The Disability Studies Reader Quotes

“Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society”
― Lennard J. Davis, The Disability Studies Reader

“Disabilities, despite their affinities with beautifiction procedures, are imagined, in contrast, to be random transformations that move the body away from ideal forms. Within the visual economy in which appearance has come to be the primary index of value for women, feminizing practices normalize the female body, while disabilities abnormalize it. Feminization prompts the gaze, while disability prompts the stare. Feminization alterations increase a woman's cultural capital, while disabilities reduce it.”
― Lennard J. Davis, The Disability Studies Reader

“...the figure of the disabled woman is best apprehended as a product of conceptual triangulation. She is a cultural third term, a figure constituted by the originary binary pair of the masculine figure and the feminine figure. Thus, the disabled female figure occupies an intragender position; that is, she is not only defined against the masculine figure, but she is imagined as the antithesis of the normative woman as well.”
― Lennard J. Davis, The Disability Studies Reader