*CLASSWORK

Classwork Wed. 9/8/1 Skills: paraphrase, quotation, reading with the grain, "they say" (vs. "I say") From Simi Linton's "Reassigning Meaning"
 * Dominant culture's meaning of disability || Linton's meaning ||
 * * Linton explains that "the term disability, as it has been used in general parlance, appears to signify something material and concrete, a physical or psychological condition considered to have predominantly medical significance" (224).
 * Linton discusses how "the medicalization of disability casts human variation as deviance from the norm, as pathological condition, as deficit, and, significantly, as an individual burden and personal tragedy" (224).
 * According to Linton, the medical model believes that the problem is physical and is in the person rather social or political and in society or the environment (224).
 * According to the medical model, there is a particular "perfect" or "normal" body or mind that we all should try to attain.
 * The medical model assumes that disability is a personal burden which the person must take on themselves; in other words, the medical model says that society does not necessarily have to change the way it thinks or acts.
 * The medical model believes in "overcoming" a disability (228).
 * Anything considered "abnormal" is stigmatized or seen as a deficit (230-31).
 * The medical model relies heavily upon the idea of disability. Various industries are built up and supported because of the idea of disability; yet the medical model presumes it would be better if disability did not exist (224). || * According to Linton, the disability studies perspective (her perspective) does not have any use for the medical definition of disability (223).
 * In other words, Linton resists the medical model.
 * Linton believes it is not helpful to pity someone with a disability (233).
 * Disability is a cultural identity similar to race, class, or gender (223).
 * Linton emphasizes the sociopolitical meanings of disability over the physical and medical ones (224).
 * For Linton, words and phrases like "afflicted," "wheelchair bound," and "suffering from" are not in the interest of disability studies (232-233).
 * Linton thinks it is important that people can name themselves and that they have control over how they are defined.
 * The disability studies perspective believes that there is no neutral, universal position of "normal" (230-232).
 * Disability is a natural human variation (224).
 * Linton explains why the concept of "overcoming" is problematic for people with disabilities (228-29); the phrase signifies that the one can not succees //with// a disability but rather must "overcome" it to succeed.
 * The normal and abnormal are not absolute categories but rather are random designations (230-31). ||

9/29/10 Peer Review of Visual Rhetorical Analysis Draft

10/11/10 Invention work for argument essay

11/1/10