Autocritical Disability Studies – serie

This book explores multiple metanarratives of disability to introduce and investigate the critical concept of assumed authority and the normative social order from which it derives.The book comprises 15 chapters developed across three parts and, informed by disability studies, is authored by those with research interests in the condition on which they focus as well as direct or intimate experiential knowledge. When out and about, many disabled people know only too well what it is to be erroneously told the error of our/their ways by non-disabled passers-by, assumed authority often cloaked in helpfulness. Showing that assumed authority is underpinned by a displacement of personal narratives in favour of overarching metanarratives of disability that find currency in a diverse multiplicity of cultural representations – ranging from literature to film, television, advertising, social media, comics, art, and music – this work discusses how this relates to a range of disabilities and chronic conditions, including blindness, autism, Down syndrome, diabetes, cancer, and HIV and AIDS.Metanarratives of Disability will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, medical sociology, medical humanities, education studies, cultural studies, and health.'offers a well-structured, accessible collection of disability narratives that foreground disabled voices' Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 16.1 (2022)

This book explores multiple metanarratives of disability to introduce and investigate the critical concept of assumed authority and the normative social order from which it derives.The book comprises 15 chapters developed across three parts and, informed by disability studies, is authored by those with research interests in the condition on which they focus as well as direct or intimate experiential knowledge. When out and about, many disabled people know only too well what it is to be erroneously told the error of our/their ways by non-disabled passers-by, assumed authority often cloaked in helpfulness. Showing that assumed authority is underpinned by a displacement of personal narratives in favour of overarching metanarratives of disability that find currency in a diverse multiplicity of cultural representations – ranging from literature to film, television, advertising, social media, comics, art, and music – this work discusses how this relates to a range of disabilities and chronic conditions, including blindness, autism, Down syndrome, diabetes, cancer, and HIV and AIDS.Metanarratives of Disability will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, medical sociology, medical humanities, education studies, cultural studies, and health.'offers a well-structured, accessible collection of disability narratives that foreground disabled voices' Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 16.1 (2022)

This edited volume explores blindness as a construct with which we the contributors engage as part of our social existence and/or academic research. Irrespective of eye conditions, or the lack thereof, blindness is an understanding at which we have all come to arrive. On the way to this conceptual point, which is in any case unlikely ever to be fixed, we have passed or visited many formative cultural stations.In the terms of autocritical disability studies (i.e. an explicitly embodied development of critical disability studies), these cultural stations include key moments in education and training; the reflective pursuits of philosophy, aesthetics, and cultural theory; literary works such as autobiography, novels, short stories, drama, and poetry; visual texts ranging from photography to postage stamps; technological developments like television, computer applications, and social media; value systems defined by family and/or religion; and the social phenomenon of hate and war. Each chapter in this volume engages with two of these cultural stations; some ostensibly if not profoundly positive or indeed negative and some that contradict each other within and across chapters.This book will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, sociology, education, and health.

This edited volume explores blindness as a construct with which we the contributors engage as part of our social existence and/or academic research. Irrespective of eye conditions, or the lack thereof, blindness is an understanding at which we have all come to arrive. On the way to this conceptual point, which is in any case unlikely ever to be fixed, we have passed or visited many formative cultural stations.In the terms of autocritical disability studies (i.e. an explicitly embodied development of critical disability studies), these cultural stations include key moments in education and training; the reflective pursuits of philosophy, aesthetics, and cultural theory; literary works such as autobiography, novels, short stories, drama, and poetry; visual texts ranging from photography to postage stamps; technological developments like television, computer applications, and social media; value systems defined by family and/or religion; and the social phenomenon of hate and war. Each chapter in this volume engages with two of these cultural stations; some ostensibly if not profoundly positive or indeed negative and some that contradict each other within and across chapters.This book will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, sociology, education, and health.

There exist problematic attitudes and beliefs about dwarfism that have rarely been challenged, but continue to construct people with dwarfism as an inferior group within society. This book introduces the critical term ‘midgetism’, which the author has coined, to demonstrate that the socio-cultural discrimination people with dwarfism experience is influenced by both heightism and disablism. As a result, it unpacks and challenges the problematic social assumptions that reinforce midgetism within society, including the acceptability of ‘midget entertainment’ and ‘non-normate space’, to demonstrate how particular spaces can either aid in reinforcing or challenge midgetism. Drawing on the tripartite model of disability, this book demonstrates how midget entertainment is framed as a non-normative positivism, which makes it an acceptable form of employment. Using autocritical discourse analysis, the book exposes, examines and responds to excuses that are used to reinforce midgetism, thus critiquing the numerous beliefs influenced by cultural representations of dwarfism, such as people with dwarfism being acceptable figures of entertainment. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, social history, sociology and cultural geography.

There exist problematic attitudes and beliefs about dwarfism that have rarely been challenged, but continue to construct people with dwarfism as an inferior group within society. This book introduces the critical term ‘midgetism’, which the author has coined, to demonstrate that the socio-cultural discrimination people with dwarfism experience is influenced by both heightism and disablism. As a result, it unpacks and challenges the problematic social assumptions that reinforce midgetism within society, including the acceptability of ‘midget entertainment’ and ‘non-normate space’, to demonstrate how particular spaces can either aid in reinforcing or challenge midgetism. Drawing on the tripartite model of disability, this book demonstrates how midget entertainment is framed as a non-normative positivism, which makes it an acceptable form of employment. Using autocritical discourse analysis, the book exposes, examines and responds to excuses that are used to reinforce midgetism, thus critiquing the numerous beliefs influenced by cultural representations of dwarfism, such as people with dwarfism being acceptable figures of entertainment. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, social history, sociology and cultural geography.

This book uses the concept of “learning disability” to explore what it means to be human. It argues that we need to learn with rather than from or about learning disability. This crucial distinction means being open to what learning disability can teach us about what it means to be human. This approach comes from recognising learning disability as an organising concept – a concept which radically transforms our sense of what it means to be – or not be – a person.After reflecting on the author’s relationship to learning disability, the book explores relationships and tensions between conceptualisations of learning disability and of the human. Through historical ontology, the book initially examines how the phenomenon of “learning disability” came into being. It then explores ways in which the concept of learning disability has, over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, radically transformed our sense not only of education and learning, but also of who is or is not deemed entitled to full citizenship and the associated rights, and so who is or is not fully human. Each chapter of the book exposes tensions and contradictions apparent in the ways we tend to think about personhood and learning disability, illuminating them through a series a binary oppositions: human and not fully human; menacing and vulnerable; controlled and abandoned; capable and incapable; human and posthuman.The book concludes by drawing together these tensions and contradictions to challenge the prevailing metanarrative of disability and make the case for a more inclusive conceptualisation of what it means to be human.It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, the history of learning disability, humanism and posthumanism, and learning disability advocacy.

This book uses the concept of “learning disability” to explore what it means to be human. It argues that we need to learn with rather than from or about learning disability. This crucial distinction means being open to what learning disability can teach us about what it means to be human. This approach comes from recognising learning disability as an organising concept – a concept which radically transforms our sense of what it means to be – or not be – a person.After reflecting on the author’s relationship to learning disability, the book explores relationships and tensions between conceptualisations of learning disability and of the human. Through historical ontology, the book initially examines how the phenomenon of “learning disability” came into being. It then explores ways in which the concept of learning disability has, over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, radically transformed our sense not only of education and learning, but also of who is or is not deemed entitled to full citizenship and the associated rights, and so who is or is not fully human. Each chapter of the book exposes tensions and contradictions apparent in the ways we tend to think about personhood and learning disability, illuminating them through a series a binary oppositions: human and not fully human; menacing and vulnerable; controlled and abandoned; capable and incapable; human and posthuman.The book concludes by drawing together these tensions and contradictions to challenge the prevailing metanarrative of disability and make the case for a more inclusive conceptualisation of what it means to be human.It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, the history of learning disability, humanism and posthumanism, and learning disability advocacy.

Disability is history and futurity, culture and society, practice and theory, work and play, an immense desire for life by which body and mind are dragged kicking and screaming into each and every new day. Using autocritical discourse analysis, a new hybrid research method that combines aspects of the established methods of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and autoethnography, this book explores the formative cultural identity politics of disability via cultural stations of UK popular culture. These cultural stations include action figures, children’s books, television miniseries, comics, comedy films, teenage drama and sitcoms, the punk rock movement, and alternative comedy. Although the cultural stations range from toys and comics to aggressive music and chaotic sitcoms, all are considered with a focus on the language and tropes of disability. Indeed, most of the works are not remembered as portrayals of disability but the book’s analysis reveals flash if not fleeting representations that, when centralised, clarify patterns of duplicity. Via the language of power, and the power of language, all these texts are found to have contributed to the formative cultural identity politics of disability. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, sociology, toy studies, comic studies, humour studies, television studies, popular music studies, gender studies, literary studies, and cultural studies.

Disability is history and futurity, culture and society, practice and theory, work and play, an immense desire for life by which body and mind are dragged kicking and screaming into each and every new day. Using autocritical discourse analysis, a new hybrid research method that combines aspects of the established methods of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and autoethnography, this book explores the formative cultural identity politics of disability via cultural stations of UK popular culture. These cultural stations include action figures, children’s books, television miniseries, comics, comedy films, teenage drama and sitcoms, the punk rock movement, and alternative comedy. Although the cultural stations range from toys and comics to aggressive music and chaotic sitcoms, all are considered with a focus on the language and tropes of disability. Indeed, most of the works are not remembered as portrayals of disability but the book’s analysis reveals flash if not fleeting representations that, when centralised, clarify patterns of duplicity. Via the language of power, and the power of language, all these texts are found to have contributed to the formative cultural identity politics of disability. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, sociology, toy studies, comic studies, humour studies, television studies, popular music studies, gender studies, literary studies, and cultural studies.

Advertising Disability invites Cultural Disability Studies to consider how advertising, as one of the most ubiquitous forms of popular culture, shapes attitudes towards disability. The research presented in the book provides a much-needed examination of the ways in which disability and mental health issues are depicted in different types of advertising, including charity 'sadvertisements', direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertisements and 'pro-diversity' brand campaigns. Textual analyses of advertisements from the eighteenth century onwards reveal how advertising reinforces barriers facing disabled people, such as stigmatising attitudes, ableist beauty 'ideals', inclusionism and the unstable crutch of charity. As well as investigating how socio-cultural meanings associated with disability are influenced by multimodal forms of communication in advertising, insights from empirical research conducted with disabled women in the United Kingdom and the United States are provided. Moving beyond traditional textual approaches to analysing cultural representations, the book emphasises how disabled people and activists develop counternarratives informed by their personal experiences of disability, challenging ableist messages promoted by advertisements. From start to finish, activist concepts developed by the Disabled People's Movement and individuals' embodied knowledge surrounding disability, impairments and mental health issues inform critiques of advertisements.Its critically informed approach to analysing portrayals of disability is relevant to advertisers, scholars and students in advertising studies and media studies who are interested in portraying diversity in marketing and promotional materials as well as scholars and students of disability studies and sociology more broadly.

Advertising Disability invites Cultural Disability Studies to consider how advertising, as one of the most ubiquitous forms of popular culture, shapes attitudes towards disability. The research presented in the book provides a much-needed examination of the ways in which disability and mental health issues are depicted in different types of advertising, including charity 'sadvertisements', direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertisements and 'pro-diversity' brand campaigns. Textual analyses of advertisements from the eighteenth century onwards reveal how advertising reinforces barriers facing disabled people, such as stigmatising attitudes, ableist beauty 'ideals', inclusionism and the unstable crutch of charity. As well as investigating how socio-cultural meanings associated with disability are influenced by multimodal forms of communication in advertising, insights from empirical research conducted with disabled women in the United Kingdom and the United States are provided. Moving beyond traditional textual approaches to analysing cultural representations, the book emphasises how disabled people and activists develop counternarratives informed by their personal experiences of disability, challenging ableist messages promoted by advertisements. From start to finish, activist concepts developed by the Disabled People's Movement and individuals' embodied knowledge surrounding disability, impairments and mental health issues inform critiques of advertisements.Its critically informed approach to analysing portrayals of disability is relevant to advertisers, scholars and students in advertising studies and media studies who are interested in portraying diversity in marketing and promotional materials as well as scholars and students of disability studies and sociology more broadly.

This book integrates the discipline of disability studies with the lived experiences of women with visible disabilities. It seeks to foreground the silenced voices of Korean and Korean American women with visible physical disabilities in South Korea and the United States. Drawing upon the work of scholars in disability studies, largely drawn from in disability studies in education and feminist disability studies, it challenges readers to (re)consider their own misconceptions and assumptions about disability and reconceptualize their understanding of diversity. A special distinction of this book is that the author, as a woman with visible disabilities, can connect to other women with visible disabilities in unique ways as they share similar experiences as well as their own unique stories through the process of in-depth interviews. Starting with a recollection of her own experience of living with a disability, it then moves to the lived experiences of four other women with disabilities. This unique way of storytelling conveys the important message that living with disability is not a one-time linear process from initial diagnosis to acceptance and overcoming, but a dynamic, evolving, and ongoing meaning-making journey. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, Asian studies, women’s studies, and sociology more broadly.

In the disability community, which can have multiple meanings in itself, we often experience poignant moments in sociocultural discourse. Our pathways to knowledge and understanding of identity are defined by life’s landmarks, many of which resonate with what thereby become formative figures or artefacts. This mapping of key moments involves recognising, and reflecting upon, cultural stations of disability.More than being demarcations of disruption to the normative social order, cultural stations of disability sometimes pertain to its very epitome. They hold something of a moment in discourse with which identification is paramount but variously emotive. They may capture feelings of liberation to which we joyfully return, difficult memories that we revisit to ponder, or the nadir of modernity from which we can only hope to learn.In this edited volume, an international gathering of contributors finds and defines dozens of cultural stations of disability in music, art, film, television programmes, literature, sitcom, activism, sport, performance, organisations, places, and events.Cultural Stations of Disability: A Moment in Discourse will be of interest to interdisciplinary readers in disability studies, humour studies, media studies, film studies, television studies, literary studies, gender studies, cultural studies, popular music studies, and related disciplines in the humanities, education, and social sciences.

In the disability community, which can have multiple meanings in itself, we often experience poignant moments in sociocultural discourse. Our pathways to knowledge and understanding of identity are defined by life’s landmarks, many of which resonate with what thereby become formative figures or artefacts. This mapping of key moments involves recognising, and reflecting upon, cultural stations of disability.More than being demarcations of disruption to the normative social order, cultural stations of disability sometimes pertain to its very epitome. They hold something of a moment in discourse with which identification is paramount but variously emotive. They may capture feelings of liberation to which we joyfully return, difficult memories that we revisit to ponder, or the nadir of modernity from which we can only hope to learn.In this edited volume, an international gathering of contributors finds and defines dozens of cultural stations of disability in music, art, film, television programmes, literature, sitcom, activism, sport, performance, organisations, places, and events.Cultural Stations of Disability: A Moment in Discourse will be of interest to interdisciplinary readers in disability studies, humour studies, media studies, film studies, television studies, literary studies, gender studies, cultural studies, popular music studies, and related disciplines in the humanities, education, and social sciences.

This book integrates the discipline of disability studies with the lived experiences of women with visible disabilities. It seeks to foreground the silenced voices of Korean and Korean American women with visible physical disabilities in South Korea and the United States. Drawing upon the work of scholars in disability studies, largely drawn from in disability studies in education and feminist disability studies, it challenges readers to (re)consider their own misconceptions and assumptions about disability and reconceptualize their understanding of diversity. A special distinction of this book is that the author, as a woman with visible disabilities, can connect to other women with visible disabilities in unique ways as they share similar experiences as well as their own unique stories through the process of in-depth interviews. Starting with a recollection of her own experience of living with a disability, it then moves to the lived experiences of four other women with disabilities. This unique way of storytelling conveys the important message that living with disability is not a one-time linear process from initial diagnosis to acceptance and overcoming, but a dynamic, evolving, and ongoing meaning-making journey. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, Asian studies, women’s studies, and sociology more broadly.

More than being counter to what we must surely endeavour to consider the status quo of honesty, not to mention the pursuit of truth that should still be fundamental in academia and education more broadly, dishonesty involves deceit and thus victimisation, which is to say it tends to be used either against someone or to give someone an unfair advantage. Such personal interactions are sometimes and, in the context of this book, revealingly referred to as the games people play.When an unfair advantage is so given, someone else tends to be disadvantaged, an aspect of dishonesty that resonates with disablement. This book coins the term dis/honesty to define the many moments in which dishonesty is invoked by disability, and vice versa. The concept is explored via a selection of contemporary British sociocultural representations – namely, short jokes, disability sitcom, soap opera, activist radio interviews, fictionalised observations, and the robotic positionality of Artificial Intelligence.In investigating these representations of dis/honesty, on the basis that the blueprint of adult behaviour is found in the schoolyard, playground figurations are posited as part of the autocritical framework. Remarkably, there are many such relationships with disablement, for intrinsic to Piggy in the Middle, Leapfrog, Pile On, Hide and Seek, Blind Man’s Bluff, and Robot Tick, among other playground games, is interpersonal inequity, whereby a normative position is juxtaposed with one defined by being outnumbered, inhibited, and/or singled out.The playground model of disability reveals normative traditions that, according to a range of recent representations, people are often more than tempted to follow. Like a hegemonic game of Hopscotch, the way of the normative social order is sketched before us, complete with behavioural guidelines legitimised by repetition and competition. This book shows how dis/honesty tropes serve the normative social order and how the playground model can be used to critique instances in which disablement emanates from interactions more than institutions, people more than places.The Playground Model of Disability: Dis/honesty Tropes in Contemporary British Sociocultural Representation will be of particular interest to readers in disability studies, as well as those in humour studies, radio studies, media studies, television studies, literary studies, cultural studies, inclusion studies, drama, sociology, and critical theory.