Re-Presenting Disability

by Richard Sandell (Editor), Jocelyn Dodd (Editor), Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (Editor)

Re-Presenting Disability addresses issues surrounding disability representation in museums and galleries, a topic which is receiving much academic attention and is becoming an increasingly pressing issue for practitioners working in wide-ranging museums and related cultural organisations. This volume of provocative and timely contributions, brings together twenty researchers, practitioners and academics from different disciplinary, institutional and cultural contexts to explore issues surrounding the cultural representation of disabled people and, more particularly, the inclusion (as well as the marked absence) of disability-related narratives in museum and gallery displays. The diverse perspectives featured in the book offer fresh ways of interrogating and understanding contemporary representational practices as well as illuminating existing, related debates concerning identity politics, social agency and organisational purposes and responsibilities, which have considerable currency within museums and museum studies. Re-Presenting Disability explores such issues

Genres: Disability, Disability Studies, Nonfiction, Academic

320 pages, Paperback

First published February 26, 2010

About the author

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson is Professor of Women's Studies at Emory University. Her fields of study are feminist theory, American literature, and disability studies. She is author of Staring: How We Look and Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Literature and Culture; co-editor of Re-Presenting Disability: Museums and the Politics of Display and Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities; and editor of Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. "

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

good readability and diversity of chapter topics

[Maja · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is certainly a mixed bag. A lot of the essays do engage well with disabled people and present some useful ideas about how museums can work to make society better for disabled people. However, this isn’t universal. Other essays have little to no engagement with disabled people. When there is engagement, most of the writers seem to think that their opinions are worthy of going unchecked purely because they are disabled. This neglects to consider that factors like internalised ablism may be at play. People aren’t innately virtuous just because they’re disabled, a fact reiterated by some of the more nuanced essays in this book. Additionally, academic discussion lacks emotion or acknowledgment that emotional wellbeing is one of the main driving forces behind why inclusion is important. This seems to make some of these scholars comfortable using hurtful words in clinical discussion without further critical discussion of their language choice. I will say that these things aren’t consistent throughout every essay. Some writers do really well engaging respectfully but I was put off by this lack of critical thought by others along with some truly harmful conflations about disability representation being so much harder than inclusion for other minority groups. The politics of ‘difference’ are intertwined across all marginalised groups and they should not be pitted against each other or we lose site of what the problems facing all of these groups really are.

[Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars: This collection placed a lot of weight onto liberal modes of representation and the educational responsibilities of the museum, but barely discussed the underlying issues and inaccessibilities of museum culture that make representation, alone, not enough. I kept wanting contributors' analyses to delve deeper and for the collection as a whole to exhibit more care and grounded criticism for the disabled communities who formed its subject material.