Through a Glass Eye, Darkly

The Chicago Disability History Exhibit will be in town until August 31 (after which, presumably, it will join Black History Month in the netherworld where all superficial attempts at diversity go after people tire of them).

I haven't been to the disability exhibit, but from talking to my colleagues who have been, I gather that the whole presentation has some serious problems. For one, it's relatively inaccessible to those who are of a different mind or who aren't disposed to truly see or hear what the presenters are trying to say.

Moreover, I've been told that the exhibit uses all forms of disability, be they mental, physical, congenital or acquired, as a crutch, relying on audience sympathy for a free pass on historical accuracy or meaning. It seems that the presenters don't really have a leg to stand on, and often turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to queries about relevance and content, instead preferring to vacantly gibber on about any and all afflictions as though they are the fever dreams of the same microcephalic mind.

This method betrays a certain intellectual incontinence; the exhibit's creators just let it all gush forth and hope that a self-selecting audience will find value somewhere. This has always been a problem, from the first moments when disability studies came, malformed and premature, into the world. Overall, it does more to hobble the endeavor than spur it along, out of the attic and into the productive world, and if the mavens of disability history would just hack away the dead weight and graft on new, usable and utilitarian narratives, the subfield that is disability studies might one day begin to have a normal life among Clio's raggedy, misbegotten brood.