Cognitive Disability Aesthetics: Visual Culture, Disability, Representations, and the (In)Visibility of Cognitive Difference by Benjamin Fraser (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Cognitive Disability Aesthetics: Visual Culture, Disability, Representations, and the (In)Visibility of Cognitive Difference by Benjamin Fraser Elizabeth J. Jones Benjamin Fraser. Cognitive Disability Aesthetics: Visual Culture, Disability, Representations, and the (In)Visibility of Cognitive Difference. Buffalo: U of Toronto P, 2018. 257p. While disability studies as a field has grown substantially in recent decades, from Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s Extraordinary Bodies (1997) to Mitchell and Snyder’s seminal Narrative Prosthesis (2000), bodily difference has taken center stage while cognitive disabilities have been relegated to the margins. Benjamin Fraser’s most recent work moves beyond this focus on the physical to what he deems a second-wave of disability studies that examines frequently ignored cognitive disabilities. His emphasis on the cognitive coupled with an interest in the seldom investigated Spanish context makes Cognitive Disability Aesthetics doubly innovative. Fraser has previously written prolifically on disability in Spain and now builds and centers his critical lens exclusively on the visual culture of cognitive disabilities. Doing so highlights the way that they are made visible. In the process of analyzing Spanish texts, exhibitions, or films, he provides English translations, thus supporting his goal to “bring Anglophone readers [End Page 322] exposure to the Spanish context” while pushing Hispanic cultural and literary studies to include cognitive disability (19). To achieve these goals, Cognitive Disability Aesthetics is divided into two parts, each with three chapters, and an introduction and conclusion. “Part One: Theorizing Visual Disability Representations” establishes a theoretical framework that is then expanded and particularized in the textual analysis in “Part Two: Cognition, Collaboration and Community.” Part One’s most distinctive feature is Fraser’s ability to inhabit paradoxes and gaps in a way that demonstrates the rich zones in the visual culture of cognitive disability and invites further examination. For example, Chapter 1 studies canonical works in a way that both highlights their utility and underscores their marginalization of cognitive difference. Similarly, Chapter 2 does not reject negative or flat visual representations of cognitive disability. Instead, along with deficits and ableism, their examination reveals spaces of transgression. Chapter 3 continues this work of acknowledging deficits while highlighting utility. Fraser explores how visual forms can provide unique insight into the materiality of the cognitive disability experience, even though many might question the ability of cognitively able creators and producers to make such representations. Part Two applies this framework to particular representations using a diverse range of examples: the Trazos Singulares (2011) public exhibition, which artists with developmental disabilities helped create; movies; documentaries; and graphic novels such as María cumple 20 años (2015), a collaboration between a daughter with autism and her cognitively able father. These examples show how visual forms can encourage collaboration between the cognitively able and those with disabilities. Nonetheless, Fraser acknowledges why some would view such co-created visual representations as superficial or limited, while still asserting that they “may open a pathway toward understanding the experience of cognitive disability in an ableist world” (135). Chapter 5 treats Paco Roca’s 2008 graphic novel Arrugas, which features characters with Alzheimer’s. After establishing a basis for connecting aging and dementia to disability studies, Fraser evaluates its visual and textual components and establishes that the graphic novel highlights issues of interdependency and temporality in a way that both “problematizes and humanizes the Alzheimer’s experience” (147). By observing the visual representation and individual experience of schizophrenia in Abel García Roure’s documentary Una cierta verdad (2008), he stresses the need for a social model of cognitive disability that includes psychiatric illness. Fraser’s combination of theory and textual examination underscores the mutually-beneficial relationship between Anglo- and Hispanophone disability studies that has yet to be fully explored. He demonstrates how [End Page 323] traditional disability studies approaches can be utilized to illuminate Spanish texts. Similarly, he signals the gaps and gray spaces in canonical disability studies theory and how investigations beyond the Anglophone world can deepen our understanding of disability. Additionally, Fraser’s unique, exclusive focus on cognitive disability magnifies the lack of similar studies in Anglo- or Hispanophone realms. Fraser’s book does not claim to be a disability studies primer. It targets an audience with...