ENGLISH 124 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Medicalization, New York University Press, Signify

• School: U of M
• Department: English Language And Literature
• Course: ENGLISH 124
• Professor: Lie

Document Summary

Disability studies looks to different kinds of signifiers and the identification of different kinds of syndromes for its material, rather than the medical language of symptoms and diagnostic categories. The medical meaning-making was negotiated among interested parties who packaged their version of disability in ways that increased the ideas" potency and marketability. Ableism - discrimination in favor of the able-bodied ; the idea that a person"s abilities or characteristics are determined by disability or that people with disabilities as a group are inferior to non-disabled people. The nature of the oppression of disabled people is not yet as widely understood as the language that is labeled as racist or sexist. Disability and disabled are most commonly used by disability rights activists, as well as policy makers and health care professionals. There are disagreements about what it is that unites disabled people and whether disabled people should have control over the naming of their experience.