Discerning the Disability and Its Interpersonal Knowledge - Working Notes in a Blind-Differentiation World

• Main Authors: Shuai, Tsung-Chi, 帥宗琪
• Other Authors: Hsia, Ling-Ching
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/jugswb

碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 心理學系 === 100 === This thesis is in two parts: the first part examines the social situation of “disability,” the second is a record of interpersonal knowledge (connaissance). As a visually disabled researcher in a world of the seeing the method of action research helps me to rearrange my life and experiences and transform these into the bases of continuing life practices. In the first part of the thesis, through contrasting two sets of life development processes: wherein the self “discerns” disability and where one “distinguishes” how others (the non-disabled and otherwise disabled persons) categorize the social existence of the disabled. I use self-narrative to comb through and critically understand my educational formation and work experiences. In the first part, I write of my experiences at the school for the visually disabled, as well as my later education in a university and subsequent work experiences. I use the metaphor of fish and monkey, living in water and land respectively, as an analogy for these stages in my own life. When the fish moves toward the monkey’s life, two previously divided worlds meet. My life at the school for the visually disabled was like that of a fish; my experiences in the world dominated by the seeing is then similar to a fish swimming ashore, wanting to climb a monkey’s tree. The process shows up the hegemonic institutions geared toward the seeing that enable visually disabled people’s inner drive to become “monkey species” (socialization), all the while sensitive to the stigma marking one’s body, wherein is contained the very despising and weakening force of the viewpoint that differentiates abled/disabled, ultimately shored up by all these institutions. The twelve years of education at the visually disabled school, in contrast to today’s new assimilatory educational policy, shows up the cumulative sense of “group identity” that is part of my formation. This “group identity” is also a life force buttressing my struggle forward amidst frustrations in the world of the seeing. In the second part, “a record of interpersonal knowledge,” I begin with a critical viewpoint on visual disability and its effects on myself via my own struggles. Through narrating the relationship between two differently disabled persons, my record moves toward discovering the real social situation as well as unique “knowledge of persons” that is activated beneath as well as through external markers of disability. Finally, the I arrive at a technical college in which counseling center I meet with many disabled students, whose experiences form the bases for my and my colleagues to formulate a collective experiment in education. In this experiment, I move forward with the realization of an ideal for and of disability. Disability, in how it affects the realities of individual lives, cannot be circled around and avoided, yet this identity is only the entry point to learn among ourselves in this educational site. When I describe the interactions between these students and other people, it is in the belief that through these descriptions of everyday interactions is represented that which effects disability, formative rules and regulations, character and social morality and other such survival forms; as well as the interpretations and anxieties of past and present teachers and family members. All of these cannot be comprehended with and by the naming of disability. In this way, this record is not just a record of work, but an ongoing practice that is continuously corrected as it is recreated into a collective body (of practice-knowledge). The last four chapters narrate the many encounters and students that I have worked with, as well as the projects that my colleagues and I have formulated. In these processes students have gone through equalizing conflicts and struggles, so as to all the more carefully and finely discern what parts might constitute disability, character, disciplining and regulatory forces that have been repressed and transformed, what are the possible performances of beautiful and rich feelings in action that might be hidden within that which is marked disability. I think such a record provides a space to reconsider that disability which for the disabled has been unspoken and irrational, and therefore extended into the misunderstood and misjudged. A record of “discerning disability” and “interpersonal knowledge” focuses on direct and real life encounters and meetings of emotions between people; it happens through willingness to be near in the body, and to support and understand one another. Through this knowledge production, I hope to enable the opening up in society of all kinds of survival spaces that will, for all those formed in weird and strange ways, allow for differently wondrous flowerings.