Purpose -This paper aims to develop and estimate a model to measure consumer perceptions of trade show effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach -Data were collected at three separate B2C trade shows. Study 1 (n ¼ 47) involved field interviews with data subjected to qualitative item generation and content analysis. Study 2 data (n ¼ 147) were subjected to exploratory factor analysis and item-total correlation to identify a preliminary factor structure for the effectiveness construct and to test for reliability. In Study 3 (n ¼ 592), confirmatory factor analysis was undertaken to more rigorously test the factor structure and generalise across industries. Validity testing was also performed. Findings -A three-dimensional factor structure for assessing consumer visitors' perceptions of trade show effectiveness was produced incorporating research, operational, and entertainment components. Research limitations/implications -Data were collected in Australia and results may not generalise across cultural boundaries. Practical implications -The resulting measurement model may be used as a reliable post-hoc diagnostic tool to identify areas of trade show effectiveness where specific performance improvements are needed. Results indicate that exhibitors and organisers of B2C trade shows should consider effectiveness as a multidimensional phenomenon with entertainment, product/industry research, and the facilitation of purchase decision-making processes and problem resolution being key objectives for consumer attendees. These elements of effectiveness should each be addressed by exhibitors and organisers in planning their displays and events. Originality/value -This is the first study to provide an empirically valid model for assessing trade show effectiveness from the consumer visitor's perspective.
Introduction: How Do We Learn What We Know? “Deaf.” How do we learn what we know about being deaf and about deafness? What’s the difference between “being deaf” and “deafness” as a particular kind of (non) hearing? Which would you rather be, deaf or blind: children commonly ask this question as they make their early forays into imagining the lives of people different from them. Hearing people cannot know what it is like to be deaf, just as deaf people cannot know what it is like to hear ... or can they? Finally, how can we tell fresh and authentic stories of “being deaf” and the state of “deafness” that disrupt our familiar—perhaps even caricatured—patterns of understanding? In this special “deaf” edition of M/C Journal we wanted to create a body of work in which deaf writers and thinkers would have their say. Mindful that "Deaf history may be characterized as a struggle for Deaf individuals to 'speak' for themselves rather than to be spoken about in medical and educational discourses" (Bauman 47), we were particularly keen to place the contributions of deaf writers and thinkers alongside the mainstream hearing culture. This is why we have chosen not to identify each writer in this edition as deaf or hearing, preferring to leave that biographical auditory detail to the writers themselves. We already knew that "there isn't a large body of literature about the deaf by the deaf" (Henry Kisor 3). Thomas Couser writes that "this should not be surprising, for a number of factors militate against deaf autobiography ... making them unlikely and rare entities" (226). And so we welcomed the diversity of topics and range of genres to this edition: they included a playful ficto-critical exploration of deafness; personal reflections on deafness (ranging from regarding it as a condition of hearing loss to a state of being); poetry; a filmography; and several fresh analyses of representations of deafness, hearing technology and deaf people’s lives in theatre, film and television (this was a particularly popular theme); the poetics of embodiment (indeed, embodiment was a recurring theme across many of the submissions); a commentary on the role of interpreters in deaf-hearing relationships; and an analysis of the role of the Web 2.0 and other technology in deaf people’s communications. However, we noted that most of the uncommissioned submissions in response to our call for papers came from hearing people. We had to seek out contributions from deaf writers and thinkers and wondered why this was so. Mainstream publication avenues for writing by deaf people on the topic of deafness are rare in Australia: perhaps deaf writers lack the necessary confidence or belief that they would be read? In this edition, they certainly reveal that they have much to say ... and inspire us to lean in and think carefully about their words. A Deaf Knowingness In writing her poem “The Triton”, Sandra Hoopman was inspired by her frequent visits to her deaf grandmother at her old Lambert Street, Kangaroo Point home, where she had a huge triton on her wrought iron veranda. Her grandmother would put the triton up to her ear and show Sandra how to 'listen' to it so that she could ‘hear’ the sea. Her poetry recalls to mind Robert Panara's most-quoted poem, “On His Deafness”, in which he imagined that he might even hear 'the rustle of a star!' Following Sandra Hoopman’s poem, we are pleased to feature the essay “Body Language” by Jessica White, shortlisted for the ABR 2010 Calibre Prize, and Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist for 2008 for her first novel A Curious Intimacy (Penguin 2008). In her essay, Jessica playfully explores the idea of not having a singular fixed identity by traversing a dialogue between the imagination and the character of Jessica, showing different selves at play and in conversation, and again in conversation with others at the ficto-critical room and with the ideas articulated by different authors. As with post-structuralist explorations, the essay emphasises the active and formative nature of language, story and ideas, which help us to deconstruct and reformulate versions of our lives and its possibilities. Play is a device that enables people to move beyond the confines of the social world. The joyful spirit of White’s essay is signalled when she writes: For example, there are still immense possibilities thrown up by theorising a jouissance, or pleasure, in the disabled body. As Susan Wendell points out, “paraplegics and quadriplegics have revolutionary things to teach us about the possibilities of sexuality which contradict patriarchal culture’s obsessions with the genitals” (120). Thus if there were more of a focus on the positive aspects of disability and on promoting the understanding that disability is not about lack, people could see how it fosters creativity and imagination. White’s essay is a ‘picaresque’, following a traveller who narrates her adventures and encounters. It is a wonderful model for narratives of difference as it departs, refreshingly, from mainstream Hollywood-style plot conventions, i.e of progress through conflict towards a climax and resolution. Instead, the picaresque allows for a variety of roles, settings and pathways for the wanderer, multiple characters and illuminating dialogues. It demonstrates literally as well as figuratively, productive encounters with the Other, jolting us into new understandings, ways of knowing and possibilities of being. In this way, White’s essay “Body Language” sets a thematically rich tone for this special “deaf” issue of M/C Journal. Through her essay and the following narratives, commentaries, articles and essays, we are immersed in the theme of the importance (and liberating possibilities) of contesting fixed and limited images, disrupting the representations and labels that are so readily assigned to the deaf or deafness. Different strategies and styles are employed, from figurative creative writing or life narrative to the critical essay or media analysis. Yet all contributions emphasise shifting perceptions, commence from a position of not being comfortable with the given representations or ideas that surround deaf identity. The personal narratives and essays assert a strong sense of disjuncture between deaf reality and common representations and ideas of deafness. Reading these contributions, we gain an acute sense of not being at one with the image or idea of a deaf person, not being at one with the social world, not being any one thing but rather many different and varying things and roles. The conditions of possibility are touched upon in the personal reflective pieces, resonating with the critical essays in their exploration of the possibilities of destabilizing hegemonic representations. For example, in “Becoming Deaf”, Karen McQuigg’s personal reflective essay, she describes several stages of the deaf experience. Her description of her son’s responses and adaptations is moving, and Karen mines a range of emotional responses to deafness. She shares with the reader the advice and support she received from other people: some readers will remember with affection the role of Elizabeth Hastings and John Lovett in the Australian Deaf community. McQuigg’s reflections sharply highlight the fluid nature of our individual experience and understanding of deafness. She (and we do too) shifts from what was experienced and understood initially as a blank, a not-comprehending—a ‘blank’ that is linked with loss and constraints, grief, suffering and isolation—to a discovery of how those views and experiences can change, along with changing environment and opportunities. This comes across also in Christy L Reid’s piece “Journey of a Deaf-Blind Woman”: possibilities are linked with where the narrator is living, with life events as varied as training and job opportunities, changes in health, marriage, the birth and development of children, child rearing, and of personal triumphs. Michael Uniacke’s personal essay “Fluid Identities: A Journey of Terminology” has much in common with Jessica White’s essay as he too engages playfully with his ideas. He uses language and figurative play to challenge the reader’s understandings of deaf identity, and to demonstrate the fluid and multiple nature of identity. For example, his opening anecdote about the Hearing Impaired Businessman plays to an embodiment of the idea that many people have, through categories and labels, of a deaf person, as Other, a caricature figure with no interiority or humour or nuanced life. Uniacke engages with this figure in a kind of dialogue, making him surreal, highlighting his typecast nature. By the end of his essay, Michael has shown us how identity can be context-specific and composed of many parts. In “Interpreters in Our Midst”, Breda Carty takes us on a jaunty, personal and engaging commentary that provokes the reader into taking a fresh look at the role of interpreters in mediating/translating relationships between deaf and hearing people. She asks, ‘When interpreters are in our midst, whose interests are they representing? And why are those interests not always clear to the observer?’ Originally written as a short piece for the Australian Sign Language Interpreters' Association (ASLIA), the article is informed by Breda’s immersion in particular professional and personal communities and experiences. While the tone of her commentary is light-hearted, using film screen representations of interpreters to illustrate her points, Breda nevertheless succeeds in politicizing the subject of interpretation and interpreters. She makes us aware of the social assumptions and hierarchies that structure our understanding of interpreting, which, if left unexamined, might seem a neutral and apolitical practice. Rebecca Sánchez makes an exciting contribution to the field of poetry. In her paper “Hart Crane's Speaking Bodies: New Perspectives on Modernism and Deafness”, Rebecca writes about looking for ideas about deafness in unexpected places, namely the poetry of hearing modernist Hart Crane. Taking up the theme of embodiment, evident in several other papers in this edition, Rebecca offers an interesting connection between a poetics of embodiment—Crane was influenced by Walt Whitman, a trail-blazer in embodied language in American poetry—and the more literal embodiment of manual languages. Although Hart Crane was not writing about deafness per se, his work explores the potential of embodied languages to alter the ways in which we interact with one another. When asked to define deafness, most people’s first response is to think of levels of hearing loss, of deficiency, or disability. By contrast, Crane’s non-literal approach provides a more constructive understanding of what communicative difference can mean, and how it can affect our und,erstanding of language itself. Rebecca’s essay's strength arises from its demonstration of Crane's desire to imagine the possibility of a language that lives within the body as rich and enabling, as are manual languages. Miriam Nathan Lerner’s professional training as a librarian is evident in her filmography “The Narrative Function of Deafness and Deaf Characters in Film”. During 2010, she is collaborating with a technical support faculty member at the Rochester National Technical Institute of the Deaf to design a website with quick-time windows so that the reader can click on and watch film clips of the works she references in her filmography. A lively, chatty introduction to some forty-three films with deaf characters and deafness, in which she provides her admittedly quirky approach to categorisation, Miriam Lerner’s filmography will one day be recognised in the same breath as Jonathon Miller’s “Rustle of a Star: An Annotated Bibliography of Deaf Characters in Fiction.” (Miller was also a librarian: they obviously possess the requisite skills of categorisation!) Pamela Kincheloe’s article “Do Androids Dream of Electric Speech? The Construction of Cochlear Implant Identity on American Television and the ‘New Deaf Cyborg’” offers an important analysis of popular (mis)conceptions of deafness and ‘assistive technologies’ as is evident from American television representations of deaf people with Cochlear Implants. She notes the prevalence of cochlear implants in television drama, identifies a couple of very limited narrative frames that dominate such representations, and discusses their implications. In her discussion of the ‘abject’ horror associated in television series with the cochlear implant recipient (often already a corpse) Kincheloe asserts that the Cochlear Implant technology is increasingly used in such narratives to convey intensified anxieties, not only about the deaf Other, but also about technology and the emergent ‘cyborgs’, humans modified by technology. Sharon Pajka-West’s well-researched article “Deaf Characters in Adolescent Fiction”, excerpted from her doctorate thesis, originated in a request from a young deaf reader for a book with which she could connect. Pajka-West takes us on her pursuit to fulfil this request, giving us many fascinating insights along the way. Her blog is essential reading not only for anyone interested in the field of adolescent literature, but also for those who understand the significance of providing young deaf readers access to literature in which the multiple possibilities for deaf lives, deaf identities, and deafness are canvassed. In her article “Marginalising the Mainstream: A Signed Performance of The Miracle Worker”, Caroline Heim places deaf issues centre-stage. Her thesis is that a way needs to be found to increase access to theatrical events for the deaf. She tackles this by viewing a Crossbow Production performance of The Miracle Worker (the story of the teaching relationship between Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan from different perspectives: accessibility, funding, plot construction and actors’ interpretation, the detail of production design (sound, colour and tactile) and the use of theatrical device, and post performance discussion. Arguably, Heim’s article might have benefited from more focus on the concept of inclusion, rather than exclusion. The claim that not enough money is given to providing ‘access’ for the deaf to mainstream productions may be difficult to uphold as a stand-alone argument when the budget of the majority of Australian theatre companies would highlight the fiscal difficulty they have just getting productions on the stage. All the same, Heim’s article provokes us, the reader, into investigating the many layered meanings of ‘access’ and also reminds us, yet again, of theatre’s potential magic in engaging audiences across all spheres of life. In her essay “Looking across the Hearing Line”, Nicole Matthews has written a stimulating paper on youth, Deaf people, and new media. Her paper is especially interesting as an exploration of the intersection between disability and Web 2.0 technologies. In particular, Matthews picks up a thread of Web 2.0 technologies relating to visual communication and expression to provide some insights into the emerging, complex nature of Deaf users’ engagement with digital media in contrast with the continuing problems of inaccessibility and exclusion in the mainstream world. Conclusion: Learning Our Knowingness from What We Don’t Know This special “deaf” issue of M/C Journal is not a “project”, in the Modern sense of that word, i.e. a unified collective effort to define identity, in this case deaf identity, or to consolidate and express a unique world view. Nor does it seek to enlighten the public about what it is to be deaf. Such a totalising project would inevitably suppress heterogeneity and the specificities of people’s lives. Rather, this collection offers many different particular and localised accounts - some personal and poetic, some analytical, some working through critique - which explore the conditions of possibility for human subjects, and in particular, people who are deaf. The contributions highlight in very different ways the complex and shifting fields within which people’s lives and experiences are formed. These works give us insight into the varied and changing social and environmental conditions that not only shape our lives but are in turn shaped by who we are and by our practices and choices. The constraints and possibilities of people’s lives change significantly and differ widely. They are linked inextricably with where people are, in terms of geography or location, and with the circumstances they find themselves in or create for themselves: circumstances of gender, family, social networks, economics, education, work, lifestyle, health or illness, physical abilities, differences and limitations. These works stress the highly contingent nature of human social development and the fluidity of deaf experience rather than identity. Identity shifts and takes on meaning in relation to others and situations; we come to know who we are through a process of differentiating ourselves from others and from identities that we do not feel comfortable with. In almost all of these accounts here experiences of deafness are not the same those conjured up by labels or stereotypes. This act of disassociation from the usual notions of deafness, highlights that our received language and labels do not give us knowledge. Disavowal reminds us that we do not know, except through some disruptive encounter with the Other, whether that is the otherness of our own deafness or the deafness of others. These writings that demonstrate the particularity and detail of deaf people’s experiences, enable us to know the limits and inaccuracies of the labels and identities so commonly assigned to deafness and the deaf. Thus, we come back to the beginning and find our equivocal, tentative answers to the question, ‘how do we learn what we know about being deaf and deafness?’ We learn what we know in various ways, yet hearing or deaf, we are exposed to particular ideas of deafness, limiting labels and assumptions that reinforce ‘ableist’ values. These writings have demonstrated the proliferation of limited stereotypes; they recur in narratives, news stories, television and films, and have power regardless of their disconnection from the real, and from the lived experience of deafness. It is a significant starting point to recognise the limitations of what we think we already know, through our media and social institutions, of deafness. These essays and writings represent a different epistemology; they explore not what deafness is or how it can be defined, but different ways of knowing deafness. References Couser, G. Thomas. “Signs of Life: Deafness and Personal Narrative” Ch. 6 in Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and Life Writing. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997. Bauman, H-Dirksen L. “Voicing Deaf Identity: Through the ‘I’s’ and Ears of an Other.” In S. Smith, and J. Watson, eds., Getting a Life: Everyday Uses of Autobiography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. 47-62. Kisor, Henry. What’s That Pig Outdoors? A Memoir of Deafness. New York: Hill and Wang, 1990.
(In memory of Chris Newell)With its title 'able', this issue called for articles and essays which explore ability from a disability perspective, rather than disability from an able-ist perspective. One take on the title 'able', is that it invites a fresh perspective on disability, with a focus on abilities and productivities (defined differently, in non-able-ist terms), rather than lack and aberrance. This affirmation of abilities is characteristic of many of the articles and essays in this issue, particularly in the narrative accounts of lived experience. Another take on 'able' evident in these articles is the critique of able-ist assumptions and discourses. Some writers, such as Campbell, Goggin and Wolbring, overtly address the value of insights offered through disability to deconstruct the ‘able-ist’ perspectives which dominate and limit our social worlds, even within disability studies. Campbell provides an overview of scholarship on disablism and able-ism: ‘Disablism’ works as "a set of assumptions (conscious or unconscious) and practices that promote the differential or unequal treatment of people because of actual or presumed disabilities". While Campbell acknowledges the importance of disability studies with its various critiques of the practices and production of disablism, "specifically … examining those attitudes and barriers that contribute to the subordination of people with disabilities in liberal society", she also identifies an ‘able-ist project’ within disability studies, which can serve to reinscribe the able-ist perspective and assumptions. Campbell argues: "the challenge then is to reverse, to invert this traditional approach, to shift our gaze and concentrate on what the study of disability tells us about the production, operation and maintenance of ableism."Goggin also calls for this inverted approach, with scrutiny of the under-examined category ‘able’: If we think of the impact and significance of “whiteness”, as a way to open up space for how to critically think about and change concepts of race; or of “masculinity” as a project for thinking about gender and sexuality — we can see that this interrogation of the unmarked category of “able” and “ability” is much needed. Goggin notes that while disability has been subject to critique and examination (like the all too conspicuous and scrutinised disabled bodies), there has been surprisingly little critique of ability: "nor have we witnessed a thoroughgoing recognition of unmarked, yet powerful operations of ability in our lives and thought". Wolbring also contends that “there is a pressing need for society to deal with ableism in all of its forms and its consequences”. Through his discussion of categories of ‘able’ and ‘ableism’, he identifies a dominant discourse around ‘species-typical’ versus ‘sub-species-typical, defined from the dominant ‘able-ist’ perspective. This discourse has a long history and is linked to the discourse around health, disease and medicine. This is … a model that classifies disabled people as having an intrinsic defect, an impairment that leads to ‘subnormal’ functioning. He insists on the importance of work within Disability Studies which questions that medical model and explores the issue of ‘who defines whom’ as sub-species typical. Many of the articles published here recognise the interdependence of such categories of ‘abled’ and ‘disabled’, drawing attention to the work they perform – usually naturalised and invisible – in producing ‘common sense’ understandings of human value and performance. The able-ist perspective produces disability in terms of lack and deviance from the human norm (which Wolbring calls ‘species typical’). This able-ist production of disability – with its sense of lack and revulsion for the aberrant body/mind – is a powerful undercurrent informing our understanding of human agency. It underpins legitimising discourses which define humanity, particularly modernist discourses of medicine and technology which address the ‘improvement’ of human lives and promise to eradicate disability. It is also crucial to the meaning of so many media narratives, since such narratives, whether in news, documentary or film/tv drama, are predominantly about dilemmas of human agency, of people’s ability or failure to act, to overcome setbacks and limitations. The notion of agency – which drives or impedes the narrative and its resolution – is just as prevalent in media narratives which include people with disability, even those narratives which celebrate their outstanding achievements (in spite of disability). The disability becomes the impediment that must be overcome or be transcended. This more general pattern is represented in emblematic form in many Hollywood action narratives: sometimes the ‘villain’ who impedes the hero’s path is ‘disabled’, or the hero must overcome some disability within themselves (often figured as a temporary disability – such as Superman’s disablement with exposure to kryptonite). While such media stories offer extremes of the ability/disability paradigm, the categories inform our wider debates and understandings of human performance and value. Human agency and the improvement or enablement of this agency – configured in conventional ‘able-ist’ terms – is key to narratives in medical science, technology and innovation, education, as well as in literature and culture, and media narratives which define and interact with our understandings of human activities and performance. Several articles in this issue examine the relationship between technology and innovation, and the able-ist project of modernity and its positioning of people with disability. Goggin addresses the relationship between technology, innovation and disability, calling for a reversal of mainstream logic which sees technology as something which ameliorates disability and improves the lives of people with disability. He points to the work of writers who demonstrate the vital role of people with disability as users of technology, to inform design in the innovation process, and improve the lives of all users of technology. In this context the 'disability perspective' helps break through the limitations of the able-ist perspective. In their article “iTunes Is Pretty (Useless) When You’re Blind”, Kate Ellis and Mike Kent critically examine the promise of digital technology “to open up the world to people with disabilities”, showing the limitations of iPods and iTunes for many people with disabilities (in particular the difficulties for users of screen readers and Braille tablets). They focus on the way that technologies and innovations designed to improve access for people with disabilities “actually enhance access for all users”. They draw on the example of the Lectopia lecture recording and distribution system which has enhanced the educational outcomes for all students where it has been adopted. This resonates with Goggin’s piece on technology and innovation, and the benefits of converging the perspective of the disabled user, with the ‘user’ as considered in technology design. In her article on photographer William Yang’s photographic portraits of his friend Allen dying of AIDS, Catalina Florescu addresses the history of medicine and its role in perpetuating ‘able-ist’ evaluations of disability. In the nineteenth century, how much was medicine responsible for defining ugly as ill, deformed, and getting old, versus beautiful as healthy, and then, for the sake of the community’s health, firmly promoting these ideas? Furthermore, with the rise of photographic art, medicine was able to manipulate and control these ideas even more efficiently. She quotes Deborah Lupton, “the new technology of photography that developed from the mid-nineteenth century became a valuable strategy in the documentation of patterns of disease and illness, and the construction of the sites of dirtiness and contagion”. This emphasis on the historical role of technology in managing and defining, and potentially redefining, understandings of ability and disability, is similar to the scrutiny of technologies that occurs throughout other articles and essays in this issue, including those essays by McDonald, Wain and Place, which address the lived experience of disability. Human agency is also a central theme in cultural and media studies: the modern impulse to bring about social change through critique, depends on a belief in human agency and in the ability to generate change and address social inequalities. The recognition of the role of culture, language and representation, in the contested domain of (unequal) social relations, is vital to critical practice within cultural and media studies. Given this belief in human agency, the assumption that human subjects are able to change the social order, it is vital for practitioners of cultural and media studies, to question the nature of those assumptions, aware that human agency is so often defined in ‘able-ist’ terms. As such the writings in this issue bring a valuable perspective to cultural and media studies more generally, through their critique of the able-ist assumptions that underpin conventional understandings of human agency. Several articles in this issue examine media representations, some drawing attention to those that produce different perspectives on ability and disability. Much has been written about the power of filmic, theatrical and literary representation of disability to engage with, reflect, influence and challenge dominant (able-ist) cultural and social attitudes and narratives (Garland-Thomson, Darke, Shakespeare). Bruno Starrs’ piece on Dance Me to My Song (1997) reveals that while that film is listed in Rolf de Heer’s oeuvre, its primary author is Heather Rose Slattery, a woman with cerebral palsy who wrote, co-directed and played Julie, the lead character. Starrs asserts that in the film Julie is not held up as an object of pity, rather is a fully embodied character, thus defying the “normality drama” (Darke) of disability which aims to "reinforce the able-bodied audience’s self image of normality and the notion of the disabled as the inferior Other". In his article “Disability, Heroism and Australian National Identity”, Martin Mantle analyses Chris Lilley’s 2005 television mocumentary We Can be Heroes: Finding the Australian of the Year. Mantle claims that while disabled characters have been included in Australian national identity narratives, it is questionable whether they have been identified as contributing significantly to "what it means to be Australian". Lilley’s satiric multiple portrayals of disabled and non-disabled characters challenge the assumptions that are made about what kinds of bodies qualify for inclusion in the "development and maintenance of a national character". The ‘ableist’ view of disability as impairment, rendering people passive burdens on society awaiting a ‘cure’, is strongly challenged in the field of disability performance art. Bree Hadley mobilises Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s comments about the ‘extraordinary’ body of the ‘freak’ and the “stare-and-tell ritual” (337) deployed by disabled performers to examine the ways in which they "negotiate the complexities of the terrain". Hadley considers the theatrical performance of Mat Fraser as Sealo the Sealboy (based on the 1940’s freakshow entertainer Stanley Berent ), arguing that Fraser’s stage strategies deliberately confront an audience, especially a ‘politically correct’ one, with its own ambiguities about and fascination with disabled bodies. A number of the articles in this issue draw directly on the experience and the socially shaped understandings of disability in the ‘everyday lives’ that Campbell and others speak of. Nicole Matthews writes about her charity-funded project, In the Picture which aimed to “generate exemplary inclusive” storylines and illustrations of disabled children in books for young readers by "drawing on the experience of disabled people and families of disabled children". Matthews’ article focuses on the ways in which the label ‘disabled’ is mobilised in an analysis of the variety of responses she received to her project from both disabled and non-disabled stakeholders. She observes with some irony that the pity and charity view of disability is still socially paramount, and one that is often flexed to attract much needed funding for projects such as hers. Donna Mc Donald’s piece “Shattering the Hearing Wall” reveals that one of her aims in writing a series of memoirs about being a ‘deaf woman’ is to produce something that rises above the “stock symbolic scripts”, challenging their tendency to ascribe a singularity of identity to disabled people. Fiona Place candidly records her experiences of being the mother of a child with Down syndrome facing and transcending the “disability as suffering paradigm” proffered by the medical establishment, and generally endorsed by a non-disabled society. She notes that disability is "to be avoided if at all possible and women are expected to take advantage of the advances in reproductive medicine - to choose a genetically correct pregnancy". She questions the promises of genetic screening tests to improve lives: "how safe is it to assume lives are being improved? Could it be… that some lives are now harder rather than easier?" The mother of a child with Down syndrome is seen to have "brought the suffering on herself – of having had choices – tests such as amniocentesis and CVS – but of having failed to take control, failed to prevent the suffering of her child". There is little comprehension that a mother might decide not to submit to the pre-natal genetic test, with its associated risks and consequences – the elimination of the child who is deemed to be a less than ideal choice. Filmmaker Veronica Wain also writes of her experiences as the mother of a child with a “genetic abnormality” – 18q23 deletion. Wain, like Place, confronts the social stigma attached to disability, but finds empowerment in a supportive community, discovering in the process of making the film, what Margrit Shildrick identifies as the vulnerability shared by all human beings. Drawing on the work of Lacan, Schildrick points to the sustaining ‘fantasy’ of the fully realised subject in control of self – a fantasy that is one held dearly by those who identify as able-bodied: the ideal self is phantasmatic, fissured by misidentification, and deeply threatened in its discursively constructed security by the materiality of the anomalous body, in whom signs of disorder and dependency evoke intimations of what has been disavowed. (342) It is the vulnerability of the able- body that is often masked/disavowed by the disabled/abled dichotomy, something which we are reminded of in Catalina Florescu’s account of photographer William Yang’s portraits of Allen who is dying of AIDS. Yang’s series of images starkly intone the body’s "mortal, gradually disabling fabric". Fiona Kumari Campbell’s exhorts us to refuse “ableist normalising dialogue”, to construct a different kind of landscape, a “disability imaginary” based on the “nuances and complexities” of being in and of the world; one which eschews the fixity of absolutes. To address this is to go beyond able/disable dichotomies, to interrogate the ableist- centred narratives of the medico, social, and personal tragedy models of disability presently available, and to refuse disability as a “negative ontology”. Likewise Mairian Corker and Tom Shakespeare advocate that it is time to move beyond limited ways of thinking about and understanding disability. They assert that both the "medical model and the social model seek to explain disability universally, and end up creating totalising, meta-historical narratives that exclude important dimensions of disabled people’s lives and (of ) their knowledge" (15). There can be no unitary or coherent model that fully represents the complexity of either disabled or non-disabled people’s lives; the articles in this issue of M/C Journal go some way towards capturing that complexity. References Corker, Mairian, and Tom Shakespeare, eds. Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory. London: Continuum, 2002. Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “Staring Back: Self-Representation of Disabled Performance Artists.” American Quarterly 52.2 (2000): 334-338. Schildrick, Margaret. “Unreformed Bodies: Normative Anxiety and the Denial of Pleasure.” Women’s Studies 34 (2004): 327-344.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.