September 21, 2014 - 23:07
My privilege as an able-bodied person was demonstrated for me through the "Re-Presenting Disability" reading and Riva's commentary on how to get into the right mindset for making portraits of our future friends at Camp Hill. I had not realized that I might, without realizing it, portray my subject with an air of pity rather than as a person. As Garland-Thomson says, "bringing representations of people with disabilities into the public realm via traditional portraiture is an act of sociopolitical integration...as an appropriate member of the public sphere who is worthy of contemplation and commemoration" (24). I wish there were more representations of people who are disabled in popular culture like Rush's. I feel empowered by these statements, and particularly by the assessment in class that we could be doing something good through these portraits on behalf of our subjects.
Riva made the prospect possible; I am so interested in the finished project of the portrait through collaboration with my subject. I look forward to observing and asking questions and trying to represent my subject's personality on paper. I remember attending a Linguistics Symposium during my first year that took place at Haverford. I was moved to tears by Donna Jo Napoli's lecture demonstrating her passion for including situations of children that are atypical of the norm in her children's books. She explained that if children only read stories of perfect, nuclear lives without difficulty, death, or disability, they will feel abnormal and like there is no place for them in society. This perspective echoes our recent conversations about the importance of including multiple identities in media representation. Everyone should have a role model and everyone should feel valued by society. When society fails to recognize many different kinds of people, they are directly marginalized and made to feel that they should not be included.
This discussion further illustrates the intersectionality of all of our conversations. Our discourse about race, the classroom, language, gender, age, disability, we have noticed the perspectives not championed, but excluded by our culture, but still involved in the contact zones that inhabit our lives.