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Disability History, Power, and Rethinking the Idea of “the Other”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Catherine J. Kudlick
Catherine J. Kudlick*
Affiliation:
University of California, Davis
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Extract

I'd like to begin with an anecdote. when i was an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, a leader from an African country came to speak on the impact of a recent revolution in his homeland. The speech was inspired and exciting and provoked many questions. It being Santa Cruz in the late 1970s, a woman stood up in the back of the room and asked, “After the revolution, what will your country do to help our lesbian sisters?” The speaker looked perplexed and turned to a translator, who explained that lesbians were women who made love to one another like men and women did. The speaker expressed shock until a flash of recognition came over him as he explained, “Well, we will cure that with medicine!”

Type
Conference on Disability Studies and the University
Information
PMLA , Volume 120 , Issue 2 , March 2005 , pp. 557 - 561
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2005

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References

Works Cited

Baynton, Douglas. “Disability as Justification for Inequality in American History.” The New Disability History: American Perspectives. Ed. Paul Longmore and Lauri Umansky. New York: New York UP, 2001. 33-57.Google Scholar
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. Preface. Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. Ed. Garland-Thomson. New York: New York UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Kudlick, Catherine J. “Disability History: Why We Need Another ‘Other.‘” American Historical Review 108 (2003): 763-93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, David, and Snyder, Sharon. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2000.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Kim. The Radical Lives of Helen Keller. New York: New York UP, 2003.Google Scholar