Cultural Locations of Disability

Cultural Locations of Disability
Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Total Pages : 260
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780226767307
ISBN-13 : 0226767302
Rating : 4/5 (302 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Cultural Locations of Disability by : Sharon L. Snyder

Download or read book Cultural Locations of Disability written by Sharon L. Snyder and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-01-26 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Cultural Locations of Disability, Sharon L. Snyder and David T. Mitchell trace how disabled people came to be viewed as biologically deviant. The eugenics era pioneered techniques that managed "defectives" through the application of therapies, invasive case histories, and acute surveillance techniques, turning disabled persons into subjects for a readily available research pool. In its pursuit of normalization, eugenics implemented disability regulations that included charity systems, marriage laws, sterilization, institutionalization, and even extermination. Enacted in enclosed disability locations, these practices ultimately resulted in expectations of segregation from the mainstream, leaving today's disability politics to focus on reintegration, visibility, inclusion, and the right of meaningful public participation. Snyder and Mitchell reveal cracks in the social production of human variation as aberrancy. From our modern obsessions with tidiness and cleanliness to our desire to attain perfect bodies, notions of disabilities as examples of human insufficiency proliferate. These disability practices infuse more general modes of social obedience at work today. Consequently, this important study explains how disabled people are instrumental to charting the passage from a disciplinary society to one based upon regulation of the self.


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