Conference Level
Graduate
Start Date
1-4-2017 4:00 PM
End Date
1-4-2017 4:30 PM
Abstract
A common concern within the disability community are the ways in which negative or misguided representations in media produce stigma. Stigma can be broadly defined to include “problems of knowledge (ignorance), problems of attitudes (prejudice), and problems of behaviour (discrimination),” which means that inadequate or unrealistic representations can cause a variety of damaging effects1. In Narrative Prosthesis, David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder explore the ways in which a broad selection of literature has represented disability as a literary device. Despite an ever growing number of examples of disability in media, the public, and especially many scholars, have forgotten about how many representations actually exist: “a social erasure has been performed even as a representational repertoire has evolved”2. This forgetting has serious consequences, not only on the way disability is socially received, but in framing accessibility problems as either non-existent or not as something in need of significant change. In this way, a critical look at representations of disability is needed in order to not only combat stigma, but to bring disability issues to the forefront of social and political consideration. Using Letitia Meynell’s model of pictures as epistemic devices and Nancy Tuana’s conception of Wilful Ignorance, I argue that the social forgetting that occurs in spite of the numerous examples in media is due to the outcomes of those representations. In addition, I suggest that discussion of Wilful Ignorance should take disability examples into account going forward within the field of Agnotology. When the purpose of a disabled character as a literary device is ultimately to remove or cure the disability itself, it is not surprising that the public ultimately forgets that there was a disabled person there at all.
Included in
Missing the Mark: Exploring the Forgetting of Disability in Media
A common concern within the disability community are the ways in which negative or misguided representations in media produce stigma. Stigma can be broadly defined to include “problems of knowledge (ignorance), problems of attitudes (prejudice), and problems of behaviour (discrimination),” which means that inadequate or unrealistic representations can cause a variety of damaging effects1. In Narrative Prosthesis, David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder explore the ways in which a broad selection of literature has represented disability as a literary device. Despite an ever growing number of examples of disability in media, the public, and especially many scholars, have forgotten about how many representations actually exist: “a social erasure has been performed even as a representational repertoire has evolved”2. This forgetting has serious consequences, not only on the way disability is socially received, but in framing accessibility problems as either non-existent or not as something in need of significant change. In this way, a critical look at representations of disability is needed in order to not only combat stigma, but to bring disability issues to the forefront of social and political consideration. Using Letitia Meynell’s model of pictures as epistemic devices and Nancy Tuana’s conception of Wilful Ignorance, I argue that the social forgetting that occurs in spite of the numerous examples in media is due to the outcomes of those representations. In addition, I suggest that discussion of Wilful Ignorance should take disability examples into account going forward within the field of Agnotology. When the purpose of a disabled character as a literary device is ultimately to remove or cure the disability itself, it is not surprising that the public ultimately forgets that there was a disabled person there at all.