Cultural Locations of DisabilityUniversity of Chicago Press, 2006 M05 15 - 245 pages In Cultural Locations of Disability, Sharon L. Snyder and David T. Mitchell trace how disabled people came to be viewed as biologically deviant. The eugenics era pioneered techniques that managed "defectives" through the application of therapies, invasive case histories, and acute surveillance techniques, turning disabled persons into subjects for a readily available research pool. In its pursuit of normalization, eugenics implemented disability regulations that included charity systems, marriage laws, sterilization, institutionalization, and even extermination. Enacted in enclosed disability locations, these practices ultimately resulted in expectations of segregation from the mainstream, leaving today's disability politics to focus on reintegration, visibility, inclusion, and the right of meaningful public participation. Snyder and Mitchell reveal cracks in the social production of human variation as aberrancy. From our modern obsessions with tidiness and cleanliness to our desire to attain perfect bodies, notions of disabilities as examples of human insufficiency proliferate. These disability practices infuse more general modes of social obedience at work today. Consequently, this important study explains how disabled people are instrumental to charting the passage from a disciplinary society to one based upon regulation of the self. |
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20th Century Fox ability ableism American analysis argued audience become beliefs biological Black Stork bodily body genres Bryan Singer CHAPTER characterized charity cial citizens classification cognitive Confidence-Man contemporary critique cultural locations defective deviance diagnostic disability documentary cinema disability studies disabled bodies disabled people's discourse economic efforts Ely Jelliffe Eugenics embodiment Eugenic Atlantic eugenicists euthanasia feebleminded feral child feral children Foucault Frederick Wiseman function gender Harry Laughlin hereditary human differences human variation ical identified ideology idiocy idiots impairment increasingly individuals inferior institutionalization institutions Jelliffe Eugenics Collection labor locations of disability Melville Melville's mental Moby-Dick modern Multi-handicapped narrative Nazi nineteenth century normal object one's Ordover parasite participation pathological physical population practices professional provides race racial recognized rehabilitation scientific seek sexual Smith Ely Jelliffe Snyder theory therapy tion Titicut Follies University viewer Wiseman's films
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Page xii - Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off — then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
Page 25 - I propose to show in this book that a man's natural abilities are derived by inheritance, under exactly the same limitations as are the form and physical features of the whole organic world.
Page 25 - Consequently, as it is easy, notwithstanding those limitations, to obtain by careful selection a permanent breed of dogs or horses gifted with peculiar powers of running, or of doing anything else, so it would be quite practicable to produce a highly-gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several consecutive generations.
Page 25 - I shall show that social agencies of an ordinary character, whose influences are little suspected, are at this moment working towards the degradation of human nature, and that others are working towards its improvement. The general plan of my argument is to...