David Claeson’s Response to Chris Bell’s “A Modest Proposal”

Right off the bat, Chris Bell introduces the idea of “White Disability Studies” and what most stands out about this introduction is the method with which Bell argues his point. The 10 point list he sketches out paint a wide picture that makes clear the lack of further diversity within Disability Academia and representation.

One of the strongest arguments that caught my eye in Bell’s argument for why Disability Studies is really White Disability Studies at the current moment was his point #4 on how to “keep White Disability Studies in vogue” in which he states there should be no allowances made for liminality and hybridity. Here Bell challenges the idea of viewing the Disability community as one “big, happy family.” Often the Disability community (and other marginalized communities) are viewed by outsiders as homogenous and insular, when in reality all people exist as multitudes, parts of various differing groups. The experience of a straight Black man and a lesbian Hispanic woman, both of whom are a part of the Disability community, are incredibly different, and to put them in a box and claim they are exactly alike is dismissive and dangerous.

Bell makes the point that if you were to make a film about “crip culture” and populate it with an entirely white cast, that film would easily be accepted, lauded with praise and showered with awards. The idea of intersectionality, especially within the Disability community, is one that complicates already difficult issues, and as such gets ignored in academia and film. More than not being actively worked on, the state of Disability Studies as White Disability Studies is not even acknowledged at all, Bell argues, and as such people believe that White Disability Studies are all-encompassing. Forcing that name into use in order to describe the current state of academia is important to push the issue into people’s minds and make them look at how intersectionality within the Disability community is suppressed and underrepresented.

It should be noted that since “A Modest Proposal” was published in 2006, significant strides have been made, especially within the Disability Community, to recognize intersectionality and the different issues that people within the same community may face. While there are still serious issues within mainstream perception, media, and academia, awareness of intersectionality is on the rise, and with a rise in awareness, already the first few steps of “How to keep White Disability Studies in vogue” are crumbling.

Breakout Group 2/18

Hannah Foleck (writer), Emily Kile, Emily Litsinger, Benjamin Sweeny, Daniel Huffman

Generally enjoyed book, nice writing style and prose, quick read

D: first 20 pages introduced to 2 characters with disabilities

H:a way to deal with life and mental illness is compartmentalizing

EL: is mental illness considered a disability because it can be invisible and is not commonly seen

B: some people find it hard to consider ptsd a disability, disability is considered something you are born with, ptsd is something you develop

D: called shell shocked, not ptsd, shell shocked sounds temporary, refer to it as ptsd not shell shocked, not easy to come back from

H: temporary disability is not considered as bad in the long run opposed to permanent disability

D: are mental disabilities considered real disabilities

EK:it is possible to be temporarily diabled, ptsd can be recovered from but not everyone, there are ways to cope for some people but not everyone, good days versus bad days, disability is not static. Is there benefit to refer to it as shell shocked because of the time in which the book took place. Benefits and drawbacks of both names

B: different ways of coping with all mental illnesses, physical disability is a little bit different 

EK: never 100% apply a modern diagnosis to historical, even fictional, cases. Such as female hysteria which umbrellaed over so many other diagnoses

B: The yellow wallpaper, noted to have similarities with historical diagnoses of women

D: Eva, did she take her own leg off for the insurance money?

EK: she killed plum, refers back to her own insecurities, forced into the position of a poor disabled mother, as a result she hardened herself against others, showing love in a very fiscal way. Cut herself off emotionally, considered it unacceptable for Plum to act like that as a grown up. 

D: kill or cure, she killed a disabled character because she couldn’t cure him. 

H: won’t let her son revert back to this infantile state, she refused to accept his newfound disability and chose his fate for him.

Zachary Welsh’s Thoughts on Toni Morrison’s Sula

I think Toni Morrison’s Sula is not only an engaging and thought-provoking novel that deals with disability and its ramifications, but I would also argue that it circles back to the fist week of our Disability and Literature course with the concepts and ideas that it presents within itself.

Something that I immediately noticed when reading Toni Morrison’s Sula, is that it builds off of the ideas from Jasbir Puar’s The Right To Maim in that race and ethnicity can be looked at as a disability to some extent. Specifically with this novel, we see multiple examples of disability represented through the main ensemble of African American characters. Not only do we have Eva, who is placed under such stressful life circumstances that she willingly lets her leg get run over by a train to receive insurance money, but we also see evidence of race-related disabilities when Jude Green attempts to apply for a better, more secure job and is immediately turned down due to the color of his skin. This topic is further explored with the character of Chicken Little when his drowned body is found and one of the first suggestions as to what to do with it is throw it back in the water.

Sula also harkens back to one of our first class readings in which we discussed how disabilities relate to “cure or kill” storylines in books and we see that come into play firsthand this time around. After he suffers traumatic experiences from WW1, the character of Plum is doused in kerosene and burned to death by his mother, Eva, who claims that he “became a child again” and that he “wanted to climb back in the womb.” This plot threat links directly to our beginning-of-the-year reading in which a disabled person is involved in a “cure or kill” storyline where one of the characters may feel that a problem will be solved by the disabled individual’s death. In this case for Eva, she not only rid herself of the responsibility of taking care of Plum, she, in her mind gives him what he wants instead of living a life of suffering.

Toni Morrison’s novel also forges a new path for us as a class in that it starts introducing more mental disabilities as well. As previously stated, not only does Plum develop an almost ptsd like mental disability from the war, but Sula arguably has a mental disability with her loneliness/sadness and her disconnect from society. We see this not only in the way that she just watches as her mother burns to death, but also by her frequent affairs and how she uses them to fill her sense of forlornest and detachment.

While we aren’t finished with the book yet, Toni Morrison’s Sula has been a surprising hit for me and I am really looking forward to getting to finish it and see what other interesting ideas and concepts it plays with.

Zachary Welsh’s Thoughts on Chris Bell’s A Modest Proposal

Something that really stood out to me about Bell’s proposal was his justification of and preference to discuss what he prefers to call White Disability Studies. i think what makes it particularly interesting is that it is a topic that I can see both a positive side and a negative side of.

On the one hand, I can almost see where Bell is trying to come from with his White Disability Studies approach in that he wants to view everyone as an equal. He states in his proposal “do not forget to revel in the idea that as more and more disabled people enter the main stream all disabled people irrespective of the racial and ethnic subjectivity occupy the same place at the table.” To further explain his stance, Bell mentions in his post-proposal notes that “far from excluding people of color, White Disability Studies treats people of color as if they were white people, as if there are no critical exigencies involved in being people of color that might necessitate these individuals understanding and negotiating disability in a different way from their white counterparts.” While I can understand the idea that it could potentially be a good idea to not include race as a factor and just look at someone’s disability, I can’t say I completely agree with Bell’s approach to disability studies. In fact, I would argue against it and actually say that race should be a major discussion point when studying disability because there are in fact gender, race, and ethnical injustice based disparities between members of the disabled population, and I think it’s important to recognize those differences. I would also point Bell in the direction of Toni Morrison’s Sula or Jasbir Puar’s The Right To Maim as clear examples of how race and ethnicity can play into disability studies.

As I said, I can understand where Bell is coming from with his approach but I do not necessarily agree with his stance on disabilities and our approach to studying them. I do think however that there is enough wiggle room and evidence to possibly back up either side and I would love to hear other people’s comments and their stance on the matter.

Daniel Huffman’s Response to Ayisha Knight’s “Until”

Society has an issue with categorizing people into groups based on a myriad of qualifiers that often times never benefit those being categorized in any meaningful way. Instead, those people end up sidelined in decisions made about them, for them, but almost never with them. This can lead to a feeling of those with disabilities feeling ostracized (intentionally or not) from society. Ayisha Knight’s poem focuses on the aspects about herself that seemingly put her outside of society—and while those aspects are all things of herself she cannot change, and everything wrong about her cannot be fixed—nor should it—that is often the case in the way society expects those that are different from the norm to act, behave, or adjust themselves to. When a person can’t (and preferably, won’t) fit those norms, society expects them to become a silent voice in the crowd, and while Knight is literally a silent voice in the crowd, she is the one speaking the loudest.

She opens her poem and spends roughly the first half of it bringing up fears about expressing herself against a push back that claims those very things that are wrong about her aren’t… wrong enough even though those very things are labeled upon her by the very ones telling her what is wrong. Very comparable to the way in which many people with disabilities are overlooked, unheard, or at times downright ignored in ways that seem to make those around them more comfortable in an odd better-for-society kind of way. Knight pushes through those boundaries and societal setbacks come the second half of her poem when she makes her voice truly heard without speaking a single word when she owns and accepts the truths about herself. It shows that even those with disabilities not only have their own thoughts, dreams, and everything else that makes them no different from anyone else, but when there’s a will, there’s a way to express those thoughts. But first, everyone (including herself) else must first be willing to listen.

There is also a strong contrast between the audience that Knight’s poem is directed at (society and they/them) and the actual crowd attending her reading that’s worth noting. It’s obvious that there are many people that don’t agree with the set standard of societal norms of how any given person should exist—namely those that Knight touches on in her poem regarding not only her deafness, but her race, gender, sexuality and even femininity—so it’s odd how when she is viewed as a whole that is comprised of all of those aspects, and when she can see herself as she so desires, and with so many others seeing her in the same light—we’re still faced with a societal divide. We still have classes focusing on disability discourse. We still have so many groups tirelessly advocating for the rights of those with disabilities (and everything else) and we still don’t seem any closer now than then.

Of course, certain people could make the argument that the crowd listening to her poem would rally behind her message because of course, seeing as they went out of their way to attend the reading—but those certain people are also annoying and easily ignored, so. Either way, the people that matter, and the actual means in which Knight is expressing herself are at least attempting to start the fire. Just need the right spark.

Word Count: 571

I pledge: D. Huffman

“Right to Maim” discussion

  • Breakout room discussion (Jessie Harper [J], Emily Kile [E], Benjamin Sweeney [B], Kim Eastridge[K, writer])
    • K: reminded me about the stigma of mental health issues in the Black community; really ties into the stigmas around POC and Black community members who have physical/mental disabilities
    • J: historical ties as well with the LGBT+ community going back to enslavement; weaknesses seen as taboo
    • E: police brutality; that “person was not compiling” and that with disabled people, its hard to compile; i.e. deaf or hard of hearing people. Higher percentage of deaths for disabled black people
    • K: autistic people and their mannerisms leading to police brutality 
    • B: Surprised by the statistics about black disabled people being victims to police brutality more 
    • J: Had aspiration for being a cop; but that was a bad idea. The whole “shoot to kill” if they are not compliant they are seen as violent. 
    • E: Cops shouldn’t shoot anyone, in any part of their body. You can’t guarantee the lethality of a bullet wound via infection or location. 
    • J: That was sort of my compromise, if they’re going to have guns than shoot to harm and not to kill
    • K: The program somewhere in America that has mental health professionals going on calls for mental distress; numbers of injuries are going down; want to expand the program to 24/7 services
    • B: dad’s a cop; arms and legs are more difficult targets because they’re moving; guns are important to deal with more violent criminals  
    • E: I get where you’re coming from but at the same time a lot of those issues could be solved if there was more gun regulation in America. I know I sound naive when I say that and that contraband items could be found, but looking at other countries who have outlawed guns, the amount of gun crime goes down an insane amount. So, if there was more policy change, than that would affect people in a good way. 
    • B: Summarizing our conversation to keep Dr. Foss in the loop
    • Dr. Foss: big names in the reading Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, etc. as all victims to police brutality; not a lot of attention given to this issue

Zachary Welsh’s Thoughts on Puar’s Right to Maim

When reading the introduction to Puar’s Right to Maim, one of the biggest takeaways for me was getting the opportunity to look at race and disability from a whole new perspective that I had previously been unaware to.

Puar introduces the idea that “everyone is disabled to a certain extent” and that “it does not matter if you identify as disabled or not.” This to me was really exciting because I never really saw everyone as being disabled in their own individual ways but as I continued to read through Puar’s introduction, I found myself agreeing with almost all of the points made. Puar uses this point of view to segue into her next point of discussion, movements and protests.

Puar questions the readers that if movements such as the Black Lives Matter protest exist, why are there not protests for individuals with disabilities. However, Puar uses this newly introduced perspective of everyone being disabled to answer that in a way, these marches and protests are themselves, movements for individuals with disabilities. I found Puar’s argument that race itself is a physical disability absolutely fascinating to take in and while I was a bit worried at first about her execution of these ideas, I later found myself fully understanding why she would make these arguments. Puar states that race puts certain individuals in a category of someone with a disability because of factors such as police brutality, racial stigmatization, etc. and even claims that the term “hands up don’t shoot” is a call for redressing the debilitating logics of racial capitalism and the phrase “I can’t breathe” captures the suffocation of chokeholds, and to me personally, it’s an insanely interesting, meta answer to say that these protests are not only to call out injustices that certain individuals are facing, but a chance for them to call attention to and raise awareness for their disabilities.

Puar’s writing allows for myself and readers to look at disabilities and race in a completely new light and draw connections between them that we may not have noticed before. While I personally did not find points in Puar’s writing that I saw as offensive or that I strongly disagreed with, I know that is not the case for everyone who read the text and I would love to hear some other takes and opinions in the comments below.

Kim Eastridge’s Response to John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”

In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, the author stereotypes “Lennie” through infantilizing him; however, the act of infantilization creates a character with an obvious mental disability that the readers sympathize with. I am not arguing that Lennie is a good representation of disabled people in the media, but that his character serves a bigger purpose than to be a villain or a warning to the reader. The infantilization of Lennie begins with his introduction and follows him to his demise.  

Lennie is introduced to the readers as a large man which invokes fear due to his size; especially in direct juxtaposition to George who is more wiry. Before Lennie is introduced via dialogue, he is portrayed as a threat. Early on in the book, it is revealed that Lennie has a mental disability that causes him to act childishly and outside of societal expectations. His strength, due to his massive body, is a weapon against societal norms. For example, when George and Lennie had lived in Weeds prior to this narrative and Lennie was accused of sexual assault because he did not understand the societal expectations for conduct with women and instead was hyperfocused on the texture of the woman’s dress. George and Lennie’s forced departure from Weeds echoes stereotypes of disabled people being the outcasts. Lennie’s strength and unknowingness of societal norms are seen as dangerous to the people of Weeds and not as a symbol of misunderstanding. The infantilization of Lennie does not begin until Lennie and George’s story starts in California. 

The first dialogue between Lennie and George showcases George’s position in the relationship as a caretaker and Lennie’s position as a passionate and loyal companion. The story relies on George to be the parental figure to Lennie as he reminds Lennie where they are going, not to drink too much water, and to act according to social norms in front of their new boss at the farm. This continues throughout the novella with George watching over Lennie’s actions and well-being all the way through the end of the novella with George’s mercy-killing of Lennie, which is overtly foreshadowed with Candy’s dog. Altogether, the narrative focuses on Lennie’s inabilities to act as a functioning adult and therefore the reader, despite his physical characteristics, interprets his actions as those of a child. 

Lennie’s affection towards soft things, like mice, rabbits, dogs, and Curley’s wife’s hair, all result in death as a punishment. Lennie does not deliberately inflict pain but his emotional outbursts and lack of understanding social norms and consequences results in punishment everytime he showcases his mental disability. However, the reader is not steered towards hating Lennie for his mistakes but instead to pity him because, though he inflicts pain through his own strength, his childishness marks the actions as innocent. With George having witnessed the incident in Weeds, the validity of Lennie’s innocence is strengthened by the non-disabled person’s accounts. While the character of Lennie is actively contributing to the stereotypes of disabled people being inapt, the pity that is invoked while reading Lennie’s actions forces the readers to place the blame of his death onto Curley and the other farm hands who did not understand him instead of directly onto Lennie. This correlates to the demonization of disabled people within media and society: disabled people are outcasts due to their “deformities.” While Lennie is a victim to the “Kill or Cure” phenomenon and of harmful stereotyping, the character’s purpose is not to be the villain. The end of the novella showcases Lennie’s impact on George and the other farm hands by the final “death”: the realization that owning their own farm will never happen. 

Word Count: 610

Salem’s Response to Wilde’s The Happy Prince and The Star-Child

Despite being children’s stories, some of Oscar Wilde’s work is rather dark. Stories like these two give conflicting moral endings despite their characters having roughly the same fate. In each, a beautiful and beloved prince is selfish, suffers a great deal and then helps many others. Each story shares a harsh reality with us- you are only useful and good if you are beautiful and kind, the latter of which each prince lacked. But what do these instances of suffering aim to teach us? In these stories, we are being conditioned to both accept and abhor the treatment of Others. We accept that ugliness is punishment, but pity those punishments still.

In our society, those who aren’t “normal” become targets for ridicule, abuse, and mockery. Ofcourse, being humans full of empathy, this recognition of ridicule and abuse against the disabled becomes patronizing pity. Neither of these attitudes are helpful to disabled people, and yet these attitudes are highly rewarded in both stories. Each prince sacrifices much to help the sick, the starving, and in turn is punished himself. Each boy sufferings willingly, self-righteously, but their rewards are different.

The Happy Prince, who knew nothing of his people’s suffering during his own life, does everything he can to help them all, down to every flake of goldleaf on his person and the life of his dear friend. The star-child, who was cruel and selfish without cause, gives his own food, his own body, and almost, his own life for a stranger. It can be debated, certainly, who’s sacrifice was greater, who’s suffering was more productive, and so forth, but instead we may focus on the moral value attached to each character, and what that in turn says about their suffering.

The star-child is not a character we are supposed to like from the beginning. We are inclined to be angry and disappointed that a beautiful child from the stars could be cruel, and when he is turned into a beast, this seems a fitting punishment. This differs from the sacrifice of the happy prince’s goldleaf, but both are treated poorly following their fall from beauty. This highlights how superficial the love gained from beauty is, and how deeply people are willing to be unkind.

But these lessons are undone and somewhat contradicted by the characters continuing to suffer. The Happy Prince still loses his dear friend, and is brought down from his pedestal so that he cannot see the fruits of their labor. The Star-child quickly passes within 3 years, but it is not highlighted that his final destination is heaven, as is the case in many of Wilde’s stories. For these reasons, I feel that both these stories are representations of the ways disabled people are unable to be completely included in society. Even those who make their best efforts to mask, to assimilate, to hide their own pain may not be ultimately rewarded. And if you are ugly enough, like the Star-Child, that deprivement will be seen as morally upstanding.

Hannah’s Response to Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince”

This short story follows a swallow, who is about to begin his migration to Egypt, when he is interrupted by the statue of the happy prince, standing in the center of the town. The swallow spends the entire story helping the prince give away parts of himself in order to help the poor and starving people of his town. The story ends with both the swallow and the happy prince dying and being brought to heaven by one of God’s angels. This story is told from the perspective of a privileged person and therefore gives an interesting light on the subject of disability. The Happy Prince gives us an insight on how people without disabilities see people who have a disability as someone that they can fix.

With a first reading of this short story you see a privileged prince, who has lived a life so wonderful that he has never known sadness, giving everything he has left to make the people of his town happy. He gives until he has nothing left and is melted down and thrown away. Upon first glance this can be seen as a wholesome story, one about giving and making the lives of people less fortunate than you better. When reading the story through the lens of disabilities studies this story takes a slight darker turn. The story has to be read as the prince being a nondisabled person and all of the poor people being the disabled characters. 

The prince turns into a nondisabled person who has never seen a person with a disability before. He has lived his whole life assuming that everyone was like him and that he was “normal”. When he dies and gets turned into a statue he sees, for the first time, what life is really like. There are people with disabilities everywhere in this world, whether they be visible or invisible. The prince has never seen this before and has to take in this information and deal with the reality of life. 

The conclusion that he ends up coming to is that he has to fix these people. In the story he gives the poor people money, and that is a nice thing to do in real life, but when viewing this story through a disabilities studies standpoint what you see is that the prince is in fact trying to cure the disability. Instead of ever leaving his castle when he was alive, and meeting these people and trying to make his whole kingdom better, he tries to end the problem altogether. He takes on the kill or cure mentality. The poor people are depressing to him, so he wants to get rid of them by making them richer. There is obviously a problem with the town as a whole. 

The better solution would have been to see the issue of the town as a whole and try to create a better living situation for the people living there long term. The money will run out, but the corrupt power that is running the town is not going anywhere. It is important for good people to try and find long term solutions to the social problems that people with disabilities face instead of trying to hide the problem behind gold trimmed curtains.

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