Category: Uncategorized

One theme I have consistently noticed throughout reading our course material on Disability is the selectivity and hierarchy of disability by both able bodied and disabled people. I like to compare this to colourism within people of color. This is an issue among the African American community, with my own culture as a Lebanese woman, and in East Asian cultures. People with disabilities experience horizontal discrimination within the community. For example Deaf people don’t want to be associated with Limbless people, Limbless people don’t want to be associated with Schizophrenic people, Schizophrenic people don’t want to be associated with Autistic people, Autistic people don’t want to be associated with Alcoholics, but at the end of the day every one of these disabilities are disabilities. Every single person has to overcome their own challenges and discrimination along with it.

In John Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice and Men Lennie Small is intellectually disabled while Candy is physically disabled. Both men are disabled but because Candy’s disability is a physical disability and not an intellectual disability he is valued more as a person while Lennie is dehumanized and babied.

Again, in Banner’s short story The Wedding of Tom to Tom both Tom’s are intellectually disabled while Raquel is an Alcoholic, Archie is a drug addict, “Dad” is on Disability for a back injury, and Anita is co-dependent on her drug addict ex-fiance. Yet not one of these other characters, all of whom have disabilities are dehumanized, controlled, and babied the way the two Tom’s are.

I would also like to specifically explore Anita’s horizontal discrimination with the intellectually disabled people in the home, specifically the Tom’s.

Anita’s language is often belittling when discussing people with disabilities. She uses the slur “retarded” so many times throughout the story that I lost count. She clearly does not value her job nor did she actively look for a job involved in Special Education/Disability. In fact, she states “I was gonna keep this job no matter what. I was gonna stop living like trash”(51). This job is literally the bare minimum for her. She compares Tom A at one point to a cat “he looked at me the way… my cat does. Lonesome inside, without the capability to explain” (54). This act of comparing a human being to an animal is dangerously dehumanizing and lacks empathy. Anita also cooks an elaborate breakfast for everyone; however, this act of giving does not come from a selfless place, but

from an egotistical one. I believe Anita is an egomaniac with an inflated sense of self. She clearly sees herself as superior to the people she aids. Even in the marriage of Tom to Tom (which this scene reminded me of two children playing “make believe”) she is even stated, “Let’s let them get married” (66). Her support in the Tom’s marrying did not feel sincere or altruistic to me, but rather a game or a funny way to pass the time. I think her prejudice, and most people’s prejudice whether they are abled or disabled, stems from a place of insecurity and ignorance.

I like that Banner created an intersection of sexuality and disability in this short story. I couldn’t help but think how this story would have been different if it were a heterosexual, disabled couple couple rather than a same sex, disabled couple who was in love. Disabled people in general are desexualized. This is especially true for people with prosthetics, people in wheelchairs, and people with intellectual disabilities. “Joy” in O’Connor’s short story Good Country People is another example of a disabled character who has been desexualized. Joy is in her mid thirties yet had never kissed anyone before, and Joy’s mother also compares her to a child. Yet, people with disabilities are still human. Additionally, not only are Tom A and Tom B gay and disabled, but they have extremely high sex drives. They enjoy sex, they like sex. I think even able bodied people with high sex drives are shamed for this. They’re not just engaging in a “quickie” every now and then, they are consistently trying to find ways to have sex throughout the short story. Tom A and Tom B also clearly know what they are doing. They are in a very sexual position when Anita first walks in on them, they’ve dimmed the lights, they respond pleasurably to each other. Banner’s characters are calculated and the ending of the story is also calculating. As a co-dependent woman, Anita falls back into the arms of a possibly abusive, manipulative, lying man. She becomes the victim of her own doing and justified this choice as a choice of “love.’ Meanwhile the ending of Tom A and Tom B being torn apart because of their very healthy, but disabled love for each other is a stark contrast, and I believe is meant to be ironic. It is Anita’s co-dependence that hurts her and the ableist communities prejudice that hurts Tom A and Tom B. I really appreciate how Banner is challenging the way disabled people are being represented and how a lot of work needs to be done in how we conceptualize, determine, and value disability.

Another interesting part in Banner’s story is the representation of Alcoholism through Raquel. Raquel is described as a “drunk” by Anita. She often smells of liquor and is drunk when she shows up for work. Anita describes Raquel, “A lot of drunk work in group-homes, like it’s their way of paying penance: a vodka binge then they go in and wipe a retard’s ass and think they don’t have to quit drinking” (56).

I think any recovering Alcoholic would laugh and agree enthusiastically with this description of a drinking Alcoholic. Alcoholics will do whatever they can to justify their drinking. They will point fingers, blame, anything except look at themselves as the problem. I also think it is interesting that Raquel goes to AA but she is still drinking profusely. Not always, but often, people who go to AA are there to stop drinking and stay stopped. So, I found this detail to not be representative of *most* AA going alcoholics.

So, I definitely wrote way too much, but I really, really liked this short story. There was so much to unpack in just 15 pages, I can’t wait to talk about it in class!

Word Count: 1,080

I pledge.

The reason I did not select a particular piece for this response is because I had something I wanted to say about a theme I saw in all of these readings. The interactions between those with disabilities, disabled/able-bodied relationships, and able bodied relationships, are treated as if there are different requirements to love. I understand that certain steps need to be taken to ensure the safety or comfort of your partner, but I don’t think there has to be more complications then that to it. In regards to Tom A. and Tom B., in “The Smallest People Alive” they loved each other, but were going to be separated; because they could hurt each other, which seems like a cheap excuse to keep them apart. They’d been with each other 20+ years. I think that the thought of them being together made the manager uncomfortable; because she couldn’t see the reasons why they would be so attracted to each other. In Mollow and Mcruers book, the first paragraph bugged me; because not everyone sees physical traits as the primary reason they are attracted to someone or a reason at all for that matter. Love is what you feel for someone, and looks or even how someone processes things shouldn’t change how someone feels if they are in love.

My point in this rant is that there isn’t one or two ways to like someone, and we shouldn’t be using what we use to evaluate if someone is attractive as the default when referring to others; because in most cases it isn’t true.

As per our in class/group discussions today, I thought I would post some of my simpler thoughts about Faulkner’s chosen writing style, which is definitely making all of us feel some type of way about the book;) Ironically, I wrote my notes in a stream of consciousness style, but for the sake of conciseness and clarity I will have edited a bit. :

Faulkner’s Stream of consciousness style is something I appreciate as an art form, because I think it does a good job of representing disability and mental illness. My third grade teacher taught me to “show but don’t tell” when writing, and I think that Faulkner’s style definitely does this with his characters’ emotions. For example, I find the lack of punctuation in Quentin’s section to make me feel stressed, rushed, and confused. When I say confused, I mean I feel like ideas are blurring in my head. In this way, Faulkner is showing me the way Quentin feels by imparting his emotions on to me, the reader.

Additionally, I very much appreciate how Fualkner stays with this style throughout the novel no matter what character is the “speaker.” I think this drives home a point that every character in the book is struggling with something. The fact that he starts with Benjy’s point of view, the most obviously disabled character, could imply that we as readers are suppoused to compare the other characters to Benjy. Should we/do we characterize all characters as disabled?

A main point of comparison for me so far in reading was in the italics: I thought of the italics as intrusive thoughts, interruptions to the first stream of consciousness. I think it would be interesting to do a further comparison of how these italics show up in each portion of the novel, and the emotions that each section imparts to us as readers. This style is very revealing of disability and its workings, and I think with further analysis it could show unexpected thought processes in the characters.

While I don’t necessarily enjoy reading this confusing style, I appreciate its uniqueness and layered meanings. How could this feeling in itself even connect to how we as a society could view disability? Something that may be hard to deal with, something that we may not enjoy, but something that is valuable, interesting, and meaningful.

Stephen Kuusisto’s short story, “Plato, Again,” is about a woman who recently underwent cancer surgery. The story illustrates how many women get treated in the workplace. Like most of those women, we see Caroline Moore, experiencing ableism, sexism, and racism. In the beginning of the story, Caroline thinks about everything she went through, saying that it was “easy.” The only thing she did not find easy about was the idea of getting to keep her job. She did not have much interest in her course management software before her illness; however, being back now, she was ready to work hard, wanting to get her mind off her illness. Unfortunately, nothing was the same when she returned to work. Caroline got demoted and was treated differently by all her coworkers. Simple mistakes were now seen as because of her illness and she was told that her hours would have to change to part time which can easily lead to her getting dismissed.
Mitchell and Snyder’s Introduction of “The Biopolitics of Disability,” they quote that, “sought to counter-balance an over emphasis in the social and minority models of disability on environmental restrictions experienced by disabled people wherein the ability to fully participate as citizens in a democracy (for example) is impinged upon by real bodily limits” (125 ) Going back to, “Plato, Again,” we can see that Caroline was quickly seen as unfit to do her previous job just because she “lost a breast.” Sure she was ill, but she wasn’t even given a chance to prove she’s still capable of completing tasks, she was called in to the office and told she’s been demoted on her first day back. Caroline’s story can be relatable to many people. She is a character with so many things she can be discriminated against for in today’s society. Caroline is a fifty-two-year-old, black woman with a disability. Just simply being a woman leaves her vulnerable for discrimination in the workforce. Whether they have been sexually harassed, racially discriminated against, or stigmatized because of a disability, anyone reading this story will find something to relate to.
Mitchell and Snyder also talked about how people with disabilities come across “inflexibilities of key social institutions that require them to “fit in” or try to get by without showing their disability too much. They speak of how society sees disability as an infringement on aesthetic ideals of national imagery. It’s sad that Caroline’s disability being just missing a breast, something that isn’t as visible someone with a missing limb, can affect her life so much making her “unfit” to do the tasks she has previously done. Due to her cancer, Caroline is not seen as an abled-body person and her missing breast is to referred to as, “it.” We have seen this same situation in O’Conner’s “Good Country People,” where Hulga’s prosthetic leg as “it.” Both characters, who were once “normal” humans with friends and coworkers were suddenly treated as strangers by the people who they felt closest to.

Word Count: 506
I pledge… Sara Mahgoub

Written by Amanda Smith 

On the afternoon of March 19th, I had attended Theresa Steward’s lecture from the Mysterium Humanum series on madness. Her topic of discussion was on “Musical Interpretations of Love and Madness in the Persian Epic Leili o Majnun” (translated as Layla and Majnun). The main objective of Steward’s lecture was to look at the story of Layla and Majnun and compare its meaning of madness with its modern musical interpretations. 

To start off the lecture, Steward went over the story’s history and plot. Layla and Majnun story is known as the “Romeo and Juliet of the East”. It traditional epic story was written by Nizami, a poet from the early 12th-century era. The story is placed in 7th century Bedouin, Arabia were two lovers meet. The story begins with the meetings of a beautiful women Layla and a man named Qays. They meet in school at the age of ten and since that moment they have been in love with each other- so much that they believed that touching one another is not needed to know how much they love each other. One day, Layla’s parents prevented Layla and Qay from seeing each other and even arranged a marriage for Layla. From the torture and toil of not being able to be with Layla, Qay had become Majnun (which translates to madness, crazy, mad). Now, Majnun escapes to the desert and becomes a hermit who gives up all of his earthly possessions- like his clothes- and vows to not eat or hunt animals, he states that he has “eaten the eater.” At the end of the story Layla becomes ill and dies, then Majnun visits her grave and dies laying on it (it is assumed that died from heartbreak). As a result of death, Layla and Majnun are united in heaven and live happily ever after. From this story, Steward gathered that this is more than a simple tragic love story. 

Steward stated that the story represents Sufism. Sufism is the religious belief that finding divine love will transcend an individual and awakening the true spirit into divine madness. To transcend, one must take their soul on a journey towards God, annihilate one’s ego, and transcend earthly desires. Looking at the story of Layla and Majnun, Majnun can be seen as a character who inherits divine madness. With his isolation in the desert, his support for animals, his “letting go” of ego, and his unconsummated love with Layla, he has fulfilled each stage of transcendence. Because of this, God has brought them together in heaven with their immortal love. Steward stated that Sufism shows that divine madness is known today as mental illness. With this evidence, Steward surprised her audience with a completely different interpretation of the divine love story shown in music.

Steward first introduced Hajibeyli’s Leyli and Majnun Opera. First performed in 1908, the performance tells the story through the orchestra, choruses, and individual vocals. The vocals, however, are presented using mugham (a traditional vocal improvisation). Reflecting on this Opera the orchestra shows madness with repetition of the chorus “Night of Separation” in different tones. These tones change along with the visual tethering of clothes and progressive weakness in the character portraying Majnun. What this Opera doesn’t show is the divine love and madness within Majnun in the end. Instead, they show the tragedy of mad love with the abrupt ending of him dying on her tombstone. This opera is still performed today but still has not changed its meaning. Therefore, showing negative affliction. So does it ever change? 

We ventured on into the modern interpretations of this story and found one piece from 1992 named “Song of Majnun” by Bright Sheng. Instead of a tragic love story, the meaning is twisted into love and suffering after being separated from one’s homeland. Sheng was, in his youth, exiled to Tibet, to where he escaped to the United States to become the composer he is today. His composition introduces instrument and voices that create the sounds of a “mad men” by using Greek chorus (two people gossiping to narrate story), dissonance (ugly sounds that don’t go together), and shifts in meter, and repetition of words, Sheng produced what can be interpreted as a sense of madness and the experience of an unstable mind. “Though this not exactly divine madness, it is as close as we have gotten. 

In conclusion, she stated that western civilization stigmatizes divine madness as a negative affliction and descent towards madness, like a descent towards hell. Whereas divine madness is actually a positive journey and an ascension upwards towards the divine. She exclaims that the story is not a tragedy but a happy love story, and is waiting for someone to tackle the story from this angle, musically!

Found within this short introductory text, Baynton gives readers a glimpse of the rest of the book as well as the most fundamental idea of the relations between immigration law and disability; disability was and is utilized as a tool to create inequality.

            This inequality forced upon the “defected” populous is seen blatantly through the lens of immigration laws of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The inequality brought about by disability serves two purposes here, the first being that inequality is used by those who lie within the status quo of important identity throughout most of history: white males. This is seen in the text with the mentioning of, “constitutional deficiencies,” otherwise known as using an identity such as a person’s race or gender to assign them an inherent characteristic that allows those in power to keep that person out of society. An example from this in the text would be the sentence in which Baynton says that opponents of racial equality stated that African Americans had inherent defects such as feeblemindedness, impaired reason, and more dramatic claims such as having a stronger propensity of being blind. These constitutional deficiencies were used to combat the successful entry and livelihood of every person who wasn’t a healthy, white male.

            The second purpose found here in the utilization of disability as a tool for inequality would be the unmentioned (in the text) yearning for a modern, utopian society. This drive for innovation inadvertently caused our culture to accept disability only as a hindrance to the successful society. This utopian, new-age attitude is precisely what caused many of the inequalities that we reflect on (such as the “unsightly beggar” ordinances) and still see throughout the world especially among disabled life in third world countries. Rather than combat disability by accepting it and creating a world where anyone can thrive, the United States in its’ immigration policy chose to combat it by literally blocking disability and difference from entry.

This gives us as non-participant observers a chance to learn about modern day disability representation and governmental interference. From these past ordinances and laws, it can be said that our world needs an individualist attitude in how it tackles disability. The utilization of government influence to define and suppress people with disabilities is the wrong way to go about fixing the problems within these discussions. In order to accurately accept disabled peoples into modern society without hurting their chance at a normal life, it must be accepted that every person with a disability is different. Disabilities manifest themselves differently in every person just as every person is inherently different with varying personal tastes. This knowledge can lead towards the determination that every person must be treated as an individual with their own upbringings and desires; every person with a disability should be able to determine what they need in order to thrive and feel accepted in this ableist world of ours.

In ending, the most important takeaway from this text is that disability has been and is still used as a means of oppression from those who feel they are more of a person than those with disability and that the only way to prevent this inequality that is introduced from this is by tackling disability individually just as we would with anything else regarding any one person’s identity. By taking disability as an individually occurring phenomenon we are finally able to move on from characterizing people and restricting their lives by way of excluding them from the “normalcy” that does not even actually exist.

Word Count: 615 Honor Pledge: Dylan Lassiter

Early in his novel, The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner explores the world of the Compson family through the eyes of the mentally disabled Benjy Compson. As events of Benjy’s life are brought forth through vivid memories as he goes about his day on his 33rd birthday, it becomes evident that Benjy’s mental disability is often infantilized and seen as a burden by most of his family, most notably his mother and his niece. Benjy’s mother and niece often antagonize him because of his disability by victimizing themselves, openly wishing not to have to deal with his disability, and infantilizing him.

Though Benjy’s mother, Caroline Compson, is introduced as a self-victimizing hypochondriac from early on, her misguided, negative views of her son’s disability become more evident farther along in the novel’s first part, “April Seventh, 1928.” When Caddy seeks to comfort Benjy while they visit their mother on her sickbed, Caroline shifts the focus of attention from her son to herself in order to claim that she is the one who is actually suffering: “You humor [Benjy] too much. […] You dont realise that I am the one who has to pay for it” (Faulkner 63). She also manages to infantilize Benjy in this quote by gaslighting his sensitivity while chiding Caddy as if her attempts to comfort him are the actions of a person spoiling a child. In other words, it is as if comforting him will only encourage his behavior as it would a testy child, and that Caroline would have to shoulder the aftermath on her own. It then becomes clear that she has no empathy for Benjy, and believes herself to be a victim, thus establishing herself as someone who believes his disability to be a burden.

Similarly, Caddy’s illegitimate daughter, Quentin, finds Benjy’s presence to be burdensome as well. Though Caroline is much more self-pitying, Quentin’s character is extremely forthright in expressing her hatred of Benjy because of his disability. After Faulkner introduces Quentin, it is immediately obvious that she carries a vitriolic grudge against Benjy due to his disability. His presence is enough to stir her up, as seen when Benjy and Luster come across her intimately involved with the man in the red tie. In fact, one of her first lines of dialogue is indicative of her attitude towards Benjy: “If you don’t take him right away this minute and keep him away, I’m going to make Jason whip you” (Faulkner 48). Quentin clearly does not want to be around Benjy, as his sensitivity and tendency to “beller” irritates her. This seems to stem from her infantilization of him, which is evident in her saying, “[…] you let him follow everywhere I go” (Faulkner 48). The image of Benjy following Quentin around evokes images of little siblings or children tailing others. Meanwhile, the fact that Quentin claims Luster “lets” Benjy do the things that irritate her erase any sense of autonomy Benjy could have; she essentially disregards the possibility that Benjy is aware and in control of his own actions. Thus, because of her behavior and her words, the reader gets the sense that Quentin feels as though Benjy’s disability makes him a burden just as Caroline does.

Throughout the first part of The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, Caroline Compson and Quentin are only two of many characters who fail to empathize with Benjy and effectively categorize his mental disability as burdensome through their words and actions. Throughout the later half of “April Seventh, 1928,” both exhibit tendencies to infantilize Benjy’s actions and draw irritation or discomfort from them, meanwhile focusing the attention upon themselves. And though their ways of reacting against Benjy’s disability differ, they grow from the same roots: a belief that a person with disability is “childlike” and a burden upon their caretaker.

Word count: 635

I pledge upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received any unauthorized help on this assignment. Michelle Zillioux

Works Cited:

Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury, 1st International Edition. Vintage International, a Division of Random House, Inc., 1984.

In Anne Finger’s fictionalized historical story Comrade Luxemburg and Comrade Gramsci Pass Each Other in the Congress of the Second International on the 10^th of March, 1912, much can be said about the fictionalization of two once-living people within the scope of disabled autonomy. However, the passage that was most intriguing was the author’s set-up of a fake dialogue between the characters of Rosa and Antonio. In this I say characters, because as the piece cheerfully admits, the real disabled people lost to history are simply being acted by the author. In focus is the single conversation they are allowed to have, and the direction it steers. This passage makes a larger point about the visibility of privilege and what constitutes privilege for the person experiencing it. In their dialogue, Rosa wonders if she has gotten to her high rank in the Socialist party because of, in the author’s words, her “de-gendering” (115). She is of course referring to the system of ableism that constructs the disabled body as less sexually and romantically desirable, even sexless. This construct allows those with disabilities to be othered further within society, but in a key twist here, subverts a system of misogyny. The pressure to be desirable—literally available for sex— is a trait forced on women by a patriarchal structure. A woman seen as sexless within social perception is less of, or not at all, a woman. Therefore Rosa is enjoying the freedom that she feels by not being seen as feminine within society, giving her a masculine boost in a masculine world. This freedom, however, should not be interpreted as a privilege. It stands on shaky ground, as evidenced by Antonio’s initial interruption to her sentence, saying “de-sexualization” instead of Rosa’s preferred language (115). She thinks that after being viewed as nonsexual for so long, and gaining some benefits from it, “his words [made] her a bit prickly” (115). I interpret this as a telling stab of fear. By insisting on the language of gender instead of sex, she is using a less charged concept, and shifting the conversation into her comfort zone away from any discussion of desirability. The mere reference to sex by a man makes her uncomfortable. Rosa, as a character, and I would assume the author, as a woman, know what I am referring to here. Her “privilege,” as it is, is not in fact a gift because it is always accompanied by fear. It is always followed by the persistent what if. Privilege by definition is invisible, it is not something that the person of higher status ever needs to think about, and therefore it is sometimes hard-pressed to be acknowledged by the privileged person. Disprivileged people are the ones who must navigate the world with more caution. The concept that her “luck” might change is not something Rosa can forget, it is extremely visible to her even as she tries to ignore and deflect from it. It cannot be considered an actual gift. There are many small complications to the system of privilege/disprivilege such as this one fictionalized scenario. Another example might include the “privilege” of a transgender person who can pass as cisgender within the binary structure, as opposed to a transgender person who cannot or does not want to. The person in this scenario, like Rosa, must always worry about the possibility of perception and the harm that might come with it. Essentially, the point remains the same: an actual higher standing of privilege is not, at least initially, invisible to the person who possesses it.

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Word count of paragraph excluding citations: 590

Pledge: “I hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received unauthorized help on this work.” -Lauren C. Magee

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Works Cited

Finger, Anne. “Comrade Luxemburg and Comrade Gramsci Pass Each Other in the Congress of the Second International on the 10^th of March, 1912.” PDF file.