What does it take to drop old habits of thinking about disability? I want to see a day when people with disabilities are not conceived of as a separate category of the citizenry, as say, "disabled museum patrons" or "disabled scholars". If the field of disability studies has any intrinsic value it must lie in precisely this area of engagement. PWDs are not exceptional learners or spectators. They are the public.
If you’re really reading me you’ll notice that I don’t see distinctions between able bodiedness and the compensatory notion that there exists a specialized learning process for PWDs.
The blind don’t learn something special by having a tactile experience of a painting. The sighted do not learn anything special by walking around blindfolded.
Each of the examples above can only be illuminating if the exercise is conceived of as a performance not about what we know, but rather about what remains unknown.
Just because a person can see a painting doesn’t in turn mean they know how to talk about what they see. And just because a blind person can walk around New York and "know" the place by alternative means, doesn’t automatically suggest that their impressions of this experience are going to be worthy of poetry.
The arts are invaluable insofar as we’re challenged to think about the poetry of each exquisite minute. In the end, the muse doesn’t care what your body looks like.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 