Blindness/sightedness: Disability studies and the defiance of di-vision

This chapter explores the potential for disability studies to counter the ongoing marginalisation of people living with vision impairment by interrogating ocular-centric and ocular-normative representations of blindness. Though a generally easy-to-define category of impairment, blindness, or vision impairment, is uniquely positioned socially, culturally, politically and theoretically. Ableist notions have a unique impact on concepts of vision, and thus on blindness, to which disability studies scholarship must respond. Both G. Kleege and M. Schillmeier insist that John Locke’s empirical project on blindness not only privileges visual perception, but also privileges sightedness as an authority to speak of blindness experiences. With specific regard to vision impairment, blindness features in the ancient Greek ‘culture of light’ at the limits of social and cultural boundaries, although paradoxically, vision-impaired people are also celebrated for having superior sight. Whether fully or partially sighted, congenitally or adventitiously blind, each person comes to know blindness in particular ways

Re-storying autism: a body becoming disability studies in education approach

This paper presents and analyzes six short first-person films produced through a collaborative multimedia storytelling workshop series focused on experiences of autism, education and inclusion. The aim of the project is to co-create new understandings of autism beyond functionalist and biomedical ones that reify autism as a problem of disordered brains and underpin special education. We fashion a body becoming disability studies in education approach to proliferate stories of autism outside received cultural scripts – autism as biomedical disorder, brain-based difference, otherworldliness, lost or stolen child and more. Our approach keeps the meaning of autism moving, always emerging, resisting, fading away and becoming again in relation to context, time, space, material oppressions, cultural scripts, intersecting differences, surprising bodies and interpretative engagement. We argue that the films we present and analyse not only significantly change and critique traditional special education approaches based on assumptions of the normative human as non-autistic, they also enact ‘autism’ as a becoming process and relation with implications for inclusive educators. By this we mean that the stories shift what autism might be and become, and open space for a proliferation of representations and practices of difference in and beyond educational contexts that support flourishing for all

Accomplishing the sighted world

Blindness is commonly and ordinarily understood to be an exclusively physiological phenomenon. That is, the genesis of blindness is typically framed within a physiological paradigm. Thus, blindness is commonly understood to be caused by a malfunction of the physiological processes of seeing. It is precisely within this physiological paradigm that research on blindness, for the most part, is framed. Further it is commonly and ordinarily understood that blind persons perceive the world inaccurately. Within this perspective, it is held that blind persons must be "taught" various aspects of the "sighted world" in order that they may live as "normally" as possible within this world. Thus, research in the area of blindness typically aims at the formulation of rehabilitative methods and procedures whereby blind persons are "taught" what it is they have to know in order to coexist with sighted others in a "sighted world". In short, then, investigators of blindness are typically involved in speculating about how it is that blind persons should live. This sort of speculation, however, precludes any-understanding of how it is that blind persons do live and, thus, avoids any understanding of how blind persons interact with, sighted others in a "sighted world". This study represents an investigation of at least some of the ways in which blind persons understand the "sighted world" and some of the ways in which blind persons socially interact within this "sighted world". Thus, blindness is treated here not merely as a physiological phenomenon, but rather as a social phenomenon. The method of participant observation is utilized to develop an ethnography of blindness in order to demonstrate some of the ways that blind persons interact with sighted others within a "sighted world". Further, ethnographic data is presented and analyzed in an attempt to show how blind persons accomplish the "sighted world". Blind persons are involved in an activity which, within sociological terms, can be called "passing". Conventionally, "passing" is understood as an activity engaged in by socially stigmatized persons in an attempt to conceal their social stigma. Blind persons, however, are not involved in "passing" only in an attempt to conceal their blindness from others, instead, blind persons are involved in "passing" in order to display their knowledge of, understanding of, acceptance of, and deference to the paramount reality, name the "sighted world".Arts, Faculty ofSociology, Department ofGraduat

The ethnographic possibility

The following work is a formulation of ethnography, and as such, should not be conceived of as a characterization of, description of, or commentary upon ethnography. This is to say that ethnography is not conceived of here as subject matter, i.e., ethnography is not conceived of here as matter to be engaged descriptively. Instead, ethnography is conceived of here as a form of inquiry and so, our engagement with ethnography can be formulated as an engagement with inquiry. We understand ethnography as a concrete instance of inquiry that is conducted under the auspices of an authoritative version of inquiry. Further, we understand that any inquiry, including ethnography, forgets, in the Platonic sense, the authority under which it is done and from which it receives its possibility. In this sense, we do not address ethnography concretely, but instead we address ethnography analytically. This is to say that what we address is the analytic possibility of ethnography. Thus, we treat ethnography as a text, as speech, and our inquiry seeks to formulate the authority, the grounds, under which that speech is spoken. In this sense, we conceive of any speech, including our own speech, as simultaneously covering over its authoritative grounds and recommending those grounds as an authoritative version of inquiry. So we treat ethnography not concretely but as an occasion for us to display our grounds, our authoritative version of inquiry. Thus, what collects our work is a commitment to formulating the grounds of speech and thus a commitment to displaying that very commitment. In Chapter 1 we address the notion of speech and the essential distinction between speech and language. Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted to a discussion of the topicality and deep interest of speech. We then exemplify the argument presented in Chapters 1, 2 and 3 by addressing, more directly, the possibility of ethnography in Chapters 4, 5 and 6. Finally, Chapter 7 is given over to the formulation of the idea of inquiry itself.Arts, Faculty ofAnthropology, Department ofGraduat

What’s Cool about Blindness?

No abstract availabl

Blindness/sightedness: disability studies and the defiance of di-vision

This chapter explores the potential for disability studies to counter the ongoing marginalisation of people living with vision impairment by interrogating ocular-centric and ocular-normative representations of blindness. Though a generally easy-to-define category of impairment, blindness, or vision impairment, is uniquely positioned socially, culturally, politically and theoretically. Ableist notions have a unique impact on concepts of vision, and thus on blindness, to which disability studies scholarship must respond. Both G. Kleege and M. Schillmeier insist that John Locke’s empirical project on blindness not only privileges visual perception, but also privileges sightedness as an authority to speak of blindness experiences. With specific regard to vision impairment, blindness features in the ancient Greek ‘culture of light’ at the limits of social and cultural boundaries, although paradoxically, vision-impaired people are also celebrated for having superior sight. Whether fully or partially sighted, congenitally or adventitiously blind, each person comes to know blindness in particular ways

Travelling Blind

No abstract available

Resistance Training: Re-reading Fat Embodiment at a Women's Gym

This paper uses feminist disability studies to explore the discursive production of fat embodiment within contemporary Western society. I examine beauty and medicine as fields of knowledge which create and sustain bodily norms, representations and practices. Specifically, I examine the representation of women's (fat) embodiment through an analysis of the promotional material at a well-known women's gym. I show that this gym implicitly references wider health discourses to characterize fatness as pathology, thereby requiring intervention through physical fitness to return the body to normality. Through this analysis, I demonstrate that fatness is not a value neutral embodiment but is socially produced. By bringing together disability studies and fat studies, I highlight the importance of interdisciplinary dialogue, and reveal how different forms of oppression and discourse interlock to create normative understandings of embodiment. I argue that by re-reading fatness we can resist these normative demands and begin to imagine ways of desiring embodied difference