Organizer: Steven L. Riep, Brigham Young University
Chair: D. Sabina Knight, Smith College
People with disabilities are fast becoming one of the most important minority
groups in the Chinese-speaking world today. Cutting across gender, ethnic, religious,
and class boundaries, disabilities and the disabled have become a focus in recent
literature, film, and media coverage in China and Taiwan. While some old stereotypes
and stigmas have faded, others remain and new concerns ranging from the use
of the disabled in educational propaganda to government-sponsored employment
programs for the disabled have come to the fore. This panel will explore how
writers, filmmakers, and disability activists critique prevailing definitions
and valuations of disability.
Sarah Dauncey’s paper explores the relationship
between the state, society, and the individual in contemporary China through
the ways in which the PRC government has encouraged the production of life
stories of the disabled for use as models for emulation in educational propaganda.
In his study of the clash between Western medical discourse, local disabled-rights
NGOs, and the transnational disability rights movements, Chang Heng-hao investigates
how local and global stakes collide in identifying and classifying disabilities
and confronting social stigmas in contemporary Taiwan. By drawing on feminist
disability studies and through comparisons with Russian works, Sabina Knight
shows how the disabled represent larger populations excluded by instrumental
and impersonal market rationalities and reappraises what terms such as inferior,
unfit, or useless may mean. Steve Riep discusses how contemporary Chinese films
have both reinforced and overturned stereotypes of the visually disabled and
critiqued government efforts to create employment programs for them.
Sarah Dauncey, University of Sheffield
This paper examines the production of life stories of disabled people in
post-reform China and the appropriation of certain life writing by the Chinese
state in its campaign to promote “socialist spiritual civilization”.
It will consider why some individuals write about their own disability or
have their stories told by others, as well as the role and motives of the state
in publicizing such narratives. The paper thereby aims to contribute to an enhanced
understanding of the relationship between state, society, and individual,
and the implications for the construction and reception of disabled identities
in post-reform China.
Since 1977, it has become increasingly common for disabled people in China
to be the subjects of both fictional and non-fictional life narratives (notably,
but not exclusively, in the cinematic context), and it is clear that there
are divergences in the way in which these narratives are represented, particularly
if fashioned by others. In either case, the Chinese state has played a pivotal
role in encouraging the production of the life stories of a wide range of
disabled people and has used them for educational propaganda purposes. As it
has moved away from traditional “picture-perfect” heroes, new models
such as disabled writer Zhang Haidi (author of several semi-autobiographical
works including Dreams from a Wheelchair) have come to the fore. Their experiences
simultaneously articulate issues relating to personal identity and provide
models for public emulation.
Heng-hao Chang, Nanhua University
The literature of disability studies generally recognizes that the rise of
capitalism and the formation of modern nation states shapes the social understanding
of disability. In Taiwan, a late-developed country, the confrontation between
Western medical discourse and local disability rights movements has destabilized
and reshaped the social meanings of disabilities in the era of globalization.
This paper analyzes the construction of disabilities in post-1949 Taiwan
in three areas: assigned readings in the public education system, the government
classification system for people with disabilities, and the linguistic tactics
of disability rights non-governmental organizations. First, in public school
textbooks, disabilities were viewed largely as personal tragedies and stories
of disabled people were used to inspire others to overcome their individual
difficulties. Second, while social welfare professionals and disability rights
activists advocated for a model of disability that incorporated a social
support system rather than simply defining disability as a personal medical
condition, Western medical classification models still dominated the government’s
system for identifying disabilities. Third, disability rights NGOs such as Xihaner
(Parents’ Association for People with Intellectual Disabilities) and Kenna
Yuan (Association for People with Kanner's Syndrome) contested both traditional
and medical methods for naming disabilities and confronted social stigmas
attached to disabilities. Finally, I argue that globalization plays a contradictory
role in shaping the meaning of disability in Taiwan. While the hegemony of Western
medical terminology dominates the definition of disabilities, disability
rights NGOs are empowered by the transnational disability rights movement to
contest the meanings and naming of disabilities.
D. Sabina Knight, Smith College
Drawing on perspectives from feminist disability studies, this paper examines
depictions of diverse human conditions from Down’s syndrome to aging in
recent fiction from the PRC, Taiwan, and Russia. First, I read representations
of disfigurement in Liu Xinwu’s “Huchenghebian de Huiguniang” (Cinderella
by the City Moat, 1996) and of “weak intelligence” (ruozhi) in Yu
Hua’s “Wo meiyou ziji de mingzi” (I Have No Name of My Own,
1995) and Xia Shang’s “Erfenzhiyi de Shagua” (Half Idiot,
2000). Second, I compare these PRC works with Taiwan author Zhang Qijiang’s
Daomangzhe (The Guide, 1997) and Russian works by Liudmila Ulitskaia and
Tatyana Tolstaya.
I interpret these works’ “disabled” characters as an indicator
species for populations left out or disabled by market rationalities that treat
human beings as instrumental, exchangeable quantities. These works’ insights
into human vulnerability and interdependency challenge ideologies of normalcy
that ascribe disability only to certain people, stigmatize dependency, and create
images of supposedly independent, mechanized workers, well suited to strictures
of efficiency and production. To explore how such social prejudices shape understandings
not only of those designated disabled, but also of femininity, illness, aging
and dependency, my third section finds parallels in Bi Shumin’s novel
Zhengjiu rufang (Save the Breast, 2003) and Qu Lan’s reportage “Laonian
beige” (The Dirge of Old Age, 2003). I end with reflections on what it
means to consider oneself or others as inferior, unfit, or useless, and how
rejecting utilitarian views opens new perspectives on attractiveness and
infirmity, happiness and suffering, dignity and dependency.
Steven L. Riep, Brigham Young University
Visual disabilities have been subject to stereotypes in traditional and modern
China. Through the mid-twentieth century, misconceptions about compensatory
sensory abilities that supposedly resulted from visual impairments meant that
the visually disabled worked primarily as fortunetellers and musicians, if they
worked at all. In recent decades, the PRC government has set up massage therapy
training programs to provide employment for the blind, which have both helped
and hindered opportunities for their educational and professional advancement.
That traditional views and modern policies have tended to marginalize and constrain,
rather than liberate those with visual disabilities, is amply illustrated in
contemporary Chinese cinema.
This paper will explore how Chinese filmmakers have addressed prevailing
conceptions of the visually disabled. I will demonstrate how Tian Zhuangzhuang’s
The Blue Kite sublimates disability issues to political critique in his treatment
of the loss of individual agency. Chen Kaige’s Life on a String, I contend,
works against the role of the blind musician as savant to show new possibilities
for inclusion and equality. I will contrast the treatment of young blind women
in Chen Guoxing’s Colors of the Blind, which tends to reproduce stereotypes
of the visually disabled found in other world cinemas, with Zhang Yimou’s
Happy Times, which works against common misconceptions of visual disability
to offer new perspectives on blindness in China. Finally, I conclude by reading
the Pang Brothers’ horror film The Eye as a critique of the need for a
cure and a call for acceptance of disability on its own grounds.
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