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What is disability culture

cds4's picture

Wooofff, ok, I was not anticipacting the question of "What is disability culture" to have such complicated implicatIons. Honestly, I'm a little baffled on how to approach this query however, one section of the reading did stick out to me in particular so I guess I'll begin there. The author was discussing a memory of Rodney leading a workshop, and how in that moment she began to appreciate the diverse array of perspectives towards disability present in the room. The description made me think of a line from a book I'm reading that says 'To have pain is to have certainty, to hear about other's pain is to have doubt'. I feel like a similar principle can be applied to the concept of disability culture. Everyone may have a disability culture, but that doesn't mean that everyone experiences it the same way or has the same one. Maybe thats why it's so difficult to define it. You think you know what disability culture is until you hear someonelses definition and then yours is thrown into doubt. But that doesn't mean that your disability culture has any less reality. So what is it then? Theres a really nice definition of culture in general out there that characterises it as the manifestation of human intellect. I think thats what disability culture is; the manifestation of human intellect. I guess someone could argue against that by asking what makes that definition distinct to disability, however disability transcends all social bounds, it is existent in everything. The real question is how do other cultures distinguish themselves from disability culture. Since disability culture is so transcendent, I still dont know how it should be interacted with. Because although everyone has access to a culture on a whole that doesn't mean that there aren't boundaries. A person who does not indentify as dísabled might not be able to use the same terminology as someone who is, even though both parties belong to disability culture .