Comment from the Field

Abstract

third and final instalment in the Voice Disability seminar series was held at Liverpool Hope University between January and July 2016. Organizing and chairing this series, Dr David Bolt, Director the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies (CCDS),1 introduced attendees to a selection speakers who explored how the voice disability is conveyed through theory, representation, aesthetics, and narrative.The first speaker in this part the series was Alan Hodkinson (Liverpool Hope University), who delivered his paper The Unseeing Eye: Disability and the Hauntology Derrida's Ghost. A Story in Three Parts. Employing the three stanzas Thomas Hardy's poem The Self-Unseeing, Dr Hodkinson discussed the normalcy that exists in the cultural artefacts which reside in English schools, emphasizing how this conspiracy has contributed to the rueful erasure of the strong and proud history disabled people. Seeking to reclaim this history and thus to rewrite the present and future education in England, Dr Hodkinson drew on the theoretical Derrida and Bentham. He concluded his seminar by revealing how a utopia hope can be found in the real story disability that, when materialized, is powerful enough to disassemble Their transparent house normalcy.Two Voices and Disability: A Voice Inscription and a Voice Re-Constitution saw Tom Campbell (University Leeds) explore how categories are invented to describe particular traits that become visualized at particular historical points. Providing an example this construction, Dr Campbell emphasized how the impairment category dyslexia only becomes visible when society places value on a standardized form literacy. Using Foucault's work on genealogy and biopolitics, Dr Campbell voiced concern with how impairment categories are constituted by experts, revealing that although fruitful these categories are also inherently dangerous. This double-edged sword is demonstrated by the fact that impairment categories, while providing access to support and a unification people, simultaneously operate on a level (self-)reparation to ensure that the interests capitalism are served. Progression, Dr Campbell argued, involves reconstituting the voice disability by investigating the categories that disabled people use to define themselves.In her seminar Unexpected Anatomies: Extraordinary Bodies in Contemporary Art, Ann M. Fox (Davidson College) used the medium aesthetics to demonstrate how the voice disability works to dismantle the hierarchy that presumes the inherent superiority normalcy. With an emphasis on the politics staring, Prof. Fox drew on her experience as a co-curator three disability arts-related exhibitions, to introduce and narrate various forms art. Diverting attendees away from preconceived ideas the disabled body, she encouraged a consideration an expansive imagination the body. This visualization the body in contemporary disability art, Prof. Fox explained, foregrounds disability as a creative and regenerative force. In this instance, disability can be appreciated for the new ways knowing that it brings.Following Prof. Fox's seminar, there were two seminars scheduled that unfortunately had to be cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. 'The President has been shot': Reagan, Wounded Heroes and the Cyborg Soldier in American Science Fiction the was to be presented by Sue Smith (independent scholar). In this paper, Dr Smith was planning to discuss President Ronald Reagan, disability, and the cyborg soldier in 1980s American science fiction. …