---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Shilpaa Anand <[email protected]> Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2017 10:46:05 +0530 Subject: {Disability Studies India} FW: Non-Politics of Disability To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Hello All, Some of you may have already seen this NY Times piece but I'm sharing it anyway because it resonates so much with the Indian context as well. Happy reading! ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Lee Clark <[email protected]> Date: 19 January 2017 at 09:00 Subject: [DS-HUM] FW: Non-Politics of Disability To: [email protected] The Opinion Pages The Non-Politics of Disability Jay Ruckelshaus https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/opinion/denouncing- trump-wont-help-disability-rights.html The morning after Donald J. Trump’s election victory I posted a status update on Facebook that drew praise from both my liberal and conservative social media friends, and revealed something I’d thought impossible — a limit to his stalwart supporters’ loyalty. The post wasn’t exactly neutral; I lamented what Mr. Trump’s election means to me, a wheelchair user, and recalled the boorish example he set in mocking Serge Kovaleski, the Times reporter, who has a congenital joint disorder. My partisan posture was clear, but still, the post elicited warm messages of encouragement from even strident Trump supporters. One response was revealing: A friend claimed that the president-elect would do wonders for the country, even as she wholeheartedly denounced him on this issue. (For the record, Kovaleski does not consider himself to be disabled.) That a statement on disability garnered sympathy from across the political spectrum was unsurprising, at least to me. I’ve grown used to my wheelchair trumping (forgive me) other political and moral concerns. Rarely, if ever, do people contest my claims that we must do more for those with disabilities: Greater access? Better employment training? More flexible school curriculums? “Of course!” they invariably respond. “Who could argue with that?” Disability rights enjoy a seemingly ironclad moral consensus, an ostensible unanimity that is striking given America’s entrenched polarization and the antagonism surrounding other identity movements. Many are wary of L.G.B.T. rights or the Black Lives Matter movement, but it seems beyond the pale — almost cruel — to oppose disability rights. Nobody wants to be anti-disability. Initially, this harmony would seem helpful. Free from partisan discord, advancements for the approximately 57 million Americans with disabilities should be easier to achieve, borne aloft by the wings of certain progress. Why, then, do rampant unemployment and educational disparities endure, and why does success remain the exception? I think part of the reason is the insulation of our pro-disabled political consensus. Its logic is rooted not in any deep belief in the equal worth of citizens with disabilities, but rather in a general aversion to disability. This is related to the charity impulse that has always surrounded disability — and has constrained liberation efforts by assuming that inequities are unfortunate but natural realities to be mitigated through compassion, rather than politically structured injustices. There is also a profound lack of disabled people in the public sphere, meaning any substantive discussion that does occur is extremely rare. I suspect many people I talk to about disability maintain an implicit hope that, if they nod as vigorously as possible, the issue will simply go away. In this way, support for disability rights is similar to the act of expressing perfunctory thanks to military veterans. It temporarily absolves us of the responsibility to address the heart of the matter. Moreover, the apparent moral consensus may be mostly superficial. In trying to enact accessibility, disability advocates encounter increasing resistance as the effort and costs involved in proposals come closer to being realized. (Consider the neighborhood store that decides it’s just too costly to install a ramp, or the community lecture that excludes deaf attendees by refusing to hire a sign-language interpreter.) Instead of facilitating change, false unity actually restrains change. It stifles the more substantive conversations true progress requires. And our inability to speak honestly — and contentiously — about disability shows how the politics of disability is in this sense non-political. We are the worse for it. In addition to greater participation in the public sphere, true progress for citizens with disabilities will require a willingness to confront the issues head-on, even when — especially when — citizens disagree on competing solutions. We must politicize disability — not in the cable-news, grandstanding kind of way, but in the term’s more formal sense. The work of the Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe can help illuminate what’s at stake. Mouffe begins with the premise that human relations are inherently antagonistic: Political change always requires controversial transfers in power or prestige, and it is an illusion to imagine politics without confrontation. Per this “agonistic” conception of democracy, a healthy political order is one that prefers vigorous, good-faith argumentation to complacent consensus. Until we publicly recognize real disagreements surrounding disability and accessibility, Mouffe would insist, we are doomed to a vacuous, empty debate that is neither political nor productive. Recall the Kovaleski incident. I’m not suggesting that the abhorrence of Mr. Trump’s actions is open to legitimate questioning. But in their forcefully reassuring comments and messages, my friends prevented any serious discussion of disability at the level where reasonable disagreement does exist. Where will the money come from to fund disability employment schemes? How do we even define “disability”? Despite — and, I would argue, partly because of — the broad condemnation of Mr. Trump for his insensitivity, there was no substantive public discussion of such issues. You may be thinking, haven’t we had enough politics lately? Maybe it’s a blessing that disability isn’t as political as it might be; it avoids the drama and messiness that now seem to define our common life. Avoiding politics might be possible if disability were an exclusively private affair. But it is fundamentally a public concern, affecting everyone directly or indirectly and revealing our obligations to one another as members of a democratic society. Issues of accessibility can be fully addressed only through public institutions and collective effort. For the disability community, there is no answer but politics. But politics need not be repulsive. That’s the beauty of Mouffe’s agonism: By legitimating clashing arguments and welcoming them into the political fold, unproductive antagonism becomes constructive, and compromises emerge. And success here could yield broader insights. I believe there is great potential for a new disability politics to provide a positive blueprint for dealing with our partisan divide and other identity issues that goes beyond the unhelpful political correctness frame. Thinking seriously about precisely why disability maintains a moral consensus might allow us to harness any advantages (e.g. a common moral vocabulary) while discarding what’s unhelpful. What if we could construct a model of politicization that doesn’t entail bitter partisanship, and rescue authentic disagreement from stultifying consensus? The resulting practices and mentalities could be revolutionary for disability politics, and for democracy itself. I’m still thinking through how this might work, and I recognize that any such efforts will require real trade-offs and difficult conversations. Politics — when put into action — always does. Jay Ruckelshaus is a Rhodes Scholar and graduate student in political theory at the University of Oxford, and the founder and president of Ramp Less Traveled, a nonprofit organization that helps students with spinal cord injuries pursue higher education. Disability is a weekly series of essays, art and opinion by and about people living with disabilities. The entire series can be found here. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter. Please delete the message that you are replying to. Doing this will allow people who subscribe to the digest version of the list to receive messages in a condensed form. When posting articles please only post a link with a brief summary of the article. This is done to respect copyright laws. Feedback on the list can be directed to Virginia Bemis ([email protected]) and Julie Nack Ngue ([email protected]) -- Shilpaa Anand Assistant Professor, Department of English Convener, Committee for Cell for Persons with Disabilities Maulana Azad National Urdu University Hyderabad 500 032. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Disability Studies India" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/disability-studies-india. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- Avinash Shahi Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list..
