Disability as diversity:a difference with a difference

Abstract

Disability is a fundamental facet of human diversity, yet it lags behind race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and class in recognition inside and outside the academy. Disability has its own history (or histories) and culture(s) which deserve to be studied in their own right. Disability Studies is not limited to the study of disabled people as a distinct population, however; rather, it involves the comprehensive investigation of disability as a cultural construct that undergirds social practices and cultural representations. As contemporary Disability Studies scholars view it, then, disability is a significant and powerful cultural category; like race and gender, disability is a cultural construct that assigns traits to individuals— and discriminates among them—on the basis of bodily differences. Today, disabled people, long vulnerable to prejudicial representation in high and low culture, are challenging conventional assumptions by representing themselves in memoir and autobiography.