Precarious, Performative, Playful, Potential...Perspectives!

At the end of her first chapter, Price notes that her book includes “abundant examples of what can happen when, against the odds, those with mental disabilities find ways to speak, write, dance, and otherwise communicate against the grain of able-mindedness” (57). While reading her introduction and first chapter, I kept thinking about the use of Adderall as a “study aid” by students who have not been prescribed the drug or diagnosed with ADHD, a practice that I perceive to be is relatively common at Haverford (though not talked about openly). I’m not quite sure how this fits into the dichotomy Price has set up between mental disability and able-mindedness, but I’m curious to hear others’ thoughts about non-prescription Adderall and Ritalin use and abuse, especially as it relates to the concept of able-mindedness (when “able minds” are not “able” enough!) and to the Honor Code.

Has anyone ever heard the song Frontier Psychiatrist by the Avalanches? (Here it is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8BWBn26bX0). Now, I'm not going to pretend to understand this song or video, but It played while I was listening to my Ratatat station on Pandora, and the opening bit seemed to connect with what I was reading in Price's "Mad at School." It goes,

"Is Dexter ill today, Mr Kirk, Dexter's in school
I'm afraid he's not, Miss Fishpaw
Dexter's truancy problem is way out of hand
The Baltimore County school board have decided to expel
Dexter from the entire public school system
Oh Mr Kirk, I'm as upset as you to learn of Dexter's truancy
But surely, expulsion is not the answer!
I'm afraid expulsion is the only answer
It's the opinion of the entire staff that Dexter is criminally insane
That boy needs therapy, psychosomatic"

This touches on the systematic connection between a child (for whatever reason) not working well within institutionalized education, and mental disease.  If one is true, then the other must be also.

Price states that "atypical minds are entering academe in unprecedented numbers...or simply being noticed more often" (7). She spins this as a positive turn, an upswing. But I'm not sure it's so unambiguously good. Isn't the reason more students are open about depression and attention deficit disorder because more students are being treated for these "diseases." Is over prescribing and medicating the way to embrace these atypical minds?

            We talked last class about the power of calling our own bodies “home.”  Clare’s book repeatedly addresses the body as home, as a habitat as important for exploration as Clare’s northwestern home forests and the factors that have influenced his growth as an individual. I have to wonder, though, if all the talk of creating a home in a body underscores a long-held and often destructive dichotomy of mind/body in western culture. This dichotomy distinguishes the body as something foreign, something to be understood and mastered by the mind (which also encompasses soul/spirit/personality/etc.).

            Does calling our bodies “home” unnecessarily separate the mind (which is doing the calling/naming) from the body? I think that separating my power for naming from my body is a comforting notion. By calling my body home, I can contain the essence of my self, as a thing capable of naming and designating, into something separate and “above” the body. This naming creates an implicit hierarchy of value—as long as I still have the faculty of reason, of naming, the state of my physical body is relatively immaterial. But what if someone, for whatever reason, cannot “name” her body as home? Can she still exist as a “full” person? What does that even mean?

After our discussion ended on Tuesday, I left class still pondering the results of our utopia exercise. While some might think a perfect socio-politico-legal system is easy to construct in theory, I had (and continue to have) trouble conceptualizing a world in which “equality,” a word that implies affording all people the same status, rights, and opportunities*, does not inevitably translate into “sameness,” a word that wipes away all sense of individuality and fails to acknowledge or cherish differences. I’m reminded of Orwell’s Animal Farm, which details first the liberation of animals on a farm from oppressive humans, then the animals’ attempt to set up a utopian society in which all members of the farm are equal, and finally the emergence of a hierarchy in which (spoiler alert) the pigs take control of the farm and reduce the original seven commandments to only one: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

(An interesting take on the current state of our society...)

In the Foreword of the Price book, Tobin Siebers writes that there is a way in which teachers are called upon to diagnose their students; that there is "a hidden agenda of classroom teaching- what is being diagnosed in persistent and determined ways is the mental health of students" (xii). While I agree with the notion that teachers often end up "diagnosing" the mental health of their students, I don't think I agree with the sentiment that it is as deliberate as the phrase "hidden agenda" suggests. This argument made me think about the Summers I have spent teaching swim lessons to young kids. I found myself spending a lot of time thinking about how to better teach each individual swimmer, which is intrinsically connected to thinking about the ways each student thinks and how their needs might be different than those of other kids in the class. It seems to me that while an environment of quasi-medical diagnosis may be created in classroom environments, it may often be a product of a desire to better teach and not a deliberate quest to seek out difference. However, I agree with Price that academic environments can tend to cast a negative light on mental differences and create an even more hostile environment for such differences than is found in the rest of our interactions. 

At the suggestion of Kaye, here are links to the songs I've used as titles for my previous blog entries. I'll be including a link to the corresponding song in each of my upcoming posts, which can be listened to separately or while you read.

9/3/2011 - "Down By The Water" -The Decemberists

9/11/2011 - "Bitch" -Meredith Brooks

9/17/2011 - "Cape Cod Girls" -New England Sea Chantey (composor unknown)

As I read Margaret Price's Introduction to Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life.

With regards to the norm, Price writes that the disclosure of mental illness (as well as queerness) is "apparitional" and that it is only disclosed when the environment in which it is present allows it to disappear and appear. I think that this is a point of discussion because as we have sort of discussed in class, this 'norm' is something that is not particularly well-defined and changes depending on the individual. If we cannot define the 'norm', then can we really define the 'other' or the 'deviant' as a society as a whole? How can these deviations "appear"?

But, as with physical disabilities, it is difficult to push past the binary of the well/unwell paradigm in terms of mental illness. However, if the "deviations" are not fixed (and as Price has pointed out,  these so-called deviations can be anything from "coffee-guzzling, cigarette-puffing, vigorous human beings" to people who have been diagnosed with mental illnesses through the DSM) and neither is the "normal", then what is "ableism"? It is difficult to define this term if what its definition is based in is so rooted in other factors which themselves have no clear definition. 

In Price’s introduction she mentions the sanctity of knowledge, the ivory tower of thought only open to the privileged genius of our era, the perfect academic who can meet with other academics in their spheres of thought, to sit and talk at length about theories of the universe or the meaning of life. When I read this I immediately thought of Renaissance paintings such as Raphael’s School of Athens. That ideal of academia, Plato and Aristotle debating at length under the majestic stone archways, walking the tiled halls with fellow thinkers pushes out, as Price said, the teacher who can’t sit in a staff meeting or the child who can’t control their outbursts in class. We are constantly barraged by images of the perfect; models whose size and proportions have been digitally altered for magazine covers, students who score perfect SAT or ACT scores and not only are admitted to every Ivy League school but receive a full ride on a sports scholarship. Rare are the John Nashes and the Marlee Matlins who occupy the spotlight in our world today.

So as I was um, taking a break from calculus today I found this interactive video that I think relates to our conversation about home. It works better with a fast browser and internet connection, and they're serious about closing other pages and programs. Its REALLY COOL! Enjoy :)