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Access Activism. The Politicization of Wheelchairs and Wheelchair Users in the Twentieth Century
(2022)
For millions of disabled people around the world the wheelchair has been one of the most important technological innovations of the twentieth century. From its inception as a relatively cumbersome, heavy machine, designed principally for indoor use, the wheelchair has evolved into a sophisticated and highly technical mode of transport. Wheelchairs are, at least in the Global North, relatively widely used and universally recognizable – so recognizable that they have become the cultural symbol to represent all disabled people. Wheelchairs are often viewed with trepidation: as machines that disable, confine, and deprive their occupant of independence – as medical devices that doctors prescribe only to the sick, the wounded or the elderly. Such definitions and perceptions infiltrate the public lives of wheelchair users, cause considerable macro and micro political difficulties, and consequently disable users in a myriad of different ways.
I first came across Harlan Lane’s work towards the end of my PhD, which I was undertaking at University College London, UK. My dissertation was on the construction of ›difference‹ in the British Empire, particularly the differences ascribed to race and gender. Using nineteenth-century medical missionaries as a way in, I had started to think about differences evoked by health, disability, and the body. In particular, I noted the way in which missionaries used the language of disability as a discourse of racialisation. The African and Indian colonial subjects they encountered were described throughout missionary literature as ›deaf to the Word‹, ›blind to the light‹ and ›too lame‹ to walk alone. I have two d/Deaf cousins, one of whom is the sign language sociolinguist Nick Palfreyman, and around about this time Nick had started to familiarise me with some of the issues surrounding Deaf politics. Becoming interested and wanting to know more, I began to learn British Sign Language (BSL) and contemplate the connections between the historical work I was doing and contemporary struggles of Deaf politics and disability politics (I was particularly interested in DPAC – Disabled People Against Cuts – given the contemporary climate of austerity in the UK). As I did so I became acquainted with the work of Harlan Lane. Here, although acutely aware of my own positionality as a white, British, hearing woman, I have taken up the challenge set by the editors of this special issue to re-read his work twelve years on from my initial encounter with it, using the insights into postcolonial study I have gained through my historical work.
This article builds on the writing of former asylum inmates in the United States to analyze life on asylum wards between 1890 and 1950. Although published accounts of inmates’ experiences in American asylums have their own limitations as primary sources, they are nevertheless very revealing not only of the day-to-day life of institution inmates, but also of the ways in which former asylum inmates made sense of their experiences. The article relies upon insights from Disability Studies and Mad Studies to analyze life on the wards, work and socialization, relations among inmates, clandestine communication channels, and the formation of informal support groups, such as ›suicide clubs‹ in institutions. ›Mad writers‹ were almost equally women and men. They were white, and often well educated. They used the social and economic advantages that many of them had to create a public space from which they could critique the United States’ burgeoning asylum system. These accounts also laid the groundwork for later twentieth-century mad people’s movements.
Dieser Aufsatz stützt sich auf die Schriften ehemaliger Anstaltsinsassen in den USA, um das Leben auf den Stationen zwischen 1890 und 1950 zu analysieren. Obwohl die veröffentlichten Ego-Dokumente als Quellen nicht unproblematisch sind, sind sie dennoch sehr aufschlussreich – nicht nur als alltagsgeschichtliche Einblicke, sondern auch für die Art und Weise, wie ehemalige Anstaltsinsassen ihre Erfahrungen verarbeitet und gedeutet haben. Der Aufsatz stützt sich auf Erkenntnisse aus den Disability Studies und den Mad Studies, um das Leben auf den Stationen, die Arbeit und die Sozialisation, die Beziehungen zwischen den Insassen, die geheimen Kommunikationskanäle und die Bildung informeller Selbsthilfegruppen, etwa die »Selbstmordclubs« in den Anstalten, zu analysieren. Die »verrückten Schriftsteller« waren fast zu gleichen Teilen Frauen und Männer. Sie waren weiß und oft gut ausgebildet. Sie nutzten die sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Vorteile, die viele von ihnen hatten, um einen öffentlichen Raum zu schaffen, von dem aus sie das wachsende Anstaltssystem der USA kritisieren konnten. Solche Berichte legten auch den Grundstein für die Bewegungen der »Verrückten« in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts.