Disability Conundrum

 

 

Each day I must navigate the dynamics of being stared at by strangers while simultaneously requiring the help of the very people who are doing the staring. 

Many people with disabilities have written about this, most notably Rosemarie Garland Thompson who has deftly explored disability performance art as a means of reimagining the social gaze. A spectrum of disability activists, artists and scholars has sought to engage the issue–to in effect replace subjectivity with playful enactments. My wife Connie who has been a guide dog trainer and who has watched me absorb the staring has often imagined wearing a hidden video camera while working a guide dog–posing as a blind person–then capturing them a la Alan Funt, Candid Camera, having caught their stares. I hope she makes the movie. Maybe now that we’re in Syracuse and part of a broad disability community she can finally take that up. Nevertheless I was put in mind of this staring-as-subject-as-activist-performer issue just today when a new acquaintance, a colleague at Syracuse University told me how she admires my apparent ability to carry on in the face of the faces. She has a disability now, one that requires her to use a cane. Her mobility is quite challenged. She shared with me her sense of the stares–how people seem to be looking at her with pity. I think it surprised her when I wrote back and said that I feel this all the time and that I attempt daily to counteract it by wearing a bemused and ironic expression, one that says (as best as I can model it) “I am not what you suppose.” But let’s be clear: wearing an expression is tiring. Being on stage and disarming the hetero-clite pity stare is exhausting. The whole game is easier if you’re quick of wit and love Groucho Marx. I can use language lickety split and it’s a weapon or an anodyne every hour. Staring back takes work. It takes imagination and darned if I can tell if the art will be unnecessary in my lifetime. So today I’m thinking of all my peeps–the disability artists and activists who are staring back and who do it with intelligence and ardor. 

 

S.K.