This blog is meant to be used as an example for first-year composition students. Rhonda is a fictional community college student who will perpetually be taking the two-course sequence. This is her online writing and research journal (her 2012 research entries run from 1/20-5/5/2012; Eng101 reading journal that year runs from 8/22-12/5/12). For an explanation of the course, see below for Rethinking Teaching the Research Paper.
One of the sources that I'm going to use for my paper is Disability Theory, by Tobin Siebers. His ideas are really interesting, and I got a ton of material out of the book, especially from the part about the ideology of ability, which he says is “at its simplest the
preference for able-bodiedness.At its
most radical, it . . . set[s] the measure of body and mind that gives or denies
human status to individual persons” (8). Pretty tough, huh? I never thought about this before, but I know I've seen people act like a disabled person wasn't human (the worst time -- it's a long story -- was when I saw a man get really disgusted when he saw a woman in a wheelchair. I couldn't believe it). Anyway, Siebers has a list of what he calls “ideas, narratives, myths, and stereotypes” (9) that are current in our culture, and some of them really fit how Quaritch treats Jake in the movie. The two that struck me the hardest are "Nondisabled people have the right to choose when
to be able-bodied.Disabled people must
try to be as able-bodied as possible all the time," and "It is better to be dead than disabled." He's right, and I'll talk more about it in my next post.
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