short reading response paper

Caitlyn with a C’s Response to L.J. Davis’s “The End of Identity Politics and the Beginning of Dismodernism”

Within society individuals are constantly searching for, and creating labels: labeling others in order to place them in arbitrary stereotyped groups, labeling themselves to gain a sense of belonging or community, labeling behaviors, thoughts, actions. People are so desperate to either align with, or alienate themselves from others that differentiation categories, such as race, were created purely on the basis of the appearance of skin color. L.J. Davis’s introduction section controversially explores the idea that disability should not be one of these identifiers, and instead society should “expand the protected class (referencing the disabled) to the entire population.” (30)

Davis begins as many disability theorists do, by explaining the history of disability studies, and citing it as a “relatively new field” which has made critiquing, and especially attempting to dismantle one of the main ideas of the organization, extremely taboo. (11) Davis then focuses in on the idea of eugenics, and how it unites the studies of race, gender, sexuality, and disability. This fascinating concept of whether or not creating a ‘perfect society’ would include those who are seen as ‘the other’ is discussed alongside the question of genes, and their inability of consistently or accurately determining the outcome of an individual. This supports Davis’s proposal that these distinguishing features are not substantial at all, as there is little scientific fact to support these assumptions. “If all identities are socially constructed or performative, is there a core identity there? Is there a there?” (13)

Another biological aspect relating disability and identity discussed in this piece is genetic testing, and whether or not disabled individuals have “the right not to be born.” (22) While this topic may not be quintessential to Davis’s overall argument, it is a concept that stuck out greatly, and was such an original, unheard of idea, that it had to be further explored. Typically, when genetic testing is referenced in a disability theory piece, it is to highlight the underlying harm of attempting to not have a child with a disability. While Davis does do this, namely referencing the disparities that would be seen relating to the wealth of different countries and social classes, he then presents this new concept. Is this something that will become more commonplace as disability studies becomes more accessible and popular? If children have the right to be born, can they also have the right to not be? This is something that could have been further explored, as it would support Davis’s idea that disability is not black and white, and should not be seen as a concept to differentiate people.

Throughout the various theory pieces analyzed in this class, different authors have presented dissimilar models of disability that they believe are quintessential. Models such as the medical, social, and racial have all been presented, explored, and thoroughly dissected. Specific to this piece, Davis explores the humanistic model, which is “a new way of thinking [that] rests on…” dismodernism. (30) This humanistic model centers around the physical human body, and postulates that there is no ‘normal’ in society, and disability should not be a dividing factor amongst individuals.

Groupings such as gender, sexual orientation, and sexuality were once thought to have concrete boundaries, but these ideas are now seen as being on more of a spectrum. Davis proposes that disability is a grouping that should also be rethought, but unlike those previously mentioned, disability should no longer be a form of identity at all, because as Davis states, “We are all nonstandard.” (32)

Word Count: 581

I hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received unauthorized help on this work.

-Caitlyn Valenza

Alex Slaughter’s Response to Stephen Kuusisto’s Plato, Again and Laura Hershey’s Working Together

In the short reading, Plato, Again, Stephen Kuusisto writes about disability through the character Caroline Moore, a woman who had breast cancer and has had a mastectomy, which will eventually become a double mastectomy. While Caroline is considered disabled due to the surgeries she has had, she is a fifty-two year old, black woman with a master’s in computer programming. This being said, if she did not have the breast cancer, she would be seen as an abled-bodied person. This story illustrates how many people with disabilities are discriminated against simply because they have a disability, but it also presents how disabled individuals can be taken advantage of and sometimes sexually assaulted.

When Caroline Moore returns to work, she gets sexually assaulted by her boss, Densk. When she returns to work after her first surgery, he brings her into his office and eventually after asking if “it,” in reference to her missing breast, hurt, he touched her where her breast used to be. This action is an example of what we had a discussion about in class regarding disability and having a prosthetic limb. For example, some people see someone who has a prosthetic leg and proceed to ask if they can touch it. For abled-body people, this does not occur as it is seen as odd; however, apparently, it is not odd or weird to ask a disabled person.

Kuusisto emphasizes at the conclusion of the story that his aim was “to show how ableism, sexism, [and] racism are utilized as workaday tools.” This comes in to play because as previously stated, Caroline is black, a woman, and disabled, so all three of those attributes intersect in the discrimination against her. In the office Moore worked at, she originally held a manager position, but upon returning was demoted to a lower, full – time job, and upon returning a second time, she was demoted to a part-time position even if she had more experience. Kuusisto compares this to an experience of his own. As a blind man, he was once told by a superior that if he wanted to keep his provisional faculty appointment, he would have to take a summer job driving a golf cart around campus. After telling him he could not do this because of his disability, the superior told him that he was not competitive enough for continued employment. Using both his example and the one in the story, this reveals the discrimination that many people do not want to admit occurs to those individuals that are disabled on a daily basis.

In Laura Hershey’s poem, Working Together, she portrays disability through the lense of the disabled speaker, who is making a comparison between their job and their caregiver’s job on a daily basis. Throughout the poem, the caregiver’s job involves physical tasks while the speaker’s job usually involves vocal instructions or simple and easy movements. This poem illustrates the different tasks one may do when taking care of someone. The last stanza stands out to me. It emphasizes how one’s job might not be what they ever expected to be doing especially when taking care of an adult. This can be seen in the line “Her job: what no one thinks of doing / except for self or child.” This poem reveals that the speaker feels almost a sense of guilt for being disabled and having to have someone take care of them as if they were a child.

Word Count: 576

I pledge. Alex Slaughter

Molly’s Response to Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People”

In Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Good Country People,” disability is portrayed through Hulga (or Joy), who has a prosthetic leg. While this is just a part of Hulga, all the other characters in the story see her as less capable due to this disability, and ogle at her wooden leg. The three most prominent characters in the story Mrs. Hopewell, Mrs. Freeman, and Manley Pointer all view her leg differently. How they view the leg is a reflection of who they are.

Hulga is the 32 year old daughter of Mrs. Hopewell, a traditional woman who doesn’t seem too fond of her daughter. Mr. Freeman (who is only mentioned) and Mrs. Freeman have worked for Mrs. Hopewell for the last four years, the longest Mrs. Hopewell has kept anyone. Manley Pointer is a travelling bible salesman, who manages to snag a date from Hulga, but is later revealed that he is a con artist that is after her wooden leg.

Mrs. Hopewell is brokenhearted over her daughters lost leg. Mrs. Hopewell does not like the leg at all, and hates it when Hulga purposely walks louder than necessary with it. Throughout the story it seems that after 20 years she is still grieving Hulga’s accident, as proven by the line “it tore her heart to think instead of the poor stout girl in her thirties who had never danced a step or had any normal good times,” (O’Connor 274). It is said she thinks of her daughter as if she is still a child even though she is 32 and more educated than her. She is unable to see her as anything but her disability even though she has proven herself to be more than that. Mrs. Hopewell is brokenhearted over her daughters lost leg, because to her Hulga losing her leg may as well have been Hulga losing her life. This tells us that she is a old fashion woman, who thinks that if a woman cannot be perfect, then she has no true purpose.

Mrs. Freeman is fascinated by the concept of Hulga’s wooden leg. She constantly asks to hear the story from Mrs. Hopewell, and it is said that she “could listen to it any time as if it had happened an hour ago,” (O’Connor, 275). She finds a sense of pleasure from Hulga’s disability, and compares her own daughters to Hulga. Both Mrs. Freeman and Mrs. Hopewell think of her daughters as some of the finest girls ever, and tend to be the center of conversations more than Hulga. Mrs. Freeman is fascinated by Hulga’s wooden leg, because it gives her a sense of superiority over the family she’s working for. This tells us that she is insecure about her life, and feeds off tragedies of others to validate herself.

Manley Pointer wants the prosthetic leg, and this is shown two different ways. At first the want is metaphorical. It’s not that he wants to take it for himself, but that he wants someone who is strong enough to keep fighting through the pain. To him, the leg means that she was “so brave and all,” (O’Connor 285). Later though, it is revealed that the persona of “want” he puts on was not metaphorical, but literal. By revealing he was a con artist, the leg in his is view became a prize to be won. It didn’t matter to him who the person was, the leg itself was the jackpot. Manley Pointer wants the prosthetic leg literally rather than metaphorically, because he collects prosthetic parts from disabled people. This tells us that he is, for lack of a better word, a total asshole.

Word Count: 607

I pledge: Molly Avery

Kenzie’s reading response to Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral”, and Tobin Siebers’ “Disability in Theory”

In the short story Cathedral by Raymond Carver, we are introduced to a story about a man’s wife and her friend who is blind. The husband is obviously uncomfortable with the idea of this man, not only staying in his house but also with his blindness. Earlier in the semester, we read Disability in Theory by Tobin Siebers and in his paper, he talked about disability, social constructionism, and people’s negative outlook on impairment. In the short story, it was clear that the husband’s perceptions of blindness were influenced by social construction. Not only did he strictly refer to his wife’s friend as “the blind man”, but as we read the story we notice just how uncomfortable the husband is when it comes to disability. This ableist man is compelled to recognize that there are other bodies besides the able body.

Before the speaker met Robert, he couldn’t understand how he was happily married due to his blindness. He felt bad for him and then, in turn, felt bad for the woman because Robert would never see her and compliment her appearance. Later on, when the husband meets Robert in person he was immediately put off by the man’s appearance and his judgments got the best of him. “He also had this full beard. But he didn’t use a cane and he didn’t wear dark glasses. I’d always thought dark glasses were a must for the blind. Fact was, I wished he had a pair”(Carver 217).

The husband’s misconstrued idea of blindness was proven wrong as soon as he was introduced to Robert. He didn’t look like the stereotypical blind person the husband had pictured him as, and later on in the short story, he finds out that this man is more similar to what he would consider normal and exceptional. Like any other person, Robert openly smokes and drinks regardless of his blindness which succeeds in leaving the husband dumbfounded. He originally assumes that if you’re blind you can’t smoke because you can’t see the smoke. The man being uncomfortable with Robert not wearing glasses forces the husband to come face to face with his impairment. In fact, Robert wearing or not wearing glasses has nothing to do with the husband and in no way does Robert have to present his body in a way that appeases him.

Tobin Siebers discusses how “people easily perceive when someone is different from them but rarely acknowledge the violence of their perceptions”(Siebers 174). It wasn’t until much later when Robert was forced to acknowledge Robert’s blindness one on one, that he stopped perceiving him as someone lesser than him. Even though I don’t agree with the idea that temporarily blinding yourself allows you to truly understand blindness, the exercise he did with drawing the cathedral did help him communicate with someone he had a hard time connecting with. The short story in its entirety showed disability through the eyes of the able-bodied person. Not only are we looking through the lens of someone who is dependent on his own views of disability. When he is finally introduced to someone who isn’t of the “exceptional body” he is taken aback and has to interact with someone who is different from him.

Word count: 540

I pledge: Kenzie Ward

Works cited:

Siebers, T. “Disability in Theory: From Social Constructionism to the New Realism of the Body.” American Literary History 13.4 (2001): 737-54. Web.

Carver, Raymond. “Cathedral” web.

Makayla’s Response to Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”

When reading this chunk of, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” one passage in particular made an immediate connection in my mind to another text that we have read as a class. Tim Johnson, the ill dog that wandered into town, barely able to walk and obviously miserable, is similar in both character and function to Candy’s dog in, “Of Mice and Men,” by John Steinbeck. Not only are they similar in their literal meaning, but both dogs are deeply symbolic for multiple things. In Of Mice and Men, the dog’s story is a parallel to both Curley’s Wife (who was also unnamed and seen as a possession) and Lennie (who was also shot “for his own good”). And in To Kill a Mockingbird, the dog is most clearly a symbol for the oncoming problems for Atticus and his family after Atticus’ refusal to drop/leave the Tom Robinson case. Atticus’ reluctance to shoot the dog and him not really wanting to take the case, but knowing that he has to do both is just one of the ways that the symbol plays out.

However, that’s not all the ill dog represents. Tim Johnson could also be read as a metaphor for Tom Robinson himself. The dog in the street’s disability and persistence to keep going, “motivated by an invisible force” is directly comparable to Tom Robinson, almost even foreshadowing. While this can be cracked up to just his animalistic instincts, his persistence despite his disability is uncannily similar to that of Tom Robinson throughout the book. While Tom, at least up to this point in the story, is not physically disabled in the traditional sense, he’s also not white, and due to how race is viewed in his society, this gives him a disadvantage that rules over all aspects of his life. In Elizabeth Brewer’s, “Coming out Mad, Coming out Disabled,” she writes about A.J. Withers, a trans person who associates themselves with the disabled community because of how they were psychiatrized by others due to their gender identity.

Jumping off of that way of thinking, Tom Robinson could be considered disabled in a similar, societal way due to his race. People who belong to other minorities tend to interact with disability studies in similar ways. While the experience of being trans is vastly different than the experience of being a part of a racial minority, A.J. Withers and Tom’s experiences ares still comparable. Robinson being black is a big reason of why he is in this unfortunate situation and unnecessary legal trouble to begin with. Thus, the dog continuing to walk forward, despite his disability and pain also symbolizes Tom Robinson’s persistence with the trial, despite being, as Atticus Finch would say, “licked from the start.”

In conclusion, while Tim Johnson is only in this book for a few pages, the metaphors and symbolism surrounding his character allow opportunities to spring up involving several questions and discussion points about disability, some of which have tricky, unstable, and indefinite answers.

501 Words

I Pledge: Makayla Harrington

Rebecca Young’s Response to Tobin Seibers’ “Disability in Theory” and Sheila Black’s “What You Mourn”

As Tobin Seibers discusses in “Disability in Theory”, the social constructionist model of viewing disability implies that the body itself is a social construction; further, our overall views of the body are dictated by society’s standards of normality and physical ideals. While Seibers also presents counterarguments to using this theory in the context of disability studies, I still believe that its central points are applicable to this field and can enrich our studies of disability as a part of our society.

The main point of social constructionism is that all of our ideals and standards, what we consider “normal”, is influenced by our society as a whole. When changing the societal context in which we view a certain body, the actual view of that body is altered accordingly as well. As Seibers wrote in his article, “In a society of wheelchair users, stairs would be nonexistent,” (p. 174). This is a simple example which reinforces the discussions our class has been having for over a month, that an individual is not disabled until their society makes it so. As a personal example, I am incredibly nearsighted, and depend fully on glasses and contacts to navigate my world. If I lived in a society in which these resources were inaccessible or considered abnormal, I would be disabled; however, since this is not the case in our society, I merely have a vision impairment, which is easily adapted into my life. This again shows the dependence we have on our society to determine how our bodies are viewed, treated, and accepted (or not).

In addition to this, I felt that Sheila Black’s poem “What You Mourn,” spoke volumes to the conversation which Seibers has in “Disability in Theory,” and ultimately reinforces the strength of social constructionism as a theoretical argument in disability studies. While the poem’s narrator has a physical disability which has been “fixed,” the narrator themself is mourning the body they were born with. Regardless of how their physical impairments made “normal” activities difficult or impossible for them, the narrator is speaking of their disabled body as a lost love of sorts. In response to the societal voices which called their body “crippled… disabled and then differently abled,” the narrator explains that these labels were given from an external point of view, from people who had never shared the narrator’s experiences. In discussing the ongoing commentary about their body, the narrator explains that “none of [these outsiders] could imagine / that the crooked body they spoke of / … was simply mine.” Here the narrator is saying that their disabled body had inherent value despite their society saying that it didn’t; instead of looking at their impairments as flaws in need of perfecting, they saw them as unique differences which enhanced their value. At the poem’s conclusion, the narrator compares loving their unique and “abnormal” body to one loving one’s country, including “the familiar lay of the land, the unkempt trees, / …down to the nameless / flowers at your feet.” Regardless of how society views the physically impaired body, this poem allows us to view this situation from the perspective of someone who values their supposedly disabled and undesirable body, and ultimately ties in perfectly with the theory of social constructionism by showing that societal views of the body are not universal.

Word Count: 553

Morgan’s Response to Jay Timothy Dolmage’s “Introduction” to Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education

WORD COUNT: 610

The introduction to Jay Timothy Dolmage’s Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education is both an enlightening and unquestionably horrific opening to an issue running rampant across the United States and Canada. While I wasn’t necessarily aware of the racist, xenophobic, ableist, and homophobic rhetoric was being touted and actively encouraged at the university level, I can’t say I’m entirely surprised by the knowledge. Appalled, but unsurprised, as the attitudes haven’t changed much. The heterosexual, the white, and the men still hold all the power (especially if they’re all three) and they still tout the same “fearful” rhetoric of becoming a minority majority, as if it takes away their power. If anything, it just gives them more power through their higher positions and fearmongering rhetoric, that sounds exactly like what Dolmage quotes from leading eugenicist Charles Davenport. So even though we’ve made it through the Civil Rights Movement, First & Second Wave Feminism, and the Stonewall Riots and have made several leaps in the advancement of minorities, these advances, evidently, aren’t much, especially regarding disabled persons on college campuses, where only the bare minimum is offered in terms of accommodations, simply to avoid legal ramifications:

“the use of higher education as a principle of equal opportunity—opened many doors and removed many barriers, but all too often disability was used to test the edges of opportunity; for people with disabilities, the equal access promised by the second step never really came, or only ever came in a qualified way. Here, while the discourse or discussion about disability was about welcoming and including, the back end was being built to construct disability purely under what might be called a medical and a liability model: define disability medically, treat it in a legalistic, minimalistic manner designed to avoid getting sued. This can force accommodation to happen, but it also tends to force—always and only—the legal minimum accommodation” (Dolmage, 2017)

Dolmage also informs the reader that, because the law requires only the bare minimum, colleges and universities don’t always tell you what accommodations they can or are willing to offer. This makes it especially hard for individuals like me, who have ADHD, to seek assistance where necessary.

My own experience with the Office of Disability Services is such that because I’m not seeing a psychiatrist (but a therapist, who cannot prescribe medications), I don’t have any paperwork to bring to ODS. I know that I have trouble focusing on one thing at a time and deadlines are my worst enemy, but because institutions rarely ever codify the services and accommodations offer, I don’t know what to ask for to gain assistance. More than that, any accommodations for shifting deadlines wouldn’t provide any assistance or preparation for post-school life in the real world. So, without the proper psychiatric paperwork prescriptions from a prescribing doctor, there’s really nothing I can do about getting accommodations. And, even if I did, there’s always the stigma, as Dolmage notes, of being considered to have an “unfair advantage.” My only option is to keep arguing with doctors about my treatment, hope for the right medication, and suffer through my inability to focus and hope beyond hope that my brain doesn’t set me up for failure.

Dolmage’s introduction has given me more insight on how universities are failing to accommodate students like me and students who have it worse than me. While we’ve made some in moving past the eugenicist movement of forced incarceration, forced sterilization, human experimentation, inhumane conduct and mistreatment, we as a society still have a long way to go with regard to how we treat our fellow humans that aren’t Straight, White, and/or able bodied.

References

Dolmage, J. (2017). Academic Ableism. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.