SOC 202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Disability Studies, Reinforcement, Ableism

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 202
• Professor: Laura Thrasher

Document Summary

Part 1: the freak show: public ritual and transitional moment. Who counted as freak: disabled people, non-disabled people of colour from colonized countries, non-disabled people of colour from the u. s, non-disabled people with visible differences. The freak show did, by carefully constructing an exaggerated divide between normal" and other (p. 87) Who else was made at the freak show: they came to gawk to be educated and entertained, titillated and repulsed. They came to have their ideas of normal and abnormal, superior and inferior, their sense of self, confirmed and strengthened (clare, 2015: 86) Part 2: disability and the politics of display. The history of disabled people in the western world is in part the history of being on display, of being visually conspicuous while politically and socially erased (garland thomson, 2002, p. 56) I relish the knowledge that there have been people who have taken advantage of white people"s and non-disabled people"s urge to gawk.