The Carnival is coming here

The second Disability Blog Carnival will be here Thursday, October 26. Submissions are due Monday, October 23. The theme for this stop on the carnival tour is "The Cure," though any submissions about disability rights, disability culture, or personal disability experiences are welcome.

By "The Cure" I don't mean (as Penny noted) that I'm looking for posts about the fine but gloomy alternative band of the '80s. I'm refering to the issue -- or question -- that pretty much defines how people think of disability. Dan Wilkins wrote this about "the cure" while a board member of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association:

Society needs to understand that, of the nearly sixty-million belonging to this U.S. Disability Culture alone and millions more around the globe, those who dream of cures are far and away in the minority compared to those who dream of acceptance and access to all that their society and community has to offer. The majority of us with disabilities are comfortable in our skin. We see ourselves as unbroken and not in need of "fixing". We are proud of our disabilities and of the wisdom and perspective gained from the experience. The majority of us, along with our friends and family, dream of the equity and respect that comes from a community that has expanded to include and accommodate all of its people.

It is a matter of two different dreams. One dream sees the person; or more precisely, the disability as the problem. The other, more widely held dream sees society itself and the environment as the problem; with its lack of attitudinal, architectural, political and programmatic access. The former sounds logical, based upon archaic misconceptions of what life “must be like” for those living with a disability: "Of course one would want to be healed." The latter demands we, as a community, step back and take a look at the bigger picture, at how we perceive and treat people who get around or see or hear differently. It demands we take responsibility for our thoughts and actions, the baggage we carry, and for the history of exclusion and segregation. It is discrimination and it must end.

Back in 1996, David Mitchell said this at Electric Edge:

The key tension that exists in nearly all stories about disability is seen most clearly in the "cure narrative." It's a story of uneasy obliteration, for it always ends in the "loss" of the object upon which it depends: Either the disability is eradicated and surrenders its seductive interest, or it resists conforming to the narrative of its rehabilitation and the evidence of that refusal must itself be obliterated. This is what Paul Longmore means by the "cure or kill" paradigm: both get rid of disability.

Mitchell refers to "stories about disabilities," which certainly applies to literature and film but also to the stories of our individual lives and the narratives people imagine about every disabled person they see. "The cure" is the persistent human project to fix people of impairments rather than accept their lives as good enough, valuable as they are.

I don't see having a philosophical problem with the cure mindset as remotely the same thing as being against scientific discovery and medical breakthroughs, but that's frequently misunderstood. Also, I have my own questions when confronted by the crip-savvy question "If there was a cure available, would you take it?"

I want to know if this fantasy cure is for everyone or just me? Is it expensive? Is it free? Does it hurt? Will it last? Are we talking just cure, or turning back time to a post-impairment body free from general inability? Will people see me as nondisabled to the point I'll be more employable? Will taking the cure mean I lose any disability aid? Will the prejudice go away too?

And many, many more.

So, the theme "the cure" refers to the above, and I'm hoping for whatever it inspires you to write about disability. Send submissions to the carnival site or to my email at kay.fine@gmail.com with the subject line "carnival," please. Deadline Monday, October, 23.