(Note: I will not make myself popular by posting this. But as Bruce Springsteen once said: “When I was growing up, there were two things that were unpopular in my house. One was me, and the other was my guitar.”
1.
Disability studies tends toward essentialist views about language. As Salman Rushdie puts it, essentialism is “the respectable child of old-fashioned exoticism. It demands that sources, forms, style, language and symbol all derive from a supposedly homogeneous and unbroken tradition. Or else…” 1
If you want to critique the empire by using its own tools essentialism is as good as anything in the box. The social construction of normalcy fits the bill.
2.
The engineering of normalcy is (was) (remains) real. From Frances Galton to Antonin Scalia the reflexive and reactionary assignment of physical and social value per bodies is the Lingua Franca of deterministic economies. No one has written more persuasively about this history than Lennard J. Davis.
3.
Essentialism gives away the game too soon. By this I mean that cultures are too diverse and local to adhere to the dominance of social construction no matter how powerful this idea may be. It is far more useful to talk about the economic construction of normalcy than to imagine it as a thoroughly cultural dynamic.
4.
Margaret Mead: “If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.”
I would prefer disability studies to talk about richer culture not a falsely dominant one.
Culture is not propaganda. It is not the panopticon. It is not a repression index. It is not a metonymy for whatever dark force you may imagine controls the puppets. Believing these things one simply gives up on people.
“The oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors.” (Paulo Freire)
Planet of the Blind 
I think I agree with what you’re saying, but it feels really abstracted. Are you using the academic language of DS to criticize it? Would Salman Rushdie be happy or sad about that?
One or two concrete examples would be helpful, if you can provide them without further indicting yourself.
I definitely agree with the idea that culture is not propaganda, and one should read all forms of art for humanity, rather than supposed codified oppression. (This is not to say that there are sometimes attitudes & cetera embodied in some art that perpetuates a negative cultural environment.)
The Freire quote is great. It also reminds me of something — the premise for a certain practitioners of Disability Studies (as far as I can see) need to believe in a “dominant” culture in order to justify their positions. In other words, they will perpetuate the myth of a dominant culture to ensure continued funding for their departments, or at the very least to justify their critique, rather than question or undermine the whole concept of a dominant culture.
Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe I’m not well-versed enough in Dis. Studies to make such a critique. And maybe I’ve managed to piss off more folks than you did with the original post. I know, I know, it’s not a contest….
Thanks,
Brendan
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