Disability in Science Fiction notes: part 1

I'm reading Disability in Science Fiction: Representations of Technology as Cure. It's edited by Kathryn Allan. EasyBib tells me the citation for the book as a whole is this:

Allan, Kathryn. Disability in Science Fiction: Representations of Technology as Cure. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Print.

Anyways, my notes from reading the introduction, chapter 1, and chapter 2 are below.

Introduction: Reading Disability in Science Fiction, Kathryn Allan, 1-15

Synder, Sharon L. and David T. Mitchell. Cultural Locations of Disability. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Print.

“Disability is a difference that exists only to be undone” (190, emphasis in original.)

Peace, William J. “Slippery Slopes: Media, Disability, and Adaptive Sports.” The Body Reader. Ed. Jean Moore and Mary Kosut. New York: New York University Press, 2010. 332-344. Print.

“People with disabilities have embraced the internet with gusto and have formed a vibrant cyber community. Disability studies scholars have also embraced the internet, but their communication and scholarship is restricted and exclusionary. This is a significant problem” (343.)

Quayson, Ato. Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Print.

Quayson identifies nine main categories of disability representation: “

1. Disability as null set and/or moral test
2. Disability as interface with otherness (race, class, social identity)
3. Disability as articulation of disjuncture between thematic and narrative vectors
4. Disability as bearer of moral deficit/evil
5. Disability as epiphany
6. Disability as signifier of ritual insight
7. Disability as inarticulable and enigmatic tragic insight
8. Disability as hermeneutical impasse
9. Disability as normality” (52.)

Chapter 1: Tools to Help You Think: Intersections between Disability Studies and the Writings of Samuel R. Delany. Joanne Woiak and Hioni Karamanos. 19-33

Basically I need to read Samuel R. Delany's stuff, because good sci fi and yeah.

Delany, Samuel R.

The Einstein Intersection. 1967. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1998. Print.

Empire Star. New York: Bantam, 1966. Print.

Pages 114-115 of The Einstein Intersection apparently has really good stuff in it.

“The stories give you a law to follow--”
“--that you can either break or obey.”

And in Empire Star: “The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, becayse they alone, by questioning the society's values, can force it to change” (103.)

Oh hey, I want to quote a chapter author directly rather than wanting the quote they wanted too from someone else.

Mainstream diversity courses routinely reproduce the exclusion of disability, treating it as an “add-on” to race, class, and gender. The Einstein Intersection, by contrast, illustrates how disability is used to justify other intersecting forms of inequality. For example, in the village, full participation as a sexual and gendered being depends on status as a “functional norm,” while in the city, wealth and class status are tied to making disability invisible. (32)

Chapter 2: Freaks and Extraordinary Bodies: Disability as Generic Marker in John Varley's “Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo.” Ria Cheyne. 35-46

“In deciding to have the tattoo, Galloway foregrounds her cyborg status and resists normalization” (38.) This is in reference to a character who, in a sense, cured herself (funded the research used in her cure) but still choses to emphasize her status as having been disabled. In the same story, two former murderers are under “amparole,” with prosthetic arms made to be light, airy, and beautiful, as well as refusing to pick up a knife or gun.

Gosling, Ju. “Towards a Scientific Model of Disability.” Abnormal. N.p., 2009. Web. http://www.ju90.co.uk/nimr/model.htm, needs read, probably needs used in the engineering version along with medical and social models when introducting the models. Ooooh. See also links to other models here. http://www.ju90.co.uk/nimr/bground.htm