Look! They're Staring at Me!

“I don’t want to know you,” says the stare. Disabled people know the stare. It happens all day long. It happens regardless of your mood. There are many good books about the stare by scholars of disability. If you’re an artist you can put “the stare” into the Dice-a-Matic of cultural pan optics  and create an indicting performance—ironic and flinty. But the stare is ex-cathedra and a-performative. The stare is the stare. Its automatic, without mindfulness. Crip culture attacks the stare—re-performs it; disarticulates it; turns it into confetti. But stare don’t care. Stare don’t give a diddly damn. 

 

You look different. The aim of culture is to create language that bridges difference. Trouble is, human beings don’t live long enough to bridge anything. Here comes another staring baby, without the advantages of her great grandmother. Meanwhile staring is a genetic and neurological determination. Staring at unlike things is value neutral. 

 

Of course we have to stare. But what then? William Gass wrote “culture has completed its work when everything is a sign” but alas, from a disability studies perspective, culture has no lingo for aporia. Over the centuries we’ve failed to create the linguistic static to promote advantageous doubt.  

 

Comic books come close. Sci-fi too. And ancient stories like the Finnish Kalevala (from which Tolkein got most of his ideas). In general human beings desperately need stories that promote advantageous doubt about unlikeness.  

 

You can argue with my premise about the neutrality of the stare—the long history of social ostracism and scapegoating does, at first, belie my point, save that political exploitation of staring requires machinery, beatings, printing presses, Joseph Goebbels, Fox News, and legions of terrified parents. Even better: undedicated parents. Culture has completed its work when everyone is a sign. 

 

I’m just a blind guy. I walk with a dog. I don’t represent anything. I don’t portend God’s unhappiness. I don’t need you to pray for me. I don’t require a donation. I don’t want you to run in front of me and open the door. In general I like staring babies. They haven’t had the advantages of culture.