” when there is no possible way the future can be an injured party (Ordover 8). The future has no rights that can be infringed upon, and the future is not even our property. This kind of rhetoric reminds me of our more recent declaration of war on terrorism–as soon as we figure out how to wage war against a tactic.

I was struck, as I was reading, by the overwhelmingly flexible categories (and statistics!) that this kind of rhetoric demands in order to operate: feeble-minded, unfit, degenerate. Not only does this system reinforce the compulsory able-bodiedness of nationalism, but it fuels all sorts of othering and xenophobia that has at its base the fear of becoming part of one of those completely flexible categories. All of these “symptoms” listed could be as easily chalked under travel-wear or long-term anxiety. (If people really are “insane,” we should ask why, since most disabilities are environmentally influenced; but that doesn’t mean we can blame everything on culture shock.) The list was obviously compiled with an immigrant in mind who has absolutely no reason to immigrate because their life has been so healthy, functional, and organized throughout. The able-bodied American is plucky, hardy, and hardworking–or if they can’t cut it, they aren’t American enough to be American.

Speaking of supressing any signs of internal dissonance, the principle of the standardized test bothers me a little. Since when has literacy had any correlation with intelligence? With emotional stability? or even character? I dunno, but even if we are valuing human beings in those terms, I can think of a lot of competent people who didn’t or don’t read so hot. When I had to take SATs and GREs and things, I was annoyed that more than anything they seemed to test my ability to condition myself. Conditionability is apparently a highly prized quality in a college student. So we all practice so we can “pass” for able-minded.

I heard someone once refer to the Statue of Liberty as the “Whore in the Harbor” who is responsible for the dilution of our culture by immigrants, as though the statue were an emblem of the transformation of America into what Cofer terms as “a dumping ground for [Europe’s] convicts, paupers and insane” (qtd in Ordover 13). If such “dumping” is detrimental to the character of a population, I would be interested to know eugenicists’ opinions on the contemporary demographics of Australia, in view of the “dumping” and racial stratification and “christianizing” that occurred there. It’s hard for me to understand why rich, happy, healthy, educated, and preferably Christian immigrants are the only ones not violating American culture or seizing and misusing American opportunities. I always thought that just about everybody in America is some product of immigration.

Last semester during Darwin week, WVU invited a speaker who had made his name promoting social darwinist theories about the inferiority of women and minorities. The women’s studies department organized a silent protest during the speaking event, and I brought a flyer into my 101 class to show students what kinds of interesting things are (still) going on around their school.  One student raised his hand and said, “Well if he did an objective study, how do we know he’s wrong if he did a real study to come up with this data?” I wish I had said, “Do you think such a study exists?” Instead of such shining clarity, I may have actually said something about how it’s good to ask where information comes from before I teed off into something about justification of historical violence and genocide….I didn’t react so great cause I was just shocked by this student’s response. I think we receive statistics like they’re truth from God, and those to wield those statistics get to be God. I worry that not everyone considers that studies, while helpful lots of times, are far from impersonal and infallible.

This font is so tiny after it’s published, which bothers me, but I fixed the time zone I think.

On Robert McRuer’s Keynote: “Disability Nationalism in Crip Times:” These three clips I had heard about in class, but I had never seen any portion of these films/plays before. (Million Dollar Baby, Murderball, Guantanamo) Oddly, the most positive review I’ve heard of Million Dollar Baby was from a friend who is visibly disabled. I was intrigued by the binary that develops between the sentimentalized disabled character with privatized assistance and the villainized disabled character who receives public assistance and needs to be narratively eliminated. I had heard that the main character dies at the end but had no idea that she dies through assisted suicide. Wow that message is appalling to me–without having seen the movie–that life in a disabled body is not worth living. I would guess that the film is constructed to make its audiences feel that this conclusion is fitting and empowering.

The able-bodiedness of nationalist images was also something I was glad to have brought to my attention in the Guantanamo clip. McRuer was saying that we in disability studies are very good at picking up on these images of compulsory able-bodiedness, and I hope to be able to affirm that myself. This is a new way of looking at things and asking those questions about everything.

During the discussion, for example, was the first time I had thought about the exclusive eligibility of physically injured but not emotionally or mentally injured servicemen and women for the Purple Heart. I think we should recognize other forms of service-related disability, but I am unsure of what that would look like. We know that psychosis and mental disorder is often environmentally produced, but the exact origin of a mental disability could be difficult to pinpoint.

I am impatient for disability studies to achieve the standing that McRuer pointed out is enjoyed by feminist criticism now, where this critique can be used to approach anything and ask questions about anything.

In 2003, Aron Ralston was hiking alone in Utah’s remote Bluejohn Canyon when his hand was crushed and pinned by a falling boulder. After six days trapped in the canyon, Ralston resorted to breaking his arm and cutting off his hand above the wrist. Since then, Ralston has shared his experiences with Dateline NBC, Outside Magazine, the New York Times, and National Geographic News, to name only the few I’ve consulted. Ralston has also published a bestselling memoir, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, excerpts of which are available on the Outside Magazine website.

I’m especially interested in Ralston’s perspective because I want to look at dominant hand-amputation in my paper. There are several issues that surface in Ralston’s first-person narratives, reflections, and commentaries that are unique to him and to this form of disability. I may not be able to flesh them all out completely here, but I want to keep these issues in mind as I look forward to molding some kind of related paper into shape.

First, does Ralston’s instance of self-amputation count as a disability? Ralston was able-bodied up until April of 2003, and since his amputation has continued climbing with the help of a custom prosthetic. His memoirs/interviews are pretty mum about his difficulties in becoming proficient in his use of the prosthetic. I think Wendell’s definition of the difference between disability and handicap–with the essential factor being the individual’s environmental context–useful here, where readers are intended to infer that there is no pre- vs. post- amputation difference in Ralston’s “ability to perform activities.” It’s interesting that there is no use of the word disability in any of the articles/interviews/biographies/memoirs I found online.

Second, how is social emphasis on individual responsibility for disability operating in Ralston’s situation? He did disable himself. In his memoirs, he takes complete responsibility for placing himself in harm’s way, saying that he not only made a mistake which allowed the incident to occur, but that he invited the incident: “That boulder did what it was there to do. Boulders fall. That’s their nature. You did this, Aron. You chose to come here today; you chose to do this slot canyon by yourself. You chose not to tell anyone where you were going.” Ralston has taken a lot of flack from the climbing community for his disregarding this “golden rule” of climbing, possibly queering himself in the process of living and functioning beyond rules. Some consider Ralston to be intentionally publicizing and profiting from his own stupidity. A review from a reader of Between a Rock and a Hard Place demonstrates how easily Ralson’s situation can be made to support the idea of personal responsibility for disability/disablement: “Aron was right when he said in his book that he created the exact situation for himself. It was an experience he needed to have for his own spiritual growth.” This reader-review also invokes an image of disability as a moral test, necessary to development of character (Quayson 37). Ralston’s own perspective of his disability as epiphany, or even inarticulable and enigmatic tragic insight also surface in his descriptions of the experience as the most “liberating” and “beautiful feeling” he has ever known.

Third, how is Ralston a supercrip? He is climbing better than ever. He is a popular motivational speaker, benefiting others through sharing his message of indomitability. Even his book is probably saving lives by publicizing the consequences of climbers not telling others their itinerary. Many of Ralston’s interviews and the latter part of his memoir give a lot of print inches to reaffirming his physical prowess. He also makes what I thought is an unnecessary reference to his girlfriend in his remark about how there is more to his life than being a motivational speaker or an outdoor extremist. Readers seem to respond either by idolizing or demonizing him–some find him inspiring, others see him as a joke. In response to being cast as a hero, he says, “I think that people responded to the way I reacted to what happened, not to the accident itself. I guess there is some irony there. But what are you going to do?” In his book, Ralston describes his desire for the extreme: “I wanted to reveal to myself who I was: the kind of person who dies or the kind of person who overcomes circumstances to help himself and others.” It would seem Ralston had already internalized some of the usual criteria for becoming a supercrip.

Fourth, does pity have a role in Ralston’s relationship with readers? Everyone who reads his book asks themselves the same question: what would I have done if I were in that situation? Ralston effectively gets readers to identify with him. But the attitude is not one that asks for pity–but it seems that for readers there are only two positive options: pity or awe. Ralston does not allow for pity by emphasizing his responsibility for his situation, so readers choose to admire him instead. As a result, some readers perceive a narcissistic tone in Ralston’s work.

Fifth, is Ralston marketing himself as a freak show? I think so. But I think that for this individual who lived to take risks as a means of self-discovery, marketing himself as a physical emblem of extremism may be fitting.  He is still working to accept his changed life, and  maybe this is his approach to that. I don’t have a conclusion for these questions, but I think they are helpful to a discussion of dismemberment and disability.

Some links:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/08/0830_040830_aronralston.html

http://outside.away.com/outside/features/200409/aron_ralston_1.html

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/03/31/sports/othersports/1194838580097/being-aron-ralston.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60DuKWyzd3E&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2XLoQ1xYB0

Wendell’s discussion of the “culturality” of what is “normal ability” really made a lot of sense to me. Her examples really made me think about how diverse people’s lifestyles are–these standards of disability are impossible to universalize because they are so relative. She talks about how a universal standard would of course be useful–if only we could all agree on one (14). The UN has attempted to make some definitions that work across multiple cultures while acknowledging inherent relativity, but clearly these have some insufficiencies. Wendell clarified for me further the relationship between handicap and disability; previously I had always heard the terms used interchangeably. I wonder if my former impressions of handicap as a euphemism for disability stem from some latent understanding that “handicap” refers more to the context of a disability in a person’s interactions with his or her environment, rather than the individualistic connotation of “disability” itself. So in other words, saying handicapped feels less like a personal judgment than does saying disabled. Handicap implies missed opportunities because of societal contructs, whereas disabled gives an impression of a negative personal trait.

Wendell’s comments on illness and disability called to mind a “new” supervisor I worked with briefly who called a staff meeting on her second day of work to tell us that she had fibromyalgia and so could not help us with anything, would make offensive and erroneous statements to us at times, would take a long time to do tasks, and would often be irritable–or not come to work at all. She said she was lucky because lots of people with fibromyalgia can’t work at all and have to go on disability; she was lucky medication worked for her. I remember how frustrated I was that she just seemed so lazy. She was VERY talkative, never finished paperwork, and was constantly eating and drinking unhealthful things at work that I thought would make anyone feel gross. But she didn’t look sick. She loved being at work even though she really didn’t do that much work. Maybe this individual would have been more successful as a part-time employee rather than a supervisor in a stressful work environment, but I had not considered prior to reading Wendell that maybe she was struggling, but did not want to feel like a complainer. I remember taking care of her responsibilities much of the time and wondering why she acted that way because it was easy for me to forget her disability or dismiss its possible affects on her ability to get stuff done. Although she attempted to define her disability and her experience with that disability for me from the start of our working relationship, because she never blamed her performance on her illness, I assumed that the disease was not influencing her actions–or nonactions.

Lourde disdains the “need for some pretense of communication” between oppressors and oppressed minority groups (1). She implies that it should not be “the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their mistakes” because such efforts are fruitless (1). And while I believe I understand the argument she makes that the status quo will always be maintained as long as all our energies are used up in clamoring for whatever redress the dominant groups will allow us, I also know that someone has to do the educating. I have always believed that you teach people how to treat you–but this is based on the premise that there is a relationship between the treater and the treated that can be changed. Later in the article she (or is it another article?) asserts that if black women do not define themselves, other people will do it for them. Say we do the self-defining. What comes next if no one is willing to challenge relationship dynamics by teaching others what treatment is appropriate and demanding that treatment? I don’t want to oversimplify her position within a community that she perceives as hostile to her voice.

She also introduces the idea of compulsive ignoring of differences–especially by white women–because any admission of difference is “fraught with guilt” (4). I have never felt compelled to ignore differences between myself and my black female friends, perhaps because they are my friends. I wondered how her use of “difference” here fits alongside “otherness.” My perception is that difference is a neutral or even positive acknowledgment, whereas otherness implies an oppressed, negatized counterpart. I can see white women having feelings of guilt over traditions of otherness once they are made aware of them. Lourde mentions stereotypes, which usually earmark othering. She also says, “it is not our differences which separate women, but our reluctance to recognize those differences and to deal effectively with the distortions which have resulted from the ignoring and misnaming of those differences” (7). I find this idea interesting, but some of her representations of difference I found easy to identify with, such as feeling “encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self” (6). (I did see her representation of the extremes of sexualization and asexuality of black women in parallel with common perceptions of the disabled villains we discussed in class: polarities of either the sexualized Jezebel or the asexual Mammie.) Perhaps if the differences to which she refers are perceived by white women as neutral, they might be reasonably ignored, but in that case, there would be no need to ignore them to avoid guilt. Guilt would not enter into it if the differences are neutral-only if they are perceived as negatives or otherness. Still, no understanding of difference can occur without first making some kind of distinction between black and white through comparison. Ultimately, if we look close enough, on a relational basis, I believe we would find differences between ourselves and anyone of any race.

McRuer’s “Introduction: Compulsory Able-bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence” I thought was aptly depicted in the example from As Good As It Gets. The synopsis sounded vaguely familiar, which suggested to me that I may have seen this movie. I was amazed at how blurry the realms of physical disability and character defect are made in this film. The Jack Nicholson character is rewarded for his pursuit of the ideal “docile body” that is predictable and heterosexual (28). It seems like he has to be able-bodied to overcome his character flaws, or he has to be heterosexual to overcome his disability.

I was also interested in the discussion of the commodification of queerness and conspicuous consumption (Crip Eye 190). Even Clinique was hoping to make a profit from the trendiness of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. The “marginal flashes of disability in the show” serve to other disability and suggest that although some of the characters are queer, at least they are not disabled. It would seem that the characters of the show became poster children in effect, themselves. Although they are not disabled, they are representative of conspicuous consumption: “looking and living better” (178).

Sorry for the delayed posting. The internet pooped out at my house! So let me get on with it–I felt like this was an edifying set of readings, especially since I’m new to the world of disability studies. I found these articles full of nice prosetry and overall “nondiscouraging”

I appreciated the etymological discussions of disability labels in the Linton and Clare articles. Knowing the historical context of labels is helpful because we need to know what we are invoking when we say these words. Some of them are surprising; for example, I grew up hearing “handicapped” as the optimal way to discuss disability–there’s a huge negative prefix on the front of DISability that makes the word feel insulting. Only since coming here to West Virginia have I known the origins of the word “handicap” or the image of the beggar its usage invokes. Clare includes a poignant quote from the League of the Physically Handicapped during a 1930s Washington D.C. protest: “We wand jobs, not tin cups” (87). In view of the connotations of such language, I find the idea of reclaiming slurs such as “crip” and “gimp” especially intriguing (Mitchell 208).

Redefining signifiers seems like it would be difficult to accomplish, but I can see Linton’s point in”Reassigning Meaning” that the use of these words within the disability community can be empowering because of their exerting the right to self-identify instead of having their identities ascribed to them by an ableist dominant culture (6). Clare uses the word “nondisabled” in his reference to the disability-hostile dominant, adding an additional negative to a term with a built-in negative charge(68). This terminology reminds me that human beings generally are in some way disabled–and even for those of us who would be considered “enabled,” our developing disabilities will become more numerous or more apparent as we age. A nondisabled status implies that the “non” part is not the norm. This discussion brings to mind the dichotomy in “fiction” vs. “nonfiction” with the non suggesting that the definitive element of fiction is missing. This returns us to the idea that disability is a definitive element among us, and the power to ascribe that definition is wielded by those who identify themselves as such through reassigning meaning.

I would like to know more about the shift ocurred in how nondisabled viewed disability from curiosity to pity. We’ve read a few articles now that address the role of spectacle and freak shows. Clare points to the medicalization of disability with the advent of diagnosis and treatment that took away some of the mystery and oddity of disability (84). This paragraph seemed to fast-forward through what must have been a gradual shift. I would like to know more about the ways doctors approaches to disability during this period ushered in a new wave of political correctness. Why did greater understanding of and control over disability evoke greater sympathy for disabled individuals from the nondisabled? Is this because greater understanding had enough of a humanizing effect to make freak show voyeurism go out of fashion? I suppose we see it as wrong now to stare at the physical body of a life we view as tragic.

This makes me wonder what will be next in the line of progressive thinking about living with disability. Will the next wave be better than pity–which Clare argues was not always as beneficial as curiosity–especially if doctors are still in charge of sizing up someone’s disability to determine what kind of services or accommodations he or she deserves. Apparently, That’s why I appreciate Linton’s argument that disability studies needs to move away from the health and occupational therapy fields and root itself in interdisciplinary liberal arts (Disability/Not Disability 133,136). Then we can take into account sociological and literary contexts of disability in multiple fields. As Linton points out in “Enter Disability Studies,” present attitudes toward disability have created a bifurcated society (124). I think it’s not right to continue reinforcing in our educational approaches the dichotomy between the disabled world and the nondisabled world in which individuals get used to being around other people like them. Because there is only one world, and all of us are responsible for it. It doesn’t help that nondisabled people feel compelled to notice a disabled body and then try their best to ignore that body.

I had not previously considered the fact that some images of disability are not the product of able-bodied authors (Mitchell 205). So does this mean that some of the inaccuracies of disabled representation have been influenced by tropes created by disabled authors? If so, that’s discouraging. Mitchell and Snyder quote Davis: “Successful disabled people have their disability erased by their success” (205). I am wondering about the implications of this. That seems like saying someone can’t be really disabled if they’re effective because the two aspects of identity conflict.

Quayson prompts me to consider some of my favorite children’s literature in terms of representation of disability. I think Wainscot Weasel falls under the category of disability as the interface with otherness (race, class, sexuality, and social identity) at least partly. The hero is the leader of the weasels, as I remember, and facilitates all of the sneaky procuring of food for the colony, but he loses an eye in the process. And he falls in love with a very beautiful female fish who lives in the pond. Looking back, I see some ways to interpret the pond as a queer space. The weasel, although an integral part of the community still feels somewhat of an outcast after losing his eye. Although the pond gives him a place of comfort, and the fish, although an odd choice for a mate, gives him a sense of belonging. I can’t remember clearly, but I think the fish has also been disabled by a predator, and I think the weasel saves her from being eaten by a hawk? I think The Thief develops disability as epiphany, signifier of moral deficit, and a signifier of ritual insight–it’s the thief who loses his right hand. Trumpet of the Swan I’m not sure about. And I would have to revisit Johnny Tremain, but I think his burning his hand could be considered a moral test.

I’m now a bloggin fool.