Scarred Bodies’ Fierce Beauty

Randy Kennedy describes the work of artist Ted Meyer, who focuses on the scarring of the body, as a “Fierce Beauty” in a recent article in the New York Times (October 4, 2006).  More on the exhibit itself can be found here.  Is this a refiguring of aesthetics (the nature of the beautiful)?  Is “fierce beauty” a provocation? a denial of beauty? Does aestheticizing scarification somehow diminsh its visceral impact?  Or is this a new topography of the body?  And how do we respond in terms of desire, or our investments in the body and body politics?

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Pimp my walker

Writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer(Sunday, Sept. 24, 2006), Melissa Dribben reports on the broader implications of “disability chic” in “Pimp my walker”:

“It falls into the category of positive identity, like African American dreads,” says Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, director of graduate studies in the Women’s Studies department of Emory University [and participating in this conference].  “The wheelchair, for example, used to be a medical thing that grandmothers used. . .” As evidenced in Murderball, the 2005 film about quadriplegic rugby players, she says, the chairs may be viewed now as extremely cool, high-tech sports equipment. Garland-Thomson cites the success of fashion model, actress and NCAA athlete Aimee Mullins as a measure of the rise of disability chic. “To transfer disability from Jerry Lewis’ telethon and charity posters to quad rugby and Aimee Mullins is to really move it into a different cultural space.”

“The border between people with disabilities and those without is the most permeable of all,” says Garland-Thomson, who was born with foreshortened arms and missing fingers.  “People who are not disabled can become disabled in an instant.  It is an identity available to all of us at all times.”

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Reuters: India’s disabled find power in the law

Daniel Sorid at Reuters wrote an article about how the disabled in India are winning accessibility lawsuits:

Tired of waiting for the government to safeguard their rights to pray, work, learn and travel, India’s 22 million disabled people are increasingly turning to the courts.

So far, the strategy has yielded some surprising victories.

The article outlines a few triumphs that legal activism by organizations for the disabled have achieved. However, the disabilities rights law is still rather weak:

Vasim Khan, a polio victim who lives in India’s technology capital of Bangalore, rides to school on a wooden plank with wheels that he propels by scraping his palms against the ground. Once there, he crawls up 24 steps to reach his classroom.

Vasim, the 10-year-old son of an impoverished tomato seller, has received few of the benefits of the landmark disability act.

While he does get a free education, he has no wheelchair to get him to school or a wheelchair ramp to access the building and his teachers are not trained to teach the disabled.

A quiet child who has difficulty reading and writing, Vasim experiences daily pain.

“It makes my wrists hurt,” he said, holding out hands swollen from the strain of pushing his wooden board to get around.

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