Class Minutes April 9, 2014

Class Minutes
April 9, 2014

Agenda

I.                   Business

II.                Crip Theory

III.             Representing Disability

Business

•  Final Exam Format - identify the genre, date (within the decade), and key themes of 20 or so excerpts of contemporary feminist theory
• Completed participation estimation feedback activity (how does your perception of your participation relate to Dr. Sparks’ notes?)

Robert McRuer’s “Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence” (2006)

• McRuer is strongly associated with the body of scholarship known as “crip theory,” which primarily seeks to integrate aspects of queer theory into disability studies and ultimately queer disability 
• Gender Trouble/Ability Trouble – McRuer invokes Butler’s language to draw on parallels between performing gender and performing ability
•  Similar to the way repetition of gendered practices constitutes “gender” (copies of copies of copies), repeated performance of able-bodiedness constitutes “ability” (both types of performance – gender and ability – are bound to fail since neither is “authentic”) à Disciplinary Power!!!
• There are multiple showcases for able-bodied performance (such as athletic events, “beauty” pageants, etc.) that encourage performing ability and reinforce compulsory able-bodiedness
•  Just as compulsory heterosexuality relies on the existence of lesbians and gay men to define itself, compulsory able-bodiediness and ability ideals depend on the construction of “disability” as a social category
•  Able-bodiedness is posited as the universal ideal/desire (“wouldn’t you rather…” narratives surrounding disability)
•  Despite the constant pressure and effort to achieve able-bodiedness, McRuer is interested in the subversive possibilities of performing (dis)ability (just as with Butler and gender – how can difference of ability be “cited” without simply perpetuating existing categories of norms and exceptions?) à What if we “crip” things and expose disability as just as constructed/unnatural as ability?
•  When looking for this disruption/defiance incorporating and citing disability is not enough à reiteration (even proud reiteration) does not guarantee subversion or effective disruption of these categories (we must fail at ability in critical way)
•  Can “able-bodied” people participate in this subversion/cripping of ability? (if so, how à what are the ethics?)

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory” (2002)

• Explosion of disability scholarship in the early 2000s à Dr. RGT’s recently published review of the field in a contemporary American Studies journal
• Myth of the “normal” à age, mental and emotional “health,” disease, body type, eye glasses, etc. are all ways in which “normal” people are interact with disability à “normal” and “abnormal” bodies is a false dichotomy
• Temporality and vulnerability studies – theory that in time, everyone is vulnerable/dependent/fails at the able-bodied ideal (one is born vulnerable, temporarily achieves ability, and then degenerates with age)
• Does this life-cycle model perpetuate the system of categorization that marks certain forms of embodiment as “exceptions” and others as normal/typical
• McRuer doesn’t want to acknowledge how we’re all exceptional (although this is an improvement on “othering” models that marginalize a minority of people as exceptions and celebrate others as normal), because he wants to understand and analyze how we determine what is normal and exceptional in the first place
• “Overcoming adversity” narratives surrounding disability do not dispute these categories or the normal curve
• Lady Gaga using the wheelchair as an accessory – is this subversive or offensive? What about wearing non-prescription lenses as a fashion statement? Where and how is the line drawn about who (which bodies) can participate in which kinds of cultural/aesthetic practices?
• Drag? Is Lady Gaga calling attention to artifices of gender and ability with her performance style? (“Performing Disability”
• How does the juxtaposition of reality and fantasy function in her performances (mermaid tail à allusion to disability or fairy tale?)
• Video on mannequins with human variations – is the gazing/shock-value/spectacle of putting these mannequins in storefronts problematic? Are these still posited as “exceptional” bodies (as opposed to average bodies à there was no racial/ethnic variation, people of size, or any other types of bodies that are typically excluded from standard mannequins)
• What are the implications of the plasticity (and static-ness) of a mannequins?
• Fashion and Disability: what role does “democratic capitalism” (or better: capitalism) play in equity? Is incorporating “disabled” into mainstream fashion and beauty culture a necessary step toward equality (“freedom to be appropriated and commodified” – RGT)?
• Is the equality narrative a fallacy? Are progress, social justice, change, and attention to intersectionality inevitable or myths? What about identity?
• Does popular rhetoric about progress, representation, and equity still occlude and pathologize existing spaces of resistance?