1st Edition
Metanarratives of Disability Culture, Assumed Authority, and the Normative Social Order
This book explores multiple metanarratives of disability to introduce and investigate the critical concept of assumed authority and the normative social order from which it derives.
The book comprises 15 chapters developed across three parts and, informed by disability studies, is authored by those with research interests in the condition on which they focus as well as direct or intimate experiential knowledge. When out and about, many disabled people know only too well what it is to be erroneously told the error of our/their ways by non-disabled passers-by, assumed authority often cloaked in helpfulness. Showing that assumed authority is underpinned by a displacement of personal narratives in favour of overarching metanarratives of disability that find currency in a diverse multiplicity of cultural representations – ranging from literature to film, television, advertising, social media, comics, art, and music – this work discusses how this relates to a range of disabilities and chronic conditions, including blindness, autism, Down syndrome, diabetes, cancer, and HIV and AIDS.
Metanarratives of Disability will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, medical sociology, medical humanities, education studies, cultural studies, and health.
'offers a well-structured, accessible collection of disability narratives that foreground disabled voices' Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 16.1 (2022)
Prologue
Part I: International Developments of the Foundational Concept
- The Metanarrative of Blindness in North America: Meaning, Feeling, and Feel
Devon Healey and Rod Michalko - The Metanarrative of Blindness in the Global South: A LatDisCrit Counterstory to the Bittersweet Mythology of Blindness as Giftedness
Alexis Padilla - The Metanarrative of Blindness in India: Special Education and Assumed Knowledge Cultures
Hemachandran Karah - The Metanarrative of Mental Illness: A Collaborative Autoethnography
Katharine Martyn and Annette Thompson - The Metanarrative of OCD: Deconstructing Positive Stereotypes in Media and Popular Nomenclature
Angela J. Kim - The Metanarrative of Learning Disability: Vulnerability, Unworthiness, and Requiring Control
Owen Barden and Steven J. Walden - The Metanarrative of Autism: Eternal Childhood and the Failure of Cure
Sonya Freeman Loftis - The Metanarrative of Down Syndrome: Proximity to Animality
Helen Davies - The Metanarrative of Dwarfism: Heightism and its Social Implications
Erin Pritchard - The Metanarrative of Chronic Pain: Culpable, Duplicitous, and Miserable
Danielle Kohfeldt and Gregory Mather - The Metanarrative of Diabetes: Should You Be Eating That?
Heather R. Walker and Bianca C. Frazer - The Metanarrative of Cancer: Disrupting the Battle Myth
Nicola Martin - The Metanarrative of HIV and AIDS: Losing Track of an Epidemic
Brenda Tyrrell - The Metanarrative of Sarcoidosis: Life in Liminality
Dana Combs Leigh - The Metanarrative of Arthritis: Playing and Betraying the Endgame
David Bolt
Part II: Beyond Normative Minds and Bodies
Part III: Chronic Conditions and the Emergence of Disability
Epilogue
Index
Biography
David Bolt is Professor of Disability Studies and Director of the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies at Liverpool Hope University, United Kingdom.
This collection of essays raises as many questions as it answers, but in challenging a range of metanarratives it offers new perspectives to scholars working across a range of fields in disability studies, medical humanities, cultural studies, and health.
H-Disability (November, 2023)
This important addition to the Autocritical Disability Studies series represents continual advancement of the field and recognition of its interdisciplinary value.
Canadian Journal of Disability Studies: Vol. 12 No. 3 (2023)
