SEP 2, 2014_BODY_Reading Response

      The readings suggest a holistic approach towards the discourse surrounding the term “disability.” The discourse of disability is not limited to the physical difficulties that one might experience. Rather, the subject expands to cover a broad range of sociocultural perspectives encompassing the term by focusing on the social, economical, political, cultural interactions that a person with “difficult abilities” would have with the “material environment” that he/she is living in. This notion brings in an even broader discourse about disability by questioning the cultural meanings attributed to bodies. As Garland-Thomas (2005) argues, the cultural meanings that a body entail cannot be separated from the use of language. Since the language we use to describe an entity is closely associated with perception, it functions as a hidden structure that prescribes our understanding of a certain concept. This imposes an “ascribed identity” to a disabled person. Therefore, it is possible to witness that the term “disabled” itself contains a subjective paradigm that is derived from the standard of a dominant social system. Shifting my perspective towards art education, Kraft and Keifer-Boyd’s (2013) argument helped me think about the ways of how such education can contribute to challenge this given identity towards people with difficult abilities through “inclusion,” both in academic and non-academic ways. Art as a school subject can empower students to critically tackle the term disability by challenging its prescribed meaning associated with “abnormality.” Accordingly, art education should develop curriculums that view disability as difference rather than disadvantage. 

• Garland-Thomson, R. (2005). Feminist disabilities studies. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society, 30(2),1558-1587.
• Kraft, M. & Keifer-Boyd, K. (2013). Including difference. Reston, VA: NAEA. (Introduction & chapter 1, ix-18).