Graduate Journal of Social Science

Articles

• Transforming Cultures of (Un)Desirability: Creating Cultures of Resistance

  Loree Erickson

  • Abstract

    One of the most insidious and comprehensive ways to marginalize people is to make them question their loveability, their desirability, their collective worth, and establish social organization that reinforces and perpetuates these systemic harms; while internalizing dominance and personalizing oppression. This process is what I am referring to when I say cultures of undesirability. Cultures of undesirability involve the narrowing of dominant western cultural imaginary so that marginalized others come to be so often understood and constructed as both “less than” and “too much,” if we are understood as persons at all. As strong as cultures of undesirability are, our resistance is stronger. Queercrip porn, an emerging form of sexual storytelling, shares and fosters queercrip knowledges, pleasures and imaginings. In this essay, I want to share how queercrip porn highlights the multitude of ways marginalized communities navigate and transform cultures of undesirability, acts as a method for fostering resiliency through building and nurturing our collective worth; and finally, how queercrip porn interrupts dominant cultural and structural ways of thinking, being and organizing that contribute to sexual marginalization and cultures of undesirability.

    Keywords

    queercrip porn, Disability, cultures of un/desirability, resistance and resilience

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  • pp. 11–22

• Disabling Sexualities: Embodiments of a Colonial Past

  Omolola A. Ladele

  • Abstract

    Disability studies in postcolonial Africa appear circumscribed by two significant paradoxes. First, there is the abysmally low legislative, political and infrastructural support for persons living with disabilities. The second paradox which seems to amplify the first is that there is a palpable silence on disability discourses in African literary debates; a possible indication of some of the prejudices that underwrite the positions of persons with disabilities. In addition, African identities have been inexorably altered by the imbalances in the power relations of the colonial experience and some fictional representations of the disequilibrium of the Empire/colony interface illustrate how people can be differently constructed and disabled by privileged and normative discourses. Thus, the emergent patterns of bodily dismemberment in African subjects are, in this essay, read as thematic and, in a paradoxical sense as aesthetic motifs of Empire’s systemic deconstruction and disarticulation of the colonised. This essay examines the twin subjects of disability and sexuality as both culturally defined yet individually embodied semiotic representations of postcolonial subjects. Giving examples from the novels of Tsitsi Dangarembga, which are set within the sociopolitical context of postcolonial Zimbabwe, this essay critically examines the novelist’s character portraitures. In our analyses, we largely deploy critical tools from disability studies in an attempt to demonstrate how the political resonances of their lived experiences are inscribed into African bodies and how these historically differentiated bodies become fractured and simultaneously reconstructed.

    Keywords

    sexuality, Disability, African fiction, reconstructing bodies, Tsitsi Dangarembga

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  • pp. 23–39

• Fighting Pain with Pain: Bob Flanagan/Sheree Rose and Catherine Opie

  Alessandra Mondin

  • Abstract

    This article focuses on a sample of the artworks created by three American artists: Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose, whose collaboration also generated several performance pieces, and Catherine Opie, who mainly works with documentary photography. In the works analysed here, Flanagan/Rose and Opie use physical pain to tackle mental pain stemming from their different disabilities: for Flanagan it is the physical disability of his chronic illness, for Opie it is the “social disability” of the stigma attached to her sexual orientation. Their works and their lives are strongly interconnected and the divide between private and public is blurred: the personal becomes political. Flanagan and Rose are able to complexify gender and sexuality through the use of BDSM and the redefinition of pain and pleasure. The outcome of their work focuses on the dynamics of their 24/7 sadomasochistic relationship and is the questioning of hegemonic masculinity and normative femininity. The reappropriation and exploitation of medical and cultural discourses about illness and sexual deviance questions heteronormative sexuality and problematises the obliteration of the sexuality of the disabled.1 Troubling and expanding representational regimes in their work, Flanagan and Rose put forward the corporeality of disability to show pain, which is invisible and escapes language (Scarry 1985; Aydede 2009). As well as Flanagan and Rose, Opie troubles the representation of the LGBTQ community in Western society and uses pain to fight the pain that comes from the minority stress provoked by discrimination and oppression (Meyer 2003). Also, she contrasts through reappropriation the stereotype that conflates sexual deviance, homosexuality, and BDSM. In order to achieve all this, the triptych-like self-portraits that are in dialogue with one another deploy, aside from the influence of the history of photography, the formal qualities of the official portraiture of Renaissance paintings. Moreover, she opposes and problematises the normalising currents in the gay and lesbian community – marriage and kinship – and expands the idea and the representation of lesbian sexuality and identity – especially lesbian motherhood. Thus, through representational strategies that are entangled with the use of her embodiment and her lived experience, Opie is able to address mental pain through her work.

    Keywords

    Disability, pain, BDSM, performance art, body art, photography, LGBTQ

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  • pp. 40–65

• Of love, fears and dreams: Narratives of wives of soldiers disabled in war

  Shyamani Hettirarachchi

  • Abstract

    Context The long drawn-out war in Sri Lanka, though now ended, has resulted in a high incidence of war-related injuries and disabilities and an arguably high, yet unaccounted incidence of trauma. There is at present some research, though very limited, documenting the effects of trauma on self-image among soldiers following war-injuries or disabilities in Sri Lanka (Fernando & Jayatunge, 2012; Jayatunge, 2008). There has been no focus on exploring the potential impact of a serviceman’s or servicewoman’s war-related disabilities on their significant partner within the Sri Lankan context. What is the lived experience of wives of soldiers disabled in war in Sri Lanka?

    Methods This study explored the potential emotional and psychological effects of war and disability on relationships post-war in a phenomenological study documenting the lived experience of female partners. It focuses on the narratives of five female partners of military servicemen wounded in war, collecting data through observations, semi-structured-interviews and dramatherapy techniques of image, artwork and letters. To understand the narratives of the participants, the researcher used models of disability and constructions of gender and masculinities to underpin data collection and analysis.

    Results Three main themes and five subthemes emerged through an inductive (Data-driven) and deductive (theory-driven) analysis using the principles of Framework Analysis (Ritchie & Spencer, 1994). The main themes were fears, love and dreams, while the subthemes included reaction, abandonment, reliance, resilience and sacrifice and blessing.

    Discussion Factors connected to disability and gender which permeated the narratives of the participants represent a tension between female normative traits, roles and responsibilities and the leadership role of primary caregiver and breadwinner assumed by women following their husband’s war-related disability. The women appear to navigate through masculinist spaces while simultaneously facing negative societal reactions to disability. The findings may be useful to be considered in discussions of psychosocial support for soldiers disabled in war and their partners at the level of policy and practice.

    Keywords

    Disability, soldiers, wives, narratives, gender

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  • pp. 66–95

• Understanding and Exploring the Effects of Informal Care on the Sexual Self: A Disability Perspective

  Andrea McCarthy

  • Abstract

    This journal edition explores the complex relationship between disability and sexuality for people receiving informal care provided from a family member or partner. Rarely does academic literature explore the personal experience, identity and the private relationships of disabled people, particularly within the context of care. As such both scholars and social workers have largely undermined disabled people’s ability to control their own lives; including their sexual identity and intimate relationships within care settings. Within this paper I argue that the extent to which sexual agency can be exercised is influenced by intersecting parts of people’s lives, such as having independence and supportive social networks. This paper will explore the complexities of personal relationships amongst disabled people receiving informal care, examining the limitations to intimacy and wider social life. Informal care can be extremely disempowering for both carers and those being cared for, often regulating their lives through the imposition of routine and structure, leaving little room for spontaneity. Therefore, for some disabled people and their carers this regulation and control of everyday life can have a significant impact on personal relationships, self-esteem and independence. Using case studies based on face-to-face interviews, this paper will explore the impact of informal care on personal relationships of people with a range of physical, mental and learning impairments. I propose that academia and social care professionals can learn from the personal experiences of the active disabled voice within research, particularly in relation to exploring intersectionality.

    Keywords

    Disability, sexuality, sexual agency, informal care, intimacy

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  • pp. 96–117

• Love, sex, disability, coming out and John Travolta in New York and Jerusalem: A twenty-year journey

  Scott Sheidlower

  • No abstract available.
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  • pp. 118–124

Book Reviews

• Wannabe people and the desirability of the disabled body: a film review of Armless (HabibAzar. 2010)

  Andrea García-Santesmases

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  • pp. 125–129

• Neoliberalism and regimes of Life and Death: A Book Review of Queer Necropolitics edited by Jin Haritaworn, Adi Kunstman and Silvia Posocco

  Heather Tucker

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  • pp. 130–136