Being disabled is to live a life of acute self-consciousness. You’re disabled in the supermarket, on the bus, in school or at the office. All eyes are on you as you wheel your way into the department of motor vehicles. The blind are the show of shows as they tap their ways down the street or are guided by their dogs. The proscenium arch of pubic space rules us as foreigners. Worse, this incipient and unstated otherness in the eyes of the normative public leads to acts of ableism. And that’s where self-consciousness squared comes in. Its one thing to be observed as different, and entirely another to be declared an inconvenience. So you live your life in sc2. As for me, I thought things would be better by now. I mean the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law 35 years ago. Today the war on the disabled has taken a grim turn. Planned cuts to social services and medical care will likely claim disabled lives. And so while people are celebrating disability month—whatever that means—I’m linked with all my disabled activist friends who are feeling horror.
And finally that’s what self-consciousness squared is. Its the horror.
Planet of the Blind 