NotNormativelyHuman 283
asabodilyconditionmightbeconsideredasessentiallyun-American.^115
In a civic culture "committed to equating virtue with independent
industry" (Garland-Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies48)^116 and where
homely wisdoms such as "God helps those that help themselves" can
still claim a normative influence on the public mind, disability in
civilians and soldiers alike is principally an anomaly, a strike of bad
luck,butalsoachallengetobemetandanobstacletobeovercome.As
Sharon Snyder, David Mitchell and also Deborah Stone have shown, in
the past and continuing into our own time, disability, in addition to
marking a non-normative physicality, has often functioned as a litmus
test for a person's character, dividing the goats who do not try hard
enough from the sheep who adjust to their impairments or, better still,
usethemasanopportunitytobecomeawholenew,betterperson(Stone
25-54). Implicitly, this means that disability is a condition "that exists
only to be undone" (Mitchell and Snyder,CulturalLocations190), left
behind in the quest for a more fulfilling life. In the line of such
reasoning, only he or she is a "good" disabled person who manages to
overcome his or her disability or turn it into boon. Such an ableist
attitude inserts disability into narratives of appearance and
(^115) Paul Longmore has charted the history of the presence of the term in public
policy and expert debate, from the fight for rights which led to the 1990
Americans with Disabilities Act via the struggle for a socio-cultural identity all
the way to the establishment of Disability Studies as an accredited academic
discipline.
(^116) In a similar vein, Roxana Galusca has argued that "the fiction of
ablebodiedness[hasbeen]shapingthehistoryoftheU.S.nation-state"(Galusca
142). – The notion of "ableism" has been the principal target for critique by
disability activists and the academic field of Disability Studies alike. Both seek
to give disability "a political interpretation" (Siebers 17) which means that non-
normativeembodimentistobeseenasavaluableandvaluedbodily,social,and
cultural difference. In such a perspective, ableism, on the other hand, is
theorized alongside racism, sexism, heteronormativity et al. as a socio-cultural
system which seeks to deny equal civic status to people with bodily
impairments. At the same time, Disability Studies often has a deeply
problematic,ifnotoutrightsuspiciousattitudetowarditsdisciplinaryobject.For
arecentcontributiontothediscussioncf.Goodley,Dan."Dis/entanglingCritical
DisabilityStudies."Disability&Society28.5(2013):631-44.Print.