ravi narayan wrote:
> > "I have always supported a womans right to choose, but that gets harder
> > and harder to do, the deeper one explores what is really happening. It
> > is in my own enlightened self interest to reject what can potentially
> > kill me."
> > --Marta Russell
> > http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/9811/1029.html
> >
>
> i do not understand this. how is it meaningful to talk about self
> interest before there is a self? once i am born and my self exists
> it is clear to me that i am thankful for my existence. but if the
> fetus (that turned out to be me) was aborted, then there seems no
> meaning in talking about my happiness or regrets because there is
> no "me" and there never will be.
Well yes in the individual sense. But I am disabled -- so if society aborted disabled fetuses in toto as a class/group of fetuses, I would have been wiped out as a matter of due course. Is that clearer?
> i do however see the difference between the "disabilities are
> socially constituted (*)" (if i may so summarize) position and the
> position of the religious right. the former, if i may, seems to
> hold that we see disabilities as a problem, both as a society and
> as individuals (and as the individuals "suffering" the disability)
> because we (as a whole) subscribe to a particular contingent view
> of the world and of human beings, which leads us to classify a
> person's qualities as "problems", and various technologies either
> accelerate the problematic nature of the person's condition (the
> graphic web, as opposed to earlier attempts like gopher, wais, and
> even early html itself, perhaps makes blindness more of a
> "problem" or "disadvantage" than it used to be)
Yes. Exclusions are not so much a result of impairment (individual "problem") as the exclusionary environment. socio-economic and geographic conditions shape the experience of impairment. Brendan Gleeson conceptualizes disablement as a particular material embodiment or socio-spatial disablement. This also applies to buildings, transportation systems, etc.
or contribute
> further to the "slippery slope" leading away from acknowledging
> the "harmful worldview" that is the cause of the problem.
I don't understand what you mean by this.
>
> i do not want to get heideggery and suggest that it is the
> technological worldview itself that is the problem, but if one
> were to respond that more technology will solve the problems (to
> use my own example above: the graphic web causes greater good than
> harm and newer translation technologies will ease the "problems"
> of the blind), that case remains to be made, and the foundation on
> which it is constructed would be interesting/revealing.
Disabled persons are fighting hard to make the web accessible - for one reason it is a great organizing tool for us.
> (*) i am not very up to date on these terminologies. i used to
> understand what "social construction" meant, but i believe that is
> a bad phrase now and its use equates to discredited irrational
> french sociologists (or some such), and i hope i am using the
> term "socially constituted" in an appropriate sense.
Some use "socially created." Foucalt was highly perceptive about disability oppression and institutional power. It is clear that his foray into power relations was intended to flush out social injustices at those levels. I would not call him irrational at all.
Not many people are aware of disability theory as this list (and others) make painfully clear. Neither has the left historically seen disability as a topic of import. That is OK because disabled persons are crafting that theory as we should be.
I have to sign off for today. Things are piling up here.
Marta