4642. Z oazy (XXIII)

Druga z trzech ostatnich książek czytanych na gigancie. Wpadłam na nią przez zupełny przypadek. Klik, klik i w ciągu pięciu dni była moja.

Kiedyś byłam kolekcjonerką społecznych przekonań dotyczących „posia­da­nia/nie­po­siadania” dzieci. Niektóre raniły, niektóre śmieszyły. Rozbierałam je na czynniki pierw­sze.

Od jakiegoś czasu jestem kolekcjonerką ludzkich przekonań — serwowanych mi, czy tego chcę, czy nie — dotyczących tego, dlaczego jestem chora. I znów, rozbieram na części pierwsze, próbując zrozumieć. Kilku numerów telefonów darczyńców za­blo­ko­wałam, bo… zwyczajnie brak mi już sił na uporczywość.

Zbieram więc, rozbieram potem na części, ale nigdy nie przyszło mi do głowy, jakie jest źródło tych przekonań (w końcu nie jestem freudystką). I wpada mi w ręce ta książka. I przecieram oczy ze zdumienia. I połykam w oka mgnieniu. I nie złoszczę się, że przepisać literka po literce muszę cytaty, które chcę mieć pod ręką. Nie­sa­mo­wi­ta jest ta książka! Po prostu.

It would be nice if, at some point, growing up ends and maturity begins, or if one could say that successful adjustment and adaptation to a particular difficulty had been achieved. For most problems, or perhaps most basic life issues, there is no single time for such a resolution to occur. The problem must be faced, evaluated, re-defined, and readapted to, again and again and again.
//  Irving Zola

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The disabled God is God for whom interdependence is not a possibility to be willed from a position of power, but a necessary condition for life. This interdependence is the fact of both justice and survival. The disabled God embodies practical interdependence, not simply willing to be interrelated from a position of power, but depending on it from a position of need.

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Idealizing the body prevents everyone, able-bodied and disabled, from identifying with and loving her/his real body. Some people can have the illusion of acceptance that comes from believing that their bodies are “close enough” to the ideal, but this illusion only draws them deeper into identifying with the ideal and into the endless task of recon­ciling the really with it. Sooner or later they must fail.
//  Susan Wendell

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Our bodies have too often been touched by hands that have forgotten out humanity and attend only to curing us.

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As linguists and anthropologists know, the act of naming someone or something grants the namer power over the named. Historically, rather than naming ourselves, the disabled have been named by medical and scientific professionals or by people who denied our full personhood.

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You can’t legislate attitudes, but the attitudinal barriers will drop the more disabled people are employed, the more they can be seen on the street and when we become not just a silent minority, but fully participating members of society.
//  Pat Wright

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The perception that disability is a private physical and emotional tragedy to be managed by psychological adjustment, rather than a stigmatized social condition to be redressed through attitudinal changes and social commitment to equality of opportunity for people with disabilities is persistent.

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Clearly disabilities place limits on individuals. So too does ordinary life place limits on people.

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As long as disability is addressed in terms of themes of sin-disability con­flation, virtuous suffering, or charitable action, it will be seen primarily as a fate to be avoided, a tragedy to be explained, or a cause to be championed rather than an ordinary life to be lived.

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Viewing suffering as means of purification and of gaining spiritual merit not only promotes the link between sin and disability but also implies that those who never experience a “cure” continue to harbour sin in their lives.

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Group oppressions are enacted in this society not primarily in official laws and policies but in informal, often unnoticed and unreflective speech, bodily reactions to others, conventional practices of everyday interactions and evaluations, aesthetic judgments, and the jokes, images, and stereotypes pervading the mass media.
//  Iris Marion Young

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Pervasive paternalism is supported by stereotypes that regard disabilities as signs of weakness, helplessness, and biological inferiority. Aversion is often rooted in people’s fears that they or someone about whom they care could become disabled.
     […]  In contrast to dominant stereotypical images of people with dis­abilities, the shared experience of people with dis­abilities em­bodies resourcefulness, independence, and persistence.

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Minority group members usually do not voluntarily join the group.

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I saw God in a sip-puff wheelchair, that is, the chair used mostly by quadri­plegics enabling them to maneuver by blowing and sucking on a strawlike device. Not an omnipotent, self-sufficient God, but neither a pitiable, suffering servant. In this moment, I beheld God as a survivor, unpitying and forthright. I recognized the incarnate Christ in the image of those judged “not feasible,” “unemployable,” with “questionable quality of life.” Here was God for me.

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Let us place ourselves in the presence of the disabled God and ask ourselves—how is God with us?

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But the telescoping our lives into simplistic categorizations of good and bad, pain and pleasure, denies the lives of people with disabilities, like all ordi­na­ry lives, are shot through with unexpected grace, overwhelming joy, and love returned. Life is simply a mixed blessing.

Nancy L. Eiesland, The Disabled God.
Towards a Liberatory Theology of Disability,
Abingdon Press, Nashville 1994.
(wyróżnienie własne)

She [Nancy Mairs] has not overcome disability and the body pain that it entails; rather, she has come to her body, tolerating its limitations and doing what she can.

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My body
is going away.
//  Nancy Mairs

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She [Nancy Mairs] becomes very clear that a body, perhaps especially a disabled body, is not a space one occupies alone.

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Now I am who I will be. A body in trouble.

(tamże)

Nancy Mairs
(1943–2016)

Autor(ka) zdjęcia nie do ustalenia,
[dostęp: 27.05.2022], źródło.