A History Profession for Every Body

At the heart of Linda Kerber's call for a better understanding of how gender and class biases shape the modern academic workplace lies a large and vexing question: what is competence? How we define it, measure it, and who we deem worthy of passing judgment all derive from the institutional structures she critiques. At the same time, our notions of competence influence the structures themselves, shaping everything from expectations and rewards to how we think about time.

Taking Kerber's call to "re-envision how the profession is embodied" quite literally, I propose unpacking academic ideas of competence by using the perspective of disability studies. This feisty interdisciplinary field more developed by our colleagues in literature departments builds on scholarship in gender, class, race, and sexuality to offer a full interrogation of how societies understand difference and define progress.¹ Rather than view disability as an isolated pathology that befalls certain unfortunate individuals, the field invites scholars to explore how it influences social relationships and defines hierarchies. More than another "Other" to add to a growing list of oppressed groups in order to be politically correct, disability lies at the root of gender and race inequities. As disability historian Douglas Baynton points out, "[N]ot only has it been considered justifiable to treat disabled people unequally, but the concept of disability has been used to justify discrimination against other groups by attributing disability to them."² People against women's suffrage often cited women's physical and mental incapacities, while those in favor claimed that women were unfairly disabled by being denied that right. Because gender inequality has such strong links to disability, Kerber's critique thus can and should be taken further.

Disability studies offers a perspective for understanding how academics have internalized especially ableist notions of competence grounded in late-industrial capitalism. Consider the qualities our discipline most associates with proven ability, itself a loaded term: rationality, logic, stamina, productivity, efficiency, ambition, thoroughness, independence, ingenuity, creativity (within reason), reliability, good humor, and collegiality. While these values each have their merits, nearly all of them can easily be linked to the socio-economic system many scholars critique in their work. "Measuring up," "pulling one's full weight," and countless other expressions we use to evaluate our colleagues bear the unmistakable imprint of industrial capitalism's unrelenting insistence for workers that reflect value-laden notions of fitness and punctuality. Once we embark on the tenure track (note the industrial imagery), we commit to producing certain quantities within a regimented period of time, not unlike factory workers who punch clocks. The academic division of labor (and prestige) between research and teaching reflects the capitalist world's divisions between production and consumption, replete with implicit public (masculine, research) and private (feminine, teaching) spheres. And under what other socio-economic system would scholarly knowledge be assigned "value" on the "job market" according to "productivity," "output," and "ability to generate enrollment numbers"?

As research in disability history is beginning to make clear, capitalism and disability are inseparable, even as they are on a collision course; the rigors of the industrial workplace created more disabilities while the capitalist system had less patience for those who failed to conform to its highly specific demands.³ Thus it should come as no surprise that to possess the qualities we associate with academic competence, one must buy into a certain set of normative ideas regarding physical and mental health, not to mention enjoy a degree of financial and personal stability. Kerber notes the difficulties for those who must take time off from the rigors of academic life to raise a family, or to nurse a loved one (or perhaps themselves) through a period of temporary illness. Now, imagine reading, processing information, entering text, preparing and delivering lectures, grading papers, culling dossiers, negotiating the library stacks in non-standard, and therefore probably more time-consuming ways. Put differently: woe to the scholar with a disability that requires alternative paths to the same ends or who lives past fifty and is slowing down!

My point isn't to play the pity card. Rather, it is important to...