Seeing Disability
I write this from the luxurious condition of temporary disability, laid up for a week or so after arthroscopic knee surgery. My crutches stand in the corner; my knee is swathed in a fat bandage, throbbing and swelling as it calls out for a new ice pack. The luxury is twofold: 1) the knowledge that this is temporary, thus entitling me to all sorts of temporary indulgences—being waited on, having an excuse not to work, not to answer mail and phone calls, or meet deadlines; 2) the time out of time, like those long stretches of boredom on transatlantic flights when one can avoid conversations with seat partners and sink into the world of some utterly distracting novel that one does not have to read for professional reasons— the ultimate regression into childhood for an English professor.
And yet here I find myself answering the call of duty, writing about disability for Public Culture, at a moment when I’m experiencing disability mainly as pleasure. How could anyone be worse qualified to speak on this topic? What subject position could be more inappropriate? (I leave aside my purely amateur standing in the emergent field of disability studies.) Only by imagining this state as permanent, I tell myself, could I come to terms with what this might mean. When I asked my surgeon if I could get a handicapped sticker for parking while I am on crutches, he laughed and pointed out that this would only work if I were going to be on them for three months.
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