Scholars in disability studies in education, like scholars in other critical fields of inquiry, increasingly draw on a more interdisciplinary range of texts in their research and teaching, including art, fiction, film, and autobiography.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study
The author asserts that contemporary disability life writing can and should be read with view to challenging a tangle of oppressive ideologies and destabilizing any claim to a normative or fixed center. Autobiography as a genre, however, requires a particular set of critical reading practices to fully illuminate myriad ways in which these texts can serve as important and politically grounded counternarratives to the dominant discourse. Read critically, these texts have the potential to unravel the myth of normalcy that undergirds so many of the exclusionary practices in education.
Research Design
Analytic essay.
Conclusions/Recommendations
A critical disability studies approach requires more than the infusion of different kinds of texts; it also requires the incorporation of diverse methods of analysis and theoretical framing of those texts in order to fully appreciate their transgressive potential.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BaglieriS., BejoianL. M., BroderickA. A., ConnorD. J., & ValleJ. W. (2011). [Re]claiming “inclusive education” toward cohesion in educational reform: Disability studies unravels the myth of the normal child. Teachers College Record, 113(10).
2.
BartonE. L. (2007). Disability narratives of the law: Narratives and counter-narratives. Narrative, 15(1), 95–112.
3.
BellC. (2006). Introducing White disability studies: A modest proposal. In DavisL. (Ed.), The disability studies reader. (2nd ed., pp. 275–282). New York: Routledge.
4.
BérubéM. (1998). Life as we know it: A father, a family, and an exceptional child.New York: Random House.
5.
BeauvoirS. D. (1989). The second sex.New York: Knopf.
6.
BrueggemannB. J. (1999). Lend me your ear: Rhetorical constructions of deafness.Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
7.
ButlerJ. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex.”.New York: Routledge.
8.
ButlerJ. (1999). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity.New York: Routledge. (Original work published 1990)
9.
ClareE. (1999). Exile and pride: Disability, queerness, and liberation.Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
10.
CouserT. (1997). Recovering bodies: Illness, disability, and life writing.Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
11.
CouserT. (2002). Signifying bodies: Life writing and disability studies. In SnyderS. L., BrueggemannB. J., & Garland-ThomsonR. (Eds.), Disability studies: Enabling the humanities. (pp. 109–126). New York: MLA.
12.
CouserT. (2005). Genre matters: Form, force, and filiation. Life Writing, 1, 139–156.
13.
CsordasT. J. (1999). Embodiment and cultural phenomenology. In WeissG., & Fern HaberH. (Eds.), Perspectives on embodiment: The intersections of nature and culture. (pp. 143–162). London: Routledge.
14.
DavisL. (1995). Enforcing normalcy: Disability, deafness, and the body.New York: Norton.
15.
DavisL. (1997). The disability studies reader.New York: Routledge.
16.
EllsworthE. (1997). Teaching positions: Difference, pedagogy, and the power of address.New York: Teachers College Press.
17.
FerriB. A. (2008). Changing the script: Race and disability in Lynn Manning's Weights.International Journal of Inclusive Education, 12, 497–509.
18.
FingerA. (1991). Past due: Story of disability, pregnancy, and birth.London: Women's Press.
19.
FingerA. (2006). Elegy for a disease: A personal and cultural history of polio.New York: St. Martin's Press.
20.
Garland-ThomsonR. (2007). Shape structures story: Fresh and feisty stories of disability. Narrative, 15(1), 113–123.
21.
GilmoreL. (2001). The limits of autobiography: Trauma and testimony.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
22.
HandlerL. (2004). Twitch and shout: A Touretter's tale.Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
23.
KleegeG. (1999). Sight unseen.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
24.
KuusistoS. (2005). Walt Whitman's “Specimen Days” and the discourse of the disability memoir. Prose Studies, 27(1 & 2), 155–162.
25.
LindgrenK. (2004). Bodies in trouble: Identity, embodiment, and disability. In SmithB. G., & HutchinsonB. (Eds.), Engendering disability. (pp. 145–165). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
26.
LintonS. (2007). My body politic: A memoir.Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
27.
LordeA. (2006). Cancer journals.San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. (Original work published 1980)
MairsN. (1996b). Waist-high in the world: A life among the non-disabled.Boston: Beacon Press.
30.
ManningL. (2005). Weights: One blind man's journey.[CD-ROM]. New York: Bridge Multimedia.
31.
MayV. M., & FerriB. A. (2005). Fixated on ability: Questioning ableist metaphors in feminist theories of resistance. Prose Studies, 27(1 & 2), 120–140.
32.
McKayN. Y. (1998). The narrative self: Race, politics, and culture in Black American women's autobiography. In SmithS., & WatsonJ. (Eds.), Women, autobiography, theory: A reader. (pp. 96–107). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
33.
MillerJ. L. (1998). Autobiography as queer curriculum practice. In PinarW. (Ed.), Queer theory in education. (pp. 365–373). New York: Routledge.
34.
MillerJ. L. (2005). Sounds of silence breaking: Women, autobiography, curriculum.New York: Peter Lang.
35.
MintzS. B. (2007). Unruly bodies: Life writing by women with disabilities.Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
36.
MitchellD. T., & SnyderS. L. (1997). Introduction: Disability studies and the double bind of representation. In MitchellD. T., & SnyderS. L. (Eds.), The body and physical difference: Discourses of disability. (pp. 1–31). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
37.
MitchellD., & SnyderS. (2000). Narrative prosthesis: Disability and the dependencies of discourse.Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
38.
MollowA. (2002). “When Black women start going on Prozac… “ The politics of race, gender, and emotional distress in Meri Nana-Ama Danquah's Willow Weep for Me. In DavisL. (Ed.), The disability studies reader. (2nd ed., pp. 265–283). New York: Routledge.
39.
PorterJ. I. (1997). Foreword. In MitchellD. T., & SnyderS. L. (Eds.), The body and physical difference: Discourses of disability. (p. xiii–xiv). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
40.
SandahlC. (2004). Black man, blind man: Disability identity politics and performance. Theatre Journal, 56, 579–602.
