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Origin Myths: Narratives of Authority, Resistance, Disability, and Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

David M. Engel
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Abstract

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Origin stories are a distinctive form of narrative. In their account of how something “began to be,” such stories connect past and present, clarify the meanings of important events, reaffirm core norms and values, and assert particular understandings of social order and individual identity. The parents of children with disabilities tell strikingly similar origin stories about the day their child was first diagnosed. Such stories not only explore the meanings of a transformative event but also draw implicit connections between past encounters with medical specialists and present encounters with educational specialists as mandated by an important federal statute. This article, based on an ethnographic study of parents, children, and educators, traces the implicit references in the parents' origin myths to a set of key oppositions that reflect their experiences within the statutory framework of special education: cooperative versus unilateral decisionmaking, lay versus professional knowledge, and authority versus legal empowerment. The article also compares the ways in which law and myth address the conflicting perspectives of disability specialists and of the parents and children themselves.

Type
Difference, Law, and Origin Myths
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , 1993 , pp. 785 - 826
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

For their helpful comments at various stages in the writing of this article, I would like to thank James Atleson, Don Brenneis, Paul Hyams, Fred Konefsky, Frank Reynolds, Jack Schlegel, Richard Sherwin, Avi Soifer, James Boyd White, and Lucie White. The research for this study was made possible by grants from the Law and Social Sciences Program of the National Science Foundation (Grant SES 87-0330), the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy.

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