JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Volume 21, Number 4, Spring 2001 Page: 794
733-962 p. : ill. (some col.), ports. ; 22 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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794
We won't know how to represent ourselves then either, and this is the
fifth representational dilemma handed to us by disability. Confronted
with the incomplete and now obviously unstable face of disability, we're
not sure what to draw in there. We're even less sure about how what we
draw will reflect back on our own face: Should we be nice? Patently
patronizing? Innocently curious? Confess our own culpability? Look
away? Hold the door open for that wheelchair? Greet the blind person or
just slip silently by? Feel bad that disabled persons are cheaply used and
even blatantly abused in so much of our literature? Vow never to watch
another film that features a disabled character? Police parking lots,
reporting those who abuse the handicapped parking spaces? Write a story
with a "real" disabled character now that we've met some in memoir and
documentaries? Volunteer at an assisted living center or sign up to read
for blind recordings? Promise never to think about race, class, sexuality
or gender again without also thinking about disability? Or should we
resist? Proclaim our own innocence, our too-easy victimization as "evil
able-bodied oppressor"? Not let lies be countered with more lies (espe-
cially when we feel they are about us)? Get rowdy back? Question
privilege in general (as the thing that divides disabled from able-bodied
no matter which side you are on)? Suddenly that old school playground
chant rings all too real in our ears: "I'm rubber, and you're glue. Whatever
you say bounces off of me and sticks to you." What we say and do and
believe about disability suddenly begins to be what we say and do and
believe about ourselves. These representations are getting sticky, too.
In the trick, we can try, as we often do in our teaching and scholarly
lives (as both students and teachers), to turn to theory. But in a classroom
where disability sits, either peripheral or in the center, we'll have a hard
time representing a theory, too. This is yet another representational
dilemma that comes when disability enters a literature and language
classroom-the sixth and final one that I'll be working to highlight in the
scenes that follow. Disability, as both a lived experience and a developing
field of study, struggles with its critical apparatus, searches for the right
theoretical frame to fit its face(s). Disability theory can complement-
both teaching to and learning from-our already existing work in gender,
sexuality, race, and class. It can intersect well and even enhance our study
of genre. It can both shadow and eclipse-can take from and give back
to-feminist theory, queer theory, Marxism, literary criticism, histori-
cism, and social constructionism, to name but a few. It spans literary
periods and languages. It serves and is served by, as Sharon Snyder has
argued, "infinities of forms."jac
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Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition (U.S.). JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Volume 21, Number 4, Spring 2001, periodical, 2001; (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28634/m1/70/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .