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Overcoming the overcoming story : critical disability studies informed geneologies of compulsory heroism

University of British Columbia

The “overcomer”—the person who succeeds against all odds—has become a persistent cultural trope for persons with disability. Although it has been critiqued by the disability community for over twenty years, its employment in the media continues apace. This dissertation explores the changing and ongoing work of the overcoming narrative through a series of critical disability studies informed genealogies. Employing three analytical approaches (Genealogy as Analysis of Lines of Descent [GALD], Genealogy as Lines of Emergence [GALE], and Genealogy as Analysis of Counter-Memory [GACoM]) and three idiosyncratic styles of genealogy (Snapshot, Shifts in Historical Word Usage [SHWU], and Hotspot genealogies), I trace the course of overcoming narrative from its employment: as religious rhetoric in institutions for the blind and the deaf, as morality tales in the social reform of the Progressive Era, as propaganda in the reeducation of returning World War One soldiers, as success stories in the legitimization of rehabilitation as the third phase of medicine, and, in its most recent manifestation, as compulsory heroism in the context of the rise of the celebrity hero and large scale fundraising. I argue, extending Adrienne Rich’s compulsory heterosexuality (1994) and Rob McRuer’s compulsory able-bodiedness (2006), that, as an effect and strategy of normalization, compulsory heroism has become the only acceptable subject position made available to marginalized persons facing adversity of all kinds. Across genealogies, the wide reach of the overcoming narrative and the subject positions and subjectivities produced through three binaries become evident: the able-bodied/the-variously-other-classified, the helper/the needy, and the productive/the dependent citizen. Further, the work of overcoming narratives as tools of persuasion, devices of disavowal, techniques of depoliticization, and instruments of homogenization becomes clearer. I maintain that overcoming stories are not uniquely or even fundamentally disability stories—they are redemption stories. As such, compulsory heroism has cultural purchase in the lives of all North Americans.

Text

2017-08-24

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/62828

Interdisciplinary Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/