Found via Cryptomundo:
6th Global Conference - Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil
Monday 22nd September - Thursday 25th September 2008
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom
This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary conference seeks to investigate and explore the enduring influence and imagery of monsters and the monstrous on human culture throughout history. In particular, the project will have a dual focus with the intention of examining specific ‘monsters’ as well as assessing the role, function and consequences of persons, actions or events identified as ‘monstrous’. The history and contemporary cultural influences of monsters and monstrous metaphors will also be examined.
Perspectives are sought from those engaged in the fields of literature, media studies, cultural studies, history, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, health and theology. Ideas are welcomed from those involved in academic study, fictional explorations, and applied areas (e.g. youth work, criminology and medicine).
Papers, reports, work-in-progress and workshops are invited on issues related to any of the following themes:
- The “monster” through history
- Civilization, monsters and the monstrous
- Children, childhood, stories and monsters; monsters and parents
- Comedy: funny monsters and/or making fun of monsters (e.g. Monsters Inc, the Addams Family)
- Making monsters; monstrous births
- Mutants and mutations
- Technologies of the monstrous
- Horror, fear and scare
- Do monsters kill because they are monstrous or are they monstrous because they kill?
- How critical to the definition of “monster” is death or the threat of death?
- Human ‘monsters’ and ‘monstrous’ acts? e.g, perverts, paedophiles and serial killers
- The monstrous and gender
- Revolution and monsters; the monstrous and politics; enemies (political/social/military) and monsters
- Iconography of the monstrous
- The popularity of the modern monsters; the Mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein, Vampires
- The monster in literature
- The monstrous in popular culture: film, television, theatre, radio, print, internet. The monstrous and journalism
- Religious depictions of the monstrous; the monstrous and the supernatural
- Metaphors and the monstrous
- The monstrous and war, war reportage/propaganda
- Monsters, the monstrous and the internet; monstrous virtualities
- Monsters, gaming and on-line communities
Papers will be accepted which deal solely with specific monsters. We also welcome proposals for pre-formed panels which specifically explore the themes of hybridity or themes of monstrous parents and families. In addition, papers which examine the theme of hope in relations to monsters (for joint sessions with the Hope project running at the same time) are wlecome.
Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 9th May 2008. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 8th August 2008.
300 word abstracts should be submitted to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order: author(s), affiliation, email address, title of abstract, body of abstract.
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.
Sorcha Ni Fhlainn
Project Co-Leader
School of English, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
mailto: iheartvampires@gmail.com
Rob Fisher
Network Founder & Leader Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Freeland, Oxfordshire
United Kingdom
mailto: m6@inter-disciplinary.net
Stephen Morris
Project Co-Leader
Independent Scholar
New York, USA
mailto: smmorris58@yahoo.com
The conference is part of the ‘At the Interface’ series of programmes organised by ID.Net. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers will be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume.
[end quote]
I think this whole conference sounds awesome, and with the potential to bring all kinds of things together. I have bolded the topics in the list that i think sound particularly exciting...
It would be utterly awesome if some Disability Studies people submitted papers for this. I know i'm not up to it at the moment (and not (yet) being within the hallowed halls of academia, probably wouldn't be eligible), but there have to be some people who would be well into this out there...
A few topics that i can think of offhand that could potentially fit into this from a disability studies perspective: changelings, freak shows in fiction and reality, representations of disabled people as monsters or villains in horror films (see this post at Sweet Perdition, discovered through the latest Disability Blog Carnival... another one i need to add to my blogroll), the Neanderthal hybrid theory of neurodiversity, the use of disabled actors to play monsters or non-human characters (eg in Doctor Who)... shit, there's fucking loads of stuff...
(I think i'm going to have to spam about a couple of dozen blogs with this...)
oh, and a couple of classic blog posts which i think are relevant to this:
Little Light: the seam of skin and scales
Boots (of Makezine): Monster Trans
Ballastexistenz: I'm the monster you met on the Internet
edit: archives of the previous 5 conferences in this project can be found here...
Showing posts with label cryptozoology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cryptozoology. Show all posts
Friday, March 28, 2008
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Visibility and/or objectification: images of disabled people in books and media
I was at a friend's house recently and, with my friend and her partner, rather randomly looking through some books that were lying around her house. Two of the books had photos of disabled people in them, and it got me thinking about images of disabled/impaired people, visibility and objectification...
The first book was a university biology textbook on human genetics. Sections of the book discussed various congenital impairments and the genetics behind them, and had accompanying photos of people with those impairments. One was a picture of a baby with Cri du Chat syndrome, which is caused by a partial deletion of a chromosome (and gets its name because babies with it have a distinctive cry which, apparently, sounds like a cat). Alongside the picture of the baby was the remark that, although "mentally retarded", people with Cri du Chat syndrome could, with "proper support", develop intelligence "in the trainable range".
On the next page was a discussion of Down's syndrome, which is caused by trisomy, or having an "extra", third copy of chromosome 23. The accompanying photo was labelled as being of "a child with Down's syndrome"; in actual fact, it looked to be of a young woman in roughly her early 20s. She was dressed in some sort of sporting gear (probably a winter sport like skiing?), and proudly holding a trophy for winning a sporting competition.
The other book was a very silly book supposedly about cryptozoology (if it wasn't that one, it was a very similar one), which was basically a complete work of fiction presented as a "science" book, probably mostly aimed at kids, featuring pseudo-scientific depictions (with fake Latin names, etc) of mythological creatures like centaurs, dragons, winged horses, merpeople, werewolves, unicorns, etc. (Note that cryptozoology is actually real, and a perseveration of mine, and generally deals with somewhat more plausible putative creatures than the above (well, at least when crazy US creationists aren't trying to hijack it)- this speech by Darren Naish is a good introduction to it...)
On the intro page to the "Hominids" chapter (which, rather than dealing with relatively plausible hominid cryptids such as the Almas or the Orang Pendek, was about such creatures as goblins, giants and fairies), however, despite the premise being that it was about fictional non-human species, there were several photos of disabled humans: several people of restricted growth, Joseph Merrick the "Elephant Man", and one of the "Rat Children of Pakistan", who are actually children who were deliberately physically and mentally impaired in order to exploit them as beggars.
All these portrayals are problematic IMO. Cri du Chat syndrome is one of many syndromes which i've only ever seen pictures or descriptions of babies/small children with, despite the fact that people with it grow to become adults. This kind of thing is quite common with regard to autism as well; lots of stuff in the media about "autistic children", but a distinct absence of autistic adults, as if the assumption is that disabled children either don't live to adulthood, or somehow miraculously become non-disabled on reaching adulthood; it also contributes to the perception of disabled adults as some sort of "eternal children". This perception is shown incredibly clearly by the labelling of the photo of the woman with Down's syndrome as "a child with Down's syndrome" - congenital impairment is assumed to be a property (only) of children to such an extent that a person with a congenital impairment, regardless of their actual age, is automatically assumed to be a child. So prevalent is the reference only to children in medical/scientific articles about congenital impairments that i sometimes wonder if the thought of the existence of adults with such impairments has ever crossed the minds of the writers of such articles.
The phrase "trainable range" is one that makes me shudder. A search for "trainable" on Wikipedia redirects to the article titled "Mental retardation", despite the word not being used in that article. I believe that, at one time, people with mental disabilities were classified by the authorities into "trainables" and "untrainables", with the former regarded as being capable of training for employment (in positions at the bottom of the workplace heirarchy, doing menial work and often paid far less than a living wage, if anything at all), and the latter regarded as incapable of any meaningful learning or contribution to society, and thus "warehoused" in institutions. (This, in fact, parallels current UK government policy, as laid out in the Welfare Reform Act, which similarly seeks to classify disabled people as either "capable of work", and thus to be forced into any job, however unsuitable, with the threat of destitution, or "incapable of work", and thus by implication incapable of meaningful membership in society and deserving of social exclusion.) The "trainable"/"untrainable" categorisation starkly illustrates the values of a society which defines people by their capacity for economic exploitation, and which considers it appropriate for disabled people to be coercively "trained" to accept a prescribed social role regardless of their own desires and aspirations.
The fact that images of visibly disabled people are considered an appropriate introduction for a fictional classification of mythological "hominid species" clearly shows to what extent disabled people are considered "Other", objects of fascination yet not of empathy or identification, not fully human; exhibits, just as "exotic" animals are, in a zoo or a freak show (a subject i touched on earlier here) - indeed, it is implied that the "dwarves" whose photo captions say they were exhibited in circuses and at the courts of European royalty are the same as the fictional "dwarves" described a few pages later as a species of Homo with non-human physical and personality traits based on the portrayals of dwarf races in fantasy (Tolkien, etc). "Elephant Man" and "Rat Children" are, of course, names which seek to compare and associate disabled people with animals and portray them as some sort of hybrid or intermediate between humans and animals, definitely not fully human; so, arguably, is "Cri du Chat syndrome".
(Although i know some people of restricted growth use it as a self-definition, i find the term "dwarf" very difficult to use to describe real people, because i can't help it making me think of them as living in mines underneath a mountain, having huge beards and Viking-style helmets, making magical artefacts out of gold and having wars with elves, orcs, etc...)
The writers of the fictional cryptozoology book probably didn't think of the possibility of causing offence to, or furthering negative stereotypes of, disabled people when they used those photos or descriptions. The writers of the genetics textbook almost certainly thought they were portraying disabled people in an ideologically neutral way, as a matter of science, not of culture or politics. However, such images cannot help but objectify and reinforce stereotypical perceptions of disabled people.
Of course, with many if not all of these types of images, i can't help feeling ambiguous; there are some arguable positives to them, despite the negatives. It's good, IMO, that impairments are part of a biological education, and that people have at least a basic knowledge of different impairments and how they affect people (as long as that knowledge is placed appropriately within a social context) - the social model does not, or at least should not, deny or ignore impairment, and understanding of impairment is, IMO, necessary (if not sufficient) for understanding of disabling barriers.
Just being aware that different kinds of human beings exist is, IMO, a good thing, and i think that some sort of categorisation of types of human difference is something that the human mind finds necessary. The image of the young woman with Down's syndrome, if taken by itself without the inaccurate caption calling her a "child", is pretty unambiguously positive; it shows a disabled person looking strong, independent and confident, and proud of her achievement in something that she is a success at. (Admittedly it does reinforce the association of disabled people with sport as primary achievement, which is something i have problems with, but that's a critique i'll have to save for another blog post...)
Even the "freakshow" images of disabled people alongside mythical animals can, IMO, be reclaimed in certain ways; as people proud of and (in many cases) choosing to earn a living from visible difference; "we're here, we're biodiverse, get used to it". (Eli Clare has a great chapter on this topic in Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation, which i'll have to return to in future posts - of course, there is also Tod Browning's magnificent film Freaks, which is justly regarded as a classic by many in the disability movement.)
Kay Olson at The Gimp Parade recently posted about a story that made it into the UK mainstream media about a woman from China who refused a disability pension despite having "her feet attached backwards" (actually turned upside down - i suspect she has a form of arthrogryposis), which is typical of many stories about people with impairments which get featured in the media as "weird news" or "quirky" stories (I'm surprised it didn't make it to the Fortean Times breaking news column, which is my source for most of these types of stories) - another recent-ish one was that of the "families who walk on all fours" in Turkey and Iraq.
On the one hand, these are clearly voyeuristic, objectifying stories; on the other, there are differing views about objectification, ranging from the view that it is always and only negative to the view that it can, if freely chosen, be something desirable and positive (these being in reference to sexual/gender objectification, but IMO applicable to any other kind). I am torn between thinking "this is non-news if it were not for the factor of a "freakish" impaired body for "normal" people to gaze at", and being pleased at visible difference being portrayed at all, and the always-welcome illustration that there are more ways than the "standard" way to be human. Is the positivity or negativity of possible interpretations located in the creator(s) of the portrayal itself, or in the mind of the person observing it?
I'm not sure. (I thought i might have had a conclusion there for a second, but i obviously don't...) I do know that this is both an incredibly important (from a cultural/sociological point of view), yet much neglected, and a (probably inevitably) very much essentially contested area. I'd be really interested in other disabled peoples' (especially those whose impairments are much more visually obvious than my own) opinions...
The first book was a university biology textbook on human genetics. Sections of the book discussed various congenital impairments and the genetics behind them, and had accompanying photos of people with those impairments. One was a picture of a baby with Cri du Chat syndrome, which is caused by a partial deletion of a chromosome (and gets its name because babies with it have a distinctive cry which, apparently, sounds like a cat). Alongside the picture of the baby was the remark that, although "mentally retarded", people with Cri du Chat syndrome could, with "proper support", develop intelligence "in the trainable range".
On the next page was a discussion of Down's syndrome, which is caused by trisomy, or having an "extra", third copy of chromosome 23. The accompanying photo was labelled as being of "a child with Down's syndrome"; in actual fact, it looked to be of a young woman in roughly her early 20s. She was dressed in some sort of sporting gear (probably a winter sport like skiing?), and proudly holding a trophy for winning a sporting competition.
The other book was a very silly book supposedly about cryptozoology (if it wasn't that one, it was a very similar one), which was basically a complete work of fiction presented as a "science" book, probably mostly aimed at kids, featuring pseudo-scientific depictions (with fake Latin names, etc) of mythological creatures like centaurs, dragons, winged horses, merpeople, werewolves, unicorns, etc. (Note that cryptozoology is actually real, and a perseveration of mine, and generally deals with somewhat more plausible putative creatures than the above (well, at least when crazy US creationists aren't trying to hijack it)- this speech by Darren Naish is a good introduction to it...)
On the intro page to the "Hominids" chapter (which, rather than dealing with relatively plausible hominid cryptids such as the Almas or the Orang Pendek, was about such creatures as goblins, giants and fairies), however, despite the premise being that it was about fictional non-human species, there were several photos of disabled humans: several people of restricted growth, Joseph Merrick the "Elephant Man", and one of the "Rat Children of Pakistan", who are actually children who were deliberately physically and mentally impaired in order to exploit them as beggars.
All these portrayals are problematic IMO. Cri du Chat syndrome is one of many syndromes which i've only ever seen pictures or descriptions of babies/small children with, despite the fact that people with it grow to become adults. This kind of thing is quite common with regard to autism as well; lots of stuff in the media about "autistic children", but a distinct absence of autistic adults, as if the assumption is that disabled children either don't live to adulthood, or somehow miraculously become non-disabled on reaching adulthood; it also contributes to the perception of disabled adults as some sort of "eternal children". This perception is shown incredibly clearly by the labelling of the photo of the woman with Down's syndrome as "a child with Down's syndrome" - congenital impairment is assumed to be a property (only) of children to such an extent that a person with a congenital impairment, regardless of their actual age, is automatically assumed to be a child. So prevalent is the reference only to children in medical/scientific articles about congenital impairments that i sometimes wonder if the thought of the existence of adults with such impairments has ever crossed the minds of the writers of such articles.
The phrase "trainable range" is one that makes me shudder. A search for "trainable" on Wikipedia redirects to the article titled "Mental retardation", despite the word not being used in that article. I believe that, at one time, people with mental disabilities were classified by the authorities into "trainables" and "untrainables", with the former regarded as being capable of training for employment (in positions at the bottom of the workplace heirarchy, doing menial work and often paid far less than a living wage, if anything at all), and the latter regarded as incapable of any meaningful learning or contribution to society, and thus "warehoused" in institutions. (This, in fact, parallels current UK government policy, as laid out in the Welfare Reform Act, which similarly seeks to classify disabled people as either "capable of work", and thus to be forced into any job, however unsuitable, with the threat of destitution, or "incapable of work", and thus by implication incapable of meaningful membership in society and deserving of social exclusion.) The "trainable"/"untrainable" categorisation starkly illustrates the values of a society which defines people by their capacity for economic exploitation, and which considers it appropriate for disabled people to be coercively "trained" to accept a prescribed social role regardless of their own desires and aspirations.
The fact that images of visibly disabled people are considered an appropriate introduction for a fictional classification of mythological "hominid species" clearly shows to what extent disabled people are considered "Other", objects of fascination yet not of empathy or identification, not fully human; exhibits, just as "exotic" animals are, in a zoo or a freak show (a subject i touched on earlier here) - indeed, it is implied that the "dwarves" whose photo captions say they were exhibited in circuses and at the courts of European royalty are the same as the fictional "dwarves" described a few pages later as a species of Homo with non-human physical and personality traits based on the portrayals of dwarf races in fantasy (Tolkien, etc). "Elephant Man" and "Rat Children" are, of course, names which seek to compare and associate disabled people with animals and portray them as some sort of hybrid or intermediate between humans and animals, definitely not fully human; so, arguably, is "Cri du Chat syndrome".
(Although i know some people of restricted growth use it as a self-definition, i find the term "dwarf" very difficult to use to describe real people, because i can't help it making me think of them as living in mines underneath a mountain, having huge beards and Viking-style helmets, making magical artefacts out of gold and having wars with elves, orcs, etc...)
The writers of the fictional cryptozoology book probably didn't think of the possibility of causing offence to, or furthering negative stereotypes of, disabled people when they used those photos or descriptions. The writers of the genetics textbook almost certainly thought they were portraying disabled people in an ideologically neutral way, as a matter of science, not of culture or politics. However, such images cannot help but objectify and reinforce stereotypical perceptions of disabled people.
Of course, with many if not all of these types of images, i can't help feeling ambiguous; there are some arguable positives to them, despite the negatives. It's good, IMO, that impairments are part of a biological education, and that people have at least a basic knowledge of different impairments and how they affect people (as long as that knowledge is placed appropriately within a social context) - the social model does not, or at least should not, deny or ignore impairment, and understanding of impairment is, IMO, necessary (if not sufficient) for understanding of disabling barriers.
Just being aware that different kinds of human beings exist is, IMO, a good thing, and i think that some sort of categorisation of types of human difference is something that the human mind finds necessary. The image of the young woman with Down's syndrome, if taken by itself without the inaccurate caption calling her a "child", is pretty unambiguously positive; it shows a disabled person looking strong, independent and confident, and proud of her achievement in something that she is a success at. (Admittedly it does reinforce the association of disabled people with sport as primary achievement, which is something i have problems with, but that's a critique i'll have to save for another blog post...)
Even the "freakshow" images of disabled people alongside mythical animals can, IMO, be reclaimed in certain ways; as people proud of and (in many cases) choosing to earn a living from visible difference; "we're here, we're biodiverse, get used to it". (Eli Clare has a great chapter on this topic in Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation, which i'll have to return to in future posts - of course, there is also Tod Browning's magnificent film Freaks, which is justly regarded as a classic by many in the disability movement.)
Kay Olson at The Gimp Parade recently posted about a story that made it into the UK mainstream media about a woman from China who refused a disability pension despite having "her feet attached backwards" (actually turned upside down - i suspect she has a form of arthrogryposis), which is typical of many stories about people with impairments which get featured in the media as "weird news" or "quirky" stories (I'm surprised it didn't make it to the Fortean Times breaking news column, which is my source for most of these types of stories) - another recent-ish one was that of the "families who walk on all fours" in Turkey and Iraq.
On the one hand, these are clearly voyeuristic, objectifying stories; on the other, there are differing views about objectification, ranging from the view that it is always and only negative to the view that it can, if freely chosen, be something desirable and positive (these being in reference to sexual/gender objectification, but IMO applicable to any other kind). I am torn between thinking "this is non-news if it were not for the factor of a "freakish" impaired body for "normal" people to gaze at", and being pleased at visible difference being portrayed at all, and the always-welcome illustration that there are more ways than the "standard" way to be human. Is the positivity or negativity of possible interpretations located in the creator(s) of the portrayal itself, or in the mind of the person observing it?
I'm not sure. (I thought i might have had a conclusion there for a second, but i obviously don't...) I do know that this is both an incredibly important (from a cultural/sociological point of view), yet much neglected, and a (probably inevitably) very much essentially contested area. I'd be really interested in other disabled peoples' (especially those whose impairments are much more visually obvious than my own) opinions...
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Human zoo exhibits, crips and cryptids
Loren Coleman at Cryptomundo has written this article about indigenous African people, of the physically small ethnic groups often called "pygmies", being exhibited in a zoo. He then takes the article into speculation about what would happen if cryptid hominid species such as "Bigfoot" were discovered. I'm not sure quite what to think of the linkage there, but from a human biodiversity point of view this says a lot about the prevalent mentality to me...
quote: "Why do humans in power treat other humans who happen to physically appear to be different than them, so inhumanely?"
if that question isn't fundamental to disability, i don't know what is...
For quite a few years i didn't believe that there actually were such people as "pygmies" - i thought they were a racist fiction invented by imperialist explorers. It wasn't until i read a music review of a collaboration between some electronic music composer and a group from one "pygmy" tribe that i realised they were actually real ethnic groups, who have of course been "othered" and described in almost certainly distorted and exaggerated ways from their "discovery" right up to the present. I'm not sure how much to believe of the claims about them - my cynical bullshit-detector side strongly suspects they are nowhere near as utterly removed from the rest of humanity as they are portrayed to be, and are probably just as much caught up in urbanisation and proletarianisation as any other Majority World people... in fact, given how multicultural Britain is, i reckon there must be some people from these ethnic groups living in some shitty inner-city housing somewhere in Britain (some might even be posting on the internet)...
This made me think, if they did come to live here, would they, in fact, be regarded as disabled people? Their short stature would probably qualify them as Persons of Restricted Growth, but unlike most people in that category, their size isn't an "impairment", but the "norm" for their ethnicity... there are other ethnic groups in which particular impairments are particularly prevalent, such as the people with the "ostrich feet" syndrome, and in which people with those conditions are not particularly regarded as impaired or disabled (i think Mike Oliver writes a bit about this in The Politics of Disablement), but this seems a bit different... would such people, in our society where most things are routinely geared towards people of "normal" (ie tall by global standards) height, would these people be "disabled"? is there a real dividing line, in biological terms, between genetic impairments and "normal" natural genetic variation?
(If anyone from a "pygmy" ethnic group is posting on the internet, then i'd absolutely love to hear their perspective on this...)
Also someone at the Cryptomundo blog posted the perceptive comment: "Did anyone ask the pygmies how they felt about it? Maybe they would have preferred staying at the zoo rather than being shuffled of to “accommodations at a local school,” which I read as folding cots in the gym. Want to treat them with due respect? Give them the choice. Don’t dictate what’s best for them.", which made me consider the perspective of a people whose culture emphasises respect for non-human nature - they might consider being treated like animals less degrading than being treated like children... but, instinctively, to me both those options - both of which are routinely done to disabled people of many types of impairments - are inherently degrading...
Cryptid hominids (stuff like Bigfoot/Sasquatch, Orang Pendek, Almas, etc) are one of my sillier perseverations. Or maybe not so silly, actually, given that it does seem that quite a few autistic people are into that sort of stuff, and there is even a theory, popular among certain segments of the Aspie community, that autism itself comes from the intermixing of modern humans with Neanderthal or other non-modern-human hominid species. (This sometimes gets linked in with speculation about mythological archetypes such as elves, faeries, trolls, etc, and the "changeling" myths - another area i'm interested in, and that absolutely fascinates me from a speculative-fiction kind of viewpoint, but that seems just that bit of speculation too far for me to accept as "real life"... the idea that a Sasquatch might have been captured and put in a mental hospital tho... whoa. Shivers down my spine, even tho i know it's highly unlikely... but that is just what the US establishment would do to one...)
Speculative stuff aside, i do believe there is a real, relevant link between this kind of stuff and disability politics. Disabled people, gender variant people, indigenous peoples of colonised areas, and "mystery" animals have all been exhibited in circuses, theatres, etc as "freaks", have all been the subjects (or possibly objects) of all kinds of pseudoscientific and mytho-religous speculation, have all been described by science in deeply "othering" terms (and then their descriptions used to add "validity" to all kinds of extremely dodgy pseudoscientific politics), and all represent biodiversity in forms that establishments, past and present, have wished to exclude, denigrate, refuse to recognise, or suppress... no wonder, then, if crips identify with cryptids ;)
I didn't actually mean to delve quite so far into the realms of such oddness so early in this blog. Oh well, organic development, i guess...
quote: "Why do humans in power treat other humans who happen to physically appear to be different than them, so inhumanely?"
if that question isn't fundamental to disability, i don't know what is...
For quite a few years i didn't believe that there actually were such people as "pygmies" - i thought they were a racist fiction invented by imperialist explorers. It wasn't until i read a music review of a collaboration between some electronic music composer and a group from one "pygmy" tribe that i realised they were actually real ethnic groups, who have of course been "othered" and described in almost certainly distorted and exaggerated ways from their "discovery" right up to the present. I'm not sure how much to believe of the claims about them - my cynical bullshit-detector side strongly suspects they are nowhere near as utterly removed from the rest of humanity as they are portrayed to be, and are probably just as much caught up in urbanisation and proletarianisation as any other Majority World people... in fact, given how multicultural Britain is, i reckon there must be some people from these ethnic groups living in some shitty inner-city housing somewhere in Britain (some might even be posting on the internet)...
This made me think, if they did come to live here, would they, in fact, be regarded as disabled people? Their short stature would probably qualify them as Persons of Restricted Growth, but unlike most people in that category, their size isn't an "impairment", but the "norm" for their ethnicity... there are other ethnic groups in which particular impairments are particularly prevalent, such as the people with the "ostrich feet" syndrome, and in which people with those conditions are not particularly regarded as impaired or disabled (i think Mike Oliver writes a bit about this in The Politics of Disablement), but this seems a bit different... would such people, in our society where most things are routinely geared towards people of "normal" (ie tall by global standards) height, would these people be "disabled"? is there a real dividing line, in biological terms, between genetic impairments and "normal" natural genetic variation?
(If anyone from a "pygmy" ethnic group is posting on the internet, then i'd absolutely love to hear their perspective on this...)
Also someone at the Cryptomundo blog posted the perceptive comment: "Did anyone ask the pygmies how they felt about it? Maybe they would have preferred staying at the zoo rather than being shuffled of to “accommodations at a local school,” which I read as folding cots in the gym. Want to treat them with due respect? Give them the choice. Don’t dictate what’s best for them.", which made me consider the perspective of a people whose culture emphasises respect for non-human nature - they might consider being treated like animals less degrading than being treated like children... but, instinctively, to me both those options - both of which are routinely done to disabled people of many types of impairments - are inherently degrading...
Cryptid hominids (stuff like Bigfoot/Sasquatch, Orang Pendek, Almas, etc) are one of my sillier perseverations. Or maybe not so silly, actually, given that it does seem that quite a few autistic people are into that sort of stuff, and there is even a theory, popular among certain segments of the Aspie community, that autism itself comes from the intermixing of modern humans with Neanderthal or other non-modern-human hominid species. (This sometimes gets linked in with speculation about mythological archetypes such as elves, faeries, trolls, etc, and the "changeling" myths - another area i'm interested in, and that absolutely fascinates me from a speculative-fiction kind of viewpoint, but that seems just that bit of speculation too far for me to accept as "real life"... the idea that a Sasquatch might have been captured and put in a mental hospital tho... whoa. Shivers down my spine, even tho i know it's highly unlikely... but that is just what the US establishment would do to one...)
Speculative stuff aside, i do believe there is a real, relevant link between this kind of stuff and disability politics. Disabled people, gender variant people, indigenous peoples of colonised areas, and "mystery" animals have all been exhibited in circuses, theatres, etc as "freaks", have all been the subjects (or possibly objects) of all kinds of pseudoscientific and mytho-religous speculation, have all been described by science in deeply "othering" terms (and then their descriptions used to add "validity" to all kinds of extremely dodgy pseudoscientific politics), and all represent biodiversity in forms that establishments, past and present, have wished to exclude, denigrate, refuse to recognise, or suppress... no wonder, then, if crips identify with cryptids ;)
I didn't actually mean to delve quite so far into the realms of such oddness so early in this blog. Oh well, organic development, i guess...
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