Material Bodies

280 RüdigerKunow

difference people often refuse to acknowledge, often simply by looking
the otherway.Obviously, it would be futile to pretend thatgenderdoes
not exist; with race, such attempts have indeed been made;^111 but
concerningdisabilitymanycultureshavebeenquiteinventiveinfinding
ways to relegate it to the very margins of social attention and cultural
concern. Over against that, PWD activists have developed an
"affirmativemodel"ofdisability:

Living with impairment is not always a wonderful experience. There's

pain involved in impairment. There's darkness and frustration and hurt

and isolation. The thing is though, this isn't all it's about. A lot of us

would still rather be who we are as people with impairments than eat

ourselves up uselessly wishing things were otherwise." (Hambrook n.

pag.)^112

The affirmative model, going back to John Swain and Sally French,
among others, is one of many attempts launched in recent years by
disabilityactiviststochangetheoverallnegativevaluationofthedisease
experience and to create public awareness for disability as an
appreciableformofdifference,anoppositional,"alternativemodalityof
being, one that is no less, nor no more, despicable than any other
categoryofbeing"(Caetonn.pag.).Iwillreturntothisquestionlateron
in this book in the context of the historically new availability of
biotechnological modifications which may change the make-up of the
disabledbody.
At this point of my argument I want to turn to another aspect of the
lived experience of disability: the element ofcontingencyinvolved in

(^111) ThemostobviousexampleisofcourseDavidHollinger'scontroversialPost-
EthnicAmerica.NewYork:BasicBooks,1995.Print.
(^112) Another, admittedly extreme example of wishing it otherwise is that of
"amputees by choice" or by design, many of whom suffer from Body Integrity
Identity Disorder (BIID). They request that physicians amputate healthy body
parts, especially limbs. Acceding to such requests, the argument goes, would
"allow individuals to mold their body to an idealized body type" (Bayne and
Levy81).