278 RüdigerKunow
disabilities,andthat"it'sthejobofadecentsocietytoprovideallpeople
in that society with the underpinnings of a decent human life" (121-
22).^107 Following Nussbaum's lead, I want to suggest that the field
named by the term "disability" is not adequately traversed by
cataloguing various forms of non-normative embodiments, but rather,
saturatedasitiswithnetworksofnormativitiesconcerningthebody,the
mind,thesocialstatus,andculturalpresenceofpersonssointerpellated,
disability is a cultural figure for social and cultural anxieties over the
body,itscurrentandfuturestatus.
Oppositional Bodies, or, Disability's Challenge to Able-Bodied
Normativity
Partly in response to this situation, partly for methodological
reasons,butmostimportantlyoutofrespectforthedisabled,noattempt
will be made in the following pages, to develop an inventory of
disability representations nor to reiterate the fashionable assertion that
disability is merely "constructed," medically, socially, or culturally.^108
No inventory means that I will not present a catalogue of disability
representationsorganizedarounddifferentdisabilities,firstdealingwith,
say, cases of paraplegia, then of blindness, etc. This also means that
when addressing individual textual or filmic samples, my point willnot
be to determine whether they are accurate, or empowering
approximations of the disability experience. My refusal to do this is a
(^107) In a related way, Eva Kitty has argued that able-bodied normativity "masks
inequitable dependencies, those of the infancy and childhood, old age, illness
anddependency"(xi).
(^108) Such inventories can be found e.g., in Nielson, Kim.ADisabilityHistoryof
the United States.Boston: Beacon P, 2012. Print.; also in Berger, Ronald J.
IntroducingDisabilityStudies.Boulder: Lynne RiennerPublishers, 2013. Print.;
Garland-Thomson,Extraordinary Bdoies; Gartner, Alan, and Tom Joe, eds.
Images of the Disabled: Disabling Images. New York: Praeger, 1986. Print.;
Mitchell and Snyder,Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of
Discourse. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2000. Print.; furthermore in the older
survey by Scheer, Jessica, and Nora Groce. "Impairment as a Human Constant:
Cross-Cultural and Historical Perspectives on Variation."Journal of Social
Issues44(1988):23-37.Print.