A culture of silence: modes of objectification and the silencing of disabled bodies

Abstract

Throughout history different practices have attempted to silence the experiences of disabled people. In this paper we explore some of these practices including the medical, familial, and self-subjugating practices English-speaking Canadian polio survivors experienced throughout their lives. We analyze participant’s experiences of silence and silencing through a Foucauldian lens, drawing on the three modes of objectification to explain the institutional and cultural discourses around polio subjects that acted upon and through the polio body to silence it. Participants’ oral history accounts demonstrate how sociocultural and medical practices effectively silenced survivors from speaking about their polio experiences. However, the trope of silence is also uprooted within oral history traditions. We will demonstrate how participants broke their silence and shifted their perspectives on polio and disability, and how this process contributed to their resistance of hegemonic conceptualizations of disability as defective.

Keywords:

• disability
• silence
• enfleshment (enfleshed)
• oral history
• modes of objectification
• polio

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This paper is part of a larger academic–community research project that focuses on documenting the oral life histories – including participants’ activist work and experiences – of Canadians who contracted polio prior to 1955.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council [grant number 410–2009-2272], awarded to Karen K. Yoshida as Principal Investigator.