Enabling the Past: New Perspectives in the History of Disability

The first UK-based history of disability conference, organized by Julie Anderson and Ana Carden-Coyne, attracted scholars from the UK, Europe and America. The Wellcome Trust, The Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology and the Centre for the Cultural History of War (both at the University of Manchester) provided the sponsorship that made this important meeting possible. Much to the surprise and delight of delegates the weather trumped all expectations: the typical wet weather of Manchester was replaced by sunshine! A broad range of papers provided the basis for lively discussion in the question periods and during the breaks. The authors of these exciting papers used a variety of materials and sources to retrieve disability's past. Prominent events and major historical processes were analyzed and talked about by some; while others looked at briefer moments and the lives of 'ordinary' people. Taken together, these papers showed the failings of the usual grand historical narrative in relation to disability and demonstrated the creative and inventive ways in which historians can write disabled people into general historical patterns. A major strength of the conference was the enthusiasm with which delegates had excavated so many separate and fascinating histories of people with particular conditions and related them to major historical issues – war, medicine, politics, religion, education, institutionalization, social policy. The success of this conference calls loudly for more of its ilk and rallies historians to dive further and deeper into uncharted archives or to reconsider the familiar in the fresh light provided by disability.

The major challenge for historians of disability was laid bare from the outset by Paul Longmore (San Francisco State) in his keynote paper. Paul explored the phenomenon of American telethons, televised charitable events that raise money for disabled groups. In his tale of telethons, Paul expertly wove together Hollywood glamour (especially Jerry Lewis), disabled people, American business and the media. He unmasked the views and representations that define, and oppress, disabled people, but also, more importantly, showed how the study of disability discourses can illuminate American society more generally. For example, Paul explained how the discourses of disability were redeployed with great effect in 'humanizing' corporate and managerial values. Zina Weygand (CNAM, Paris) the second keynote speaker, presented the history of deaf-mutes and the blind in a long chronological sweep from the Middle Ages to the age of the Enlightenment. She displayed the enormous potential of disability to problematize conventional and time-honoured periodization, and argued for the centrality of disability discourse in the project of Enlightenment and Revolutionary France. The third keynote speaker – Jeffrey Reznick (National Museum of Health and Medicine, Washington) – talked about disabled war veterans. He moved beyond the conventional approach by linking disability to material culture associated with rememorialization and memory during and after the Great War.

A number of papers continued to explore the positioning of disability in societal discourses. Bertrand Taithe (Manchester), in his study of the amputees of the Franco-Prussian war, demonstrated that the treatment and plight of amputees after the conflict mirrored that of the nation after the loss of Alsace-Lorraine. Bertrand showed how Alsace-Lorraine was literally represented in popular images of the conflict as a lost limb! Heather Perry (University of Indiana), in her study of Germany after the Great War, showed how the rehabilitation of disabled veterans became inextricably bound up with the larger social and political project of rebuilding the nation after the upheaval of war. Heather also folded a nuanced reading of gender into her analysis, arguing that disability played a key role in re-establishing the traditional gender order erased by the war effort in the era of reconstruction. Connections between gender and disability were explored by others too. For example Wendy Gagen (Essex) focused in on the desires of J. B. Middlebrook, who was injured in the First World War and whose personal reflections on his 'damaged' body revealed normative ideas on bodily appearance and refracted Edwardian codes of masculinity. Jessica Meyer (Cambridge) broadened this discussion, arguing that reflections on masculinity and age complicated medical definitions of shellshock and neurasthenia. Deborah...