Linkspam: Disability, whether to 'pass' or 'perform'?

[davidgillon]

Passing for Normal: The Austerity Politics of Visibility and Invisibility for Disabled People*

Fascinating academic paper by a friend of mine looking at the contradictory pressures of stigma and 'legitimacy' that drive disabled people towards either concealing or 'performing' their disability.

I think the way Naomi links the pressure towards 'legitimacy' into the wider aspects of the 'surveillance society' is really thought-provoking, as is 'the socially acceptable right of non-disabled people to invade the privacy of disabled people', while considering the DLA form as a mandatory, self-enforced version of the panopticon, oh my! Definitely worth a read if you're interested in disability politics, or just stuck between 'passing' and 'performing'.

* Site does require registration via FB or Google, but it's the first time I've seen a registration that lets you control what information is passed.

Comments

Re: Some early-morning, highly caffinated, thoughts

[capri0mni]

Well, according to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary (American-centric), "monster" is still a technical, official medical, term for those born with certain physical deformities (or biological term, if we're talking about non-human living things, such as plants).

The root of the word goes back to Latin, and the ancient Roman religion, and the word "monstrum," for "omen," or "sign" (same word root in "Demonstrate" and "Monitor" because it was believed that animals or humans born with missing or extra limbs were taken as signs that a calamity would fall on the community.

So it makes sense, if that's your underlying belief system, that the birth of a "monster" in your village would make you afraid, because then, you'd have to start worrying about when the king was going to die, or whether you'd be hit with a famine. But even in that very earliest meaning of the word, there's no sense that the "monsters," themselves, are hateful, or angry -- they're just the messengers of the presumed divine wrath. Still, you'd think it would be in your best interest to hide the monsters really well, so the gods don't see which villages they sent them to, and maybe they'll forget their plans for a plague of locusts, or whatever.

...And even though "modern science" has abandoned that explanation for deformities and disabilities, they still rely on that practice for their "Standard treatment." That's why I think of doctors as one of the most superstitious lots working today. If it weren't for their fancy degrees and chrome-plated technology, they'd probably be classed with the tinfoil hat brigade, a lot of the time.

Re: Some early-morning, highly caffinated, thoughts

[cloudsinvenice]

I never realised that was where it came from!

Hating the "monster", then would be like shooting the messenger... of course, human beings do have a habit of doing just that. :/

Re: Some early-morning, highly caffinated, thoughts

[capri0mni]

The other analogy I like: It's like hating stop signs as evil,* because most of the time, when people drive past them, they end up getting into driver's side collisions with another car -- so it must be that the signs want to kill drivers. And, to boot, they're the color of blood... Meanwhile, the signs can't read themselves, and probably have no idea they're telling people to stop.

*I originally came up with it to counter the American superstition that black cats are unlucky while in countries with a British commonwealth heritage black cats are lucky (::smiles at your icon::). Both versions of this superstition come from when the Greeks started trading with the Egyptians. Hecate was the Greek Goddess of magic and crossroads, and in Greece, her totem animal was a black rabbit. When the Greeks encountered a country where cats were sacred, Hecate "Adopted" them, too. So if a black cat (or rabbit) shows up walking down the road in the same direction you are, it's confirmation from the goddess that you're headed for something good, but if a black cat crosses your path, it's a sign that there's bad luck ahead. Brits latched on to the first part of that, and Americans latched onto the second.