Tanya Titchkosky

Abstract: AcknowledgmentsIntroductionText and the Life of DisabilityPART ONE: PROBLEMSTotally a Problem: Government Survey TextsMetamorphosis: Making Disability a Medical MatterReadingand Recognition: Un-doing Disability's Deadly StatusPART TWO: DIS-SOLUTIONSGoverning Embodiment: Technologies of Constituting Citizens with DisabilitiesOvercoming: Abled-Disabled and Other Acts of Normative ViolenceAfterword Notes ReferencesIndex

Abstract: Acknowledgments Preface 1 Introduction: Accessas an Act of Perception 2 'Who?': DisabilityIdentity and the Question of Belonging 3 'What?': RepresentingDisability 4 'Where?': To Pee or Not to Pee 5 'When? Not Yet': TheAbsent Presence of Disability in Contemporary University Life 6 Towards a Politics of Wonder inDisability Studies Notes References Index

Abstract: Disability, Self, and Society speaks with authenticity about disability as a process of identity formation within a culture that has done a great deal to de-emphasize the complexity of disability experience. Unlike many who hold the conventional sociological view of disability as a 'lack' or stigmatized identity, Tanya Titchkosky approaches disability as an agentive (not passive) embodiment of liminality and as a demonstration of socially valuable in-between-ness. She argues that disability can and should be a 'teacher' to, and about, non-disabled or 'temporarily abled' society. Titchkosky's poignant reflections on disability rely on the thought of Hannah Arendt as well as her personal experience as an individual with dyslexia living with a blind partner; she uniquely draws on her own and others' situations in order to demonstrate the sociopolitical character of disability. A thoughtful and cohesive integration of narrative and theory, Disability, Self, and Society presents a critical Canadian contribution to the growing subject of disability studies.

Abstract: Dans cet article, nous examinons la notion d'incapacite telle qu'elle est creee et vehiculee par le langage qui privilegie la « personne avant tout » Nous nous penchons en premier lieu sur la formulation tres repandue, qui consiste a designer les personnes handicapees comme des « personnes comme les autres ». En second lieu, nous etudions l'ideolo-gie actuelle, qui met l'accent sur le fait que les personnes handicapees sont simplement des « personnes avec des handicaps », dans l'une de ses manifestations les plus concretes, c'est-a-dire un document recent du gouvernement intituleAl'unisson: Une approche canadienne con-cernant les personnes handicapees. En partant du concept de Dorothy Smith, selon lequel le langage constitue l'organisation sociale, nous demontrons la facon dont l'incapacite est medicalisee et individualisee dans ce document, et, par la, la maniere dont l'incapacite prend la forme d'une limitation anormale et d'une insuffisance fonctionnelle que certaines personnes, quatre millions de Canadiens en l'occurrence, «eprouveraient ». Enfin, nous concluons que le langage qui privilegie la personne avant tout se comprend dans le cadre d'un processus continu ou l'incapacite n'est plus percue comme un phenomene social et, par consequent, complexe sur le plan politique. This paper examines the representation of disability that is generated by, and supports, “people-first language.” The paper first describes the ubiquitous formulation of disabled people as “just people.” Second, the current ideology that stresses that disabled people are simply “people with disabilities” is examined in one of its concrete manifestations: a recent government document entitled In Unison: A Canadian Approach to Disability Issues. By making use of Dorothy Smith's concept that language is social organization, the author shows how disability is organized in this document as a medicalized and individual matter and, as such, takes shape as abnormal limitation and lack of function that some people-four million Canadians-“just happen to have.” Finally, the paper concludes that people-first language is best understood as part of an ongoing process that removes the possibility of understanding disability as a social, and thereby complex, political phenomenon. How we are seen determines in part how we are treated; how we treat others is based on how we see them; such seeing comes from representation — Dyer, 1993: 1

Abstract: This paper does not intend to empirically establish whether Disability Studies is old or new; instead, it aims to uncover what the gloss "new" means in relation to mainstream sociol- ogy's rejection of such a claim and the repetitive articulation of it by Disability Studies. Conceptions of disability found in traditional sociological studies of disability-as-deviance are explored, turning first to the work of Goffman and then to a mainstream deviance text book. The paper then uncovers the values and assumptions that lie behind the social act of conceiving Disability Studies as a "new" field of inquiry. Thus, "new" is symbolic of an affirmation of inquiry into ablebodiedness as itself a culture in need of critical engagement. It is also a way to articulate the standpoint of disability as a means to provoke such inquiry. Further, "new" is a rhetorical device to highlight that many Disability Studies researchers are now challenging the mainstream approaches to the study of disability.

Abstract: ‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

Abstract: Benedict Anderson’s deservedly famous thesis about the origins and nature of modern nationalism turns around the central notion of an “imagined community.” This category provides him with a matrix out of which one can apprehend-theoretically and historically-the different variants of nationalist discourse formulated over the last two hundred years. We will refer, in the brief comments that follow, to three basic dimensions structuring the fabric of Anderson’s argument: 1) the presuppositions implicit in the notion of an “imagined” community; 2) the kind of substitutability or solidarity which is required to be a member of such a community; 3) the kind of relationship that is established between such a community-which is by definition finite or limited-and its outside. Before that, however, let us describe the main features of Anderson’s thesis.

Abstract: Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics