"Price's close analysis of students' positioning in language offers teachers a useful model for responding to student writing when the topic may be personally and politically charged...she does not directly challenge the ideology of their discourses, because she understands how dominant cultural norms make their way into texts and because she respects her students"
Most non-disabled people have a "privilege"--"having an unmarked body and the attendant power to gaze 'from nowhere.'" (57)
Price's article is borne of a case study in which she taught a comp class that explored the idea of normalcy using DS discourses.
"When we write, we align ourselves with particular worldviews; we step into and out of subject positions; we signal our alliances and our enmities...It's actualized every moment in a material world, a world where bodies are prevented from moving off curbs, entering public buildings, caring for themselves, remaining safe. Learning to write with more self-awareness--becoming more able to identify, consider, and change the ideologies that are enacted in our writing--is a key goal of the critical writing classroom" (57).
--Exploring Normalcy: The Course of the Course
The author found it relatively easy to come out to her class as queer vs. non-disabled.
"I wanted my students to examine their own positions, to think about the relations of power that gace rise to those positions, and to take action in their writing to challenge and perhaps change, relations of power that they perceived as unequal" (58).
"I began to see that I could not effectively study critical thinking about disability...without focusing on students' identities and subject positions as they related to disability" (59).
--Methodology
"As I identified categories of critical thinking in my data and sorted all the data according to these categories, I found that two primary concepts emerged again and again: students' use of pronouns and students' use of what I came to call 'key terms.' Students use of pronouns was an early indication that something interesting was going on in terms of subject position and disability" (60).
"Key terms, too, were something that emerged repeatedly as I analyzed difference sources of data. I noticed that students' uses of certain terms, such as 'overcome' or 'suffer,' semed to indicate moments in their writing or speech that were heavily loaded with significance.
Tara: I'm an Outsider Looking In
"Tara's use of pronouns reflects her sense that disability involves a concrete divide between insiders and outsider, 'us' and 'them'" (62).
"This, of course, is the privilege of occupying an unmarked position such as nondisabled, white, straight, or male; one's position is assumed to be the case until stated otherwise" (63).
"Tara seems to be aware that her ideas about what 'normal' means--and hence, what discourse(s) she is adhering to when using it--are in flux. Her quick reversal...indicates this. 'Normal' is a term that she began discussing early in class, and one that she continues to think about, and revise her perspective on, even after the class has ended" (64).
--Joe: It Kind of Hit Home
"I began to realize that for Joe, it does not make sense to discuss disability without referring to his experiences with his cousin, his classmate, and his mother...His failure to include himself in his response to my question could be seen as a way of using the 'view from nowhere.' But seen another way, Joe is citing his experience precisely in order to identify himself. His identification is channeled through others' identities; the two seem too intertwined to separate meaningfully" (64).
"I was struck by these word choices because, although Joe's essay makes use of DS discourse, that discourse seems to be braided with others--in this case, an ableist discourse, which assumes that a person with a disability who asks for accommodation must be either unreasonable ('complaining,' 'obsesses') or pitiful ('cries out')" (66).
--Kathleen: You Want Someone to Help You, But You Don't
"Kathleen used her own experience of disability as a touchstone when analyzing Clare's essay. In fact, she indicated during out individual interview that it was only through her own experience that she could approach discussion of Clare" (67).
"However, Kathleen's identification as a person with a disability is dynamic...At times she said that she 'had' a learning disability...at other times, she said that she 'has' a learning disability...Perhaps in part because of this dynamic identification, Kathleen's writing and speech take up a variety of subject positions around disability" (67).
"My aim here is not to uncover Kathleen's 'real' intention as a writer, but rather to emphasize that she is forced to shift between subject positions in order to get her ideas across. She is drawing on different kinds of authority when writing this essay...it also incorporates a discourse that calls on an individualized model of disability" (69).
"Disability studies rejects the notion of 'overcoming' in relation to disability, arguing that this locates disabilities in individuals who are then charged with 'overcoming' their disabilities in order to avoid being treated as tragic less-than-humans" (69).
"I read Kathleen's valuation of her own ability to 'overcome' as a survival strategy, a way to think about herself and her disability positively....sometimes it seemed more respectful simply to try to understand where she was coming from" (70-71).
"Moving from mainstream discourses of disability to DS discourse requires a radical shift of mind, and it is unsurprising that Kathleen finds it difficult to adopt this discourse fully into her writing. The stakes for her are higher than they are for Tara...For Kathleen...taking up a new discourse around disability may also mean recognizing the material effects that it will have in her life" (71).
--The Stakes of a New Discourse
"All of us in theory face the same dilemmas that Kathleen cannot avoid" (71).
"In other cases...a student must writer her way away from normalcy, using her own nonnormative subject position as a springboard into analysis of disability. Different subject positions, different identities, do not determine how students approach the topic of disability of their facility with DS discourse...the major finding I made during the course of my study is that students' own subject positions and identities cannot be avoided when teaching DS in the writing classroom--nor can my own. The only way to take up DS in a writing classroom and not focus on identities and subject positions would be to ask every student to employ a 'view from nowhere'--and hence to assume that we are all, in the most static and damaging sense of the term, normal. Those of us who are nondisabled must begin to see that our stakes in DS discourse are as high as the stakes held by people with disabilities. Although some of us write 'from normal' in the sense that our sociopolitical positions mark us as 'normal,' we must also write 'from normal' in the sense of 'away from normal'--challenging ableist discourses, and insisting on access to the topic of disability" (72).
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