March 27, 2018 - 17:36
After these readings, I felt that I had a better understanding of what Disability Culture could mean, with several different new perspectives. For one, I felt that Kuppers' introduction explored one aspect of (what can be called) Disability Culture, which is to say multiple disabled people and bodies creating and engaging a space -- in this case, for dance and for exercise. As someone who's previously studied a lot of psychology, I think exploring the group dynamics of a) people within one specific disability spectrum coming together, and b) people of mixed disabilities coming together.
Culture in itself is an amalgam of multiple human creations, identities, and relations -- music, food, science, arts, literature, sports, family, and the list goes on. I felt that this group of readings/viewings was angled particularly from the perspective of the arts: in Judith Scott's case, the visual and sculptural; in the case of Axis Dance and Simi Linton, the performing arts. In my view, a community of disabled artists working and collaborating together on their art form, incorporating their human, bodily, and disabled experiences into that form, fulfills the most basic definition of a culture. My definition is a bit broad here, but nevertheless I feel that it can't be denied that such communities of people, coming together to enrich the arts and enrich themselves, belongs to some definition of culture.
Having said that, I nonetheless agree with Petra Kuppers when she states that Disability Culture cannot be only one thing or one definition. "To me, disability culture is... a process. Boundaries, norms, belongings: disability cultural environments can suspend a whole slew of rules, try to undo the history of exclusions that many of its members have experienced when they have heard or felt 'you shouldn't be like this'. At the same time, disability cultural environments have to safeguard against perpetuating... other exclusions (based on racial stereotypes, class, gender, economic access, internalized ableism, etc.)..... In disability culture settings... I often watch or engage myself in wayward, unusual behaviors, behaviors that might not be considered 'normate', but which offer me ways of thinking about what is excluded from the norm, at what price hegemony is maintained." (Kuppers, Disability Culture and Community Performance, 4) (emphasis is my own). Again intersections of identity come into play -- because, as we know, identities intersect within every human being and within every culture. Therefore, Disability Culture must make room for all forms of individual and group diversity.