Textual Mainstreaming and Rhetorics of Accommodation

Abstract

In this essay I examine the problematics of mainstreaming within one site of composition studies research—the composition anthology. Specifically, I apply articulation theory and feminist disability theory to argue that the mainstreaming of disability narratives within composition readers, when articulated with a theory of individual subjectivity, legitimizes the belief that accommodation is an individualized process. Thus accommodation becomes synonymous with “fitting in,” a definition that locates the responsibility for adaptation within the “abnormal” body rather than within the institutions and ideologies that construct it as such.

Notes

¹I am grateful to RR reviewers Deborah Brandt and Anne-Marie Hall, whose insightful comments and suggestions for revision helped me rethink and clarify my argument.

²2003 also marked the publication of Sharon L. Snyder, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities.

³Currently, there exists a debate among disability educators and advocates over the meanings, purposes, and limitations of the terms, mainstreaming, inclusion, and full-inclusion. For my purposes I refer to mainstreaming as the “integration of students [or, in my case, authors] with disabilities into general education” (Kavale 202). For more on the debate, see Crockett and Kaufmen; Fuchs and Fuchs; Kavale; Westberg. For a discussion of the reasons why Deaf studies scholars and Deaf advocates oppose mainstreaming efforts for deaf students, see Brueggemann; Morse et al.; Neisser; Oliva; Padden and Humphries.

⁴According to the ADA, examples of reasonable accommodations include “job restructuring,” ready accessibility of “existing facilities used by employees,” and “acquisition or modification of equipment or devices” (Americans).

⁵Kenneth A. Kavale reports from a study of general education teachers that while many support the idea of inclusion, very few indicate a willingness to have students with disabilities in their classrooms. Their reasons include not having enough time, preparation, or support to teach students with disabilities well (206). Suzanne L. Westberg points out that in most cases students with disabilities are, in fact, placed in mainstream public school classrooms without adequate preparation of teachers or students.

⁶Nancy Mairs reports (“Re: Question”) that her essay has been anthologized in sixteen different composition readers.

⁷For example, in The Writer's Presence, all four essays appear. In Open Questions the essays by Cooper, Staples, and Mairs appear in a section titled, “Are We Our Bodies?” Fifty Great Essays anthologizes the essays by Mairs, Staples, and Walker. In The Norton Reader, 10th ed, the essays by Mairs and Walker appear in a section titled, “Personal Report.”

⁸That Mairs's essay might be useful to beginning doctors for precisely these reasons is perhaps evinced by its inclusion in a syllabus targeted to medical students. Johanna Shapiro and Jerome Tobis, who teach a course in the Program in Medical Humanities and Arts at the University of California–Irvine, state in their syllabus that the course's purposes include “help[ing] residents learn to see through their patients' eyes 2) provid[ing] residents with literary tools that can help them think differently about their patients 3) explor[ing] and at times challeng[ing] conventional wisdom about a) disability b) noncompliance c) the doctor–patient relationship.”

⁹For an example of the way composition textbook editors authorize readings that construct unified and stable subjectivities, consider the following description of the editors' selection criteria in their preface to The Writer's Presence: These selections were chosen because each displays “the presence of an individual imagination attempting to explore the self, shape information into meaning, or contend with issues through discussion and debate” (vi).

¹⁰For examples, see Axelrod and Cooper; Kennedy et al.; Kirszner and Mandell.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julie Jung

Julie Jung is Associate Professor of English at Illinois State University, where she teaches courses in rhetorical theory, composition theory, and writing, with an emphasis on theories and practices of revision. Her book, Revisionary Rhetoric, Feminist Pedagogy, and Multigenre Texts, won the 2005 W. Ross Winterowd Award for most outstanding book in composition theory.