A Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age

Description

If eugenics - the science of eliminating kinds of undesirable human beings from the species record - came to overdetermine the late nineteenth century in relation to disability, the twentieth century may be best characterized as managing the repercussions for variable human populations. 'A Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age' provides an interdisciplinary overview of disability as an outpouring of professional, political, and representational efforts to fix, correct, eliminate, preserve, and even cultivate the value of crip bodies. This book pursues analyses of disability’s deployment as a wellspring for an alternative ethics of living in and alongside the body different while simultaneously considering the varied social and material contexts of devalued human differences from World War I to the present. In short, this volume demonstrates that, in Ozymandias-like ways, the Western Project of the Human with its perpetuation of body/mind hierarchies lies crumbling in the deserts of failed empires, genocidal furies, and the rejuvenating myths of new nation states in the 20th century. An essential resource for researchers, scholars and students of history, literature, culture, philosophy, rehabilitation, technology, and education, 'A Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age' explores such themes and topics as: atypical bodies; mobility impairment; chronic pain and illness; blindness; deafness; speech; learning difficulties; and mental health while wrestling with their status as unreliable predictors of what constitutes undesirable humanity. List of Figures Notes on Contributors Series Preface Introduction: What We Talk About When We Talk About Disability / David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder 1. Atypical Bodies: Queer-feminist and Buddhist Perspectives / Bee Scherer 2. Mobility Impairment: Impairing Mobilities Into the Twenty-first Century / Fiona Kumari Campbell 3. Chronic Pain and Illness: States of Privilege and Bodies of Abuse / Theodora Danylevich 4. Blindness: A Cultural History of Blindness / Rod Michalko and Tanya Titchkosky 5. Deafness: Screening Signs in Contemporary Cinema / Samuel Yates 6. Speech: Speech Disability’s Awkward Late Modernity: A Multimodal Historical Approach / Zahari Richter 7. Learning Difficulties: A Cultural History of Learning Difficulties in the Modern Age / Owen Barden 8. Mental Health Issues: Managing the Mind in the Modern Age / Anne McGuire Notes References Index