Reason's other: the emergence of the disabled subject in the Northern renaissance

Abstract

By the late fifteenth century, the debate over the role of reason and the constitution of the human subject freed public discourse from its reliance on God and placed the rational individual at the centre of social and political thought. The emphasis on rationality necessitated a parallel discourse on its opposite—‘reason’s Other'. In this period, representations of disabled people change in response to this new paradigm. Late medieval cultural documents, such as those of Brant and Bosch, employ folly as a metaphorical device, associated with the qualities of Everyman. However, with the rise of renaissance humanism, the benign metaphors of folly associated with the abstract everyman quickly become inscribed on the bodies of those people who would be constructed as reason's ‘Other’—people with intellectual and physical disabilities—and the abstract discourse of folly is transformed into a much more direct representational association of disability with depravity.

What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! … the paragon of animals! Hamlet II.ii

Notes

* School of Social Work and Family Studies, 2080 West Mall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2. Email: [email protected]

Generally applied to the renaissance in European countries north of the Alps.

I will use the terminology of the day which can be offensive in our contemporary context, but if sanitized would in a very real sense mask the oppressive power of the language and the historical reality.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tim Stainton *

* School of Social Work and Family Studies, 2080 West Mall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2. Email: [email protected]