On the moral
bankruptcy of the personal tragedy theory:
Towards a Brechtian
model of disability politics
I am frequently confronted with a question that I can no
longer ignore. People often ask me whether or not having an acquired or
congenital disability is worse. And sometimes they outright tell me that having
an acquired disability is worse, since I never knew what it was like to walk;
and, owing to this fact, I don’t know what I’m missing. Let’s tackle this on
three fronts.
First, anyone with the political
backbone will tell you that the personal tragedy theory of disease is not
helpful. It simply causes the process of narcissistic disavowal in the able-bodied majority, allowing them to
legitimate the systemic oppression of those with nonnormative abilities. I
would find it repugnant to participate in this unjust arrangement of society by
legitimating the personal tragedy model. I’m not going to deny that sometimes
I’m pissed off at the vicissitudes of fortune, as is everyone, but I’m
considerably more angry at the social inequality I experience on a macro and
micro level. It is not nature that creates the problem of disability, people,,
including myself, do, and it’s about time we start taking responsibility for
it. God knows we fight against everything else God’s patently absurd impotence
is responsible for. I have absolutely no patience for the sentimental claptrap
that says disability is a meaningful experience. It isn’t. It’s terrible, since
life can be terrible. If you make a meaning out of it, it is only through a
tremendous act of will to survive and thrive. If we think that tragedies have value,
we would also have to do some comically odious intellectual gymnastics to find
some significance in the pandemics that ravage our world. This naïve
romanticism limits our ability to fight disease effectively and look at the
underlying social causes. Some people may want to live in a fantasy land of
intrinsic justice, but I don’t.
Second, I did have an accident:
it happened to be earlier, but if we are using a tragic model, it was still
unfortunate. It’s true; I did not have the pleasure of normative ability, so I
don’t know the extent of that privilege. By the same token, however, persons
with acquired injuries have benefited from a system that privileges able-bodied
approximations for some significant portion of their lives. Conversely, I have
never had the luxury of profiting from that system of oppression. Even so, I DO have a conception of what
able-bodiedness is like. Unfortunately, the ideal is everywhere we go. How
could I not have a conception? How could I not feel loss, when virtually
everyone around me, from early childhood to the present, has something I do not
and makes that fact known constantly? Moreover, during crucial years of
upbringing, unlike many persons with acquired impairments, I had to endure
tremendous stigma and underestimation on account of my nonnormative ability.
While oppression in the present is, indeed, caustic to self-development,
tremendous stigma in childhood is devastating. No wonder then that people with
congenital disabilities often have different ways of being in the world, and
often appear less normal to the able-bodied majority — they have simply been
oppressed longer. This is not a mark of ontological difference; it is a mark of
unjust social privilege. To be sure, I have not survived a single catastrophic
event, but my life can be interpreted as coping with catastrophe; and so too
can most people’s. Why we single some people out as survivors and others not
says more about us than the object of study. The rhetoric of survival is not
ethically permissible. If a person gains credit only for surviving a disease
like cancer or some kind of accident, it implies that this person is somehow
more worthy of life than those who did not or that she is somehow innately more
meritorious than those who experience greater difficulty.
Again, my point is not that one
is worse than the other. Instead, it is important to illuminate that you can
use whatever rhetorical strategies you like. The persuasive tactics people
often use only have power because the congenitally impaired are constructed as
fundamentally other. We are essentially, not accidentally, tragic. The only
reason my disability is important is because of circumstances I did not
control. I do not relish it; I am not proud of it, per se. I would happily fix
it, if this were possible. I say this, even though I recognize that it is a
vital part of my life. This does not mean I am bitter or that I hate myself. It
simply means that I am a pragmatic person, who loves life and wants to
experience it to the fullest.
Third, as undeniably unpleasant
as my disability can be, it seems insignificant compared to the other problems that
human beings around the planet face daily. In some small way, I am grateful
because, at least in part, it assuages my guilt for being European, and,
therewith, profiting from a system of exploitation that has no intrinsic
legitimation. Even so, this does not exonerate my culpability in the system. It
seems hypocritical to care excessively that I’m in a wheelchair, when we live
in a world where it is commonplace for children to be blown to pieces. I’m not
cynical; I’m a realist. God is not coming back; no one is going to save us, so
it’s time we go fucking balls deep in the excrement of life. That’s our only chance of making it get better. Things don’t
get better without action. Wake up!
All things are nothing next to our
inevitable and complete that destruction. We
need to stop fabricating meaning in misfortune. It is not healthy. And in the
long run, it creates more misfortune. Manufacturing the category of congenital
and acquired perpetuates the narcissistic fantasy that disability is something
accidental to the human condition. I’m sorry to say it isn’t. You will be
disabled. You will die. Eventually, very few people will remember your
accomplishments, and all that will matter are those moments where you decided
to help people in need, regardless of their ability. You did this because you
understood them as creatures who experience suffering and are, thereby, worthy
of concern. Think about that, for that’s a lot more productive than having me
entertain this narcissistic question. When I meditate upon tragedy, it is
useful to consider Brecht. He opposed the Aristotelian model of| purgation and
relief. Instead, his model of tragedy encourages distance, which asks the
audience to critically examine the circumstances that produced tragedy, thereby,
becoming mobilized for political action. It’s time we repudiate Aristotle in
favor of Brecht. Perhaps then people will see this as a nonsensical, as well as
morally bankrupt, question.
