Ellen Samuels suggests that, from the mid-nineteenth century until the present day, literature, film and medico-legal discourses have utilized ‘fantasies of identification’ involving exaggerated claims of scientific or medical authority in order to categorize people along axes of race/gender/disability. She states: ‘These fantasies of identification seek to definitively identify bodies, to place them in categories delineated by race, gender, or ability status, and then to validate that placement through a verifiable, biological mark of identity’ (2). Samuels argues that ‘despite being disproved’ (3), these fantasies persist. Moreover, the specter of disability is omnipresent in such social dynamics: ‘fantasies of identification are haunted by disability even when disabled bodies are not their immediate focus’ (3).
Fantasies of Identification is divided into three parts: ‘fantasies of fakery’, ‘fantasies of marking’, and ‘fantasies of measurement.’ The section on fakery revolves around the theme of the ‘disability con’ (28): the social anxiety associated with fearing that someone is an imposter and is not really disabled. She explores three cases where a disability con is prominent: representations of the case of Ellen Craft, a light-skinned African American woman who escaped slavery by pretending to be a wealthy, white disabled man; the discussion of fraud in the novel The Confidence Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville; and the representation of the disability con in films – in particular, early cinema from 1889 to 1907, as well as a small number of more contemporary films including Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Trading Places, and The Usual Suspects.
The next section of the book, on ‘fantasies of marking’, begins with a discussion of the 1845 trial of Salomé Müller, whose birthmark was central to establishing her racial identity in a court case where she, as an enslaved woman, sued for her freedom by claiming to be a White German immigrant. Samuels argues that ultimately it was not the presence of her birthmark but the verbal testimony of witnesses about it, thereby underlining the importance of discourse in understanding the contested nature of racial identifications. Samuels then considers ‘the power of fingerprinting to realize the fantasy of identification’ (98) as represented in Mark Twain’s 1894 novel Pudd’nhead Wilson and the short story ‘The Extraordinary Twins.’ In these texts, a murder is solved – and familial racial backgrounds are established – using fingerprinting. Although the dénouement of the novel is a brilliantly written piece about the value of fingerprinting, it remains part of a work of fiction. Nevertheless, it has been cited in actual court cases as a description of the merits of this form of identification. Samuels suggests that such citations are ‘difficult to comprehend except through the powerful lens of the fantasy of identification, which uses fiction to both validate and create itself as a state apparatus’ (100).
‘Fantasies of measurement’, the third section of the book, moves to the current day and discusses the use of what Samuels calls ‘biocertification’: ‘the many forms of government documents that purport to authenticate a person’s social identity through biology, substituting written descriptions for other forms of bodily knowledge and authority’ (122). Biocertification relies on the modernist notion that science can offer simple and verifiable proof of identity. Using a combination of a US memoir, a study of Post-Communist China, and a discussion of parking spaces for drivers in the United States, she highlights contested definitions of disability, and then returns to her earlier theme that disability is closely monitored because of cultural suspicions around fraud. Another chapter highlights the importance of biocertification in Native American communities, both historically and in the current day. Finally, Samuels argues that even the latest form of biocertification – DNA testing – is flawed. For instance, it is impossible to identify Native American people by DNA alone; it is simply an attempt to use science for socio-political and racial/ethnic ends. Additionally, she argues that DNA cannot be relied on to identify someone’s sex, using intersex people (and in particular the athlete Caster Semenya) to illustrate her argument.
To be honest, when I began this book, I expected a reasonable degree of engagement with psychoanalytical and social psychological literature – particularly Lacanian psychoanalysis, given its deep attention to the role of fantasy in relation to desire and identity. But Samuels does not really engage with that literature. Instead, her theoretical framework is one that is common among contemporary American cultural studies scholars – it is influenced by early works of both Judith Butler (with regard to the performativity of sex/gender) and Michel Foucault (in terms of analyzing disciplinary power). Underlying (and in some ways contradicting) these theoretical influences, there is a strong element of functionalism in her analyses. Functionalism has long been criticized on epistemological and ontological grounds: it is incredibly reductionist, often tautological, tends to ignore the specificities of historical and cultural differences, and has major problems explaining significant social change. Indeed, functionalism tends to overlook nuances, changes, cultural differences, and power shifts over time, because of its tendency to focus on overall social ‘functions’ rather than providing a more detailed micro-analysis of the complex relationships between cultural representations, social interactions, and social structure at particular times in particular places.
For Samuels, the key role of disability seems to be its function with regard to fantasy: she believes that disability mediates between modern identification of race and gender, because of ‘the symbolic function of disability as the trope of physicality’ (14). Additionally, disability ‘is not merely another factor entwined with race and gender but often functions in a supplementary role to anchor physical difference’ (49). In a later case study, she adds that ‘gender and disability function as submerged yet crucial contexts for the contested fantasy of racial identify’ (89). The overall function of such fantasies, she believes, is that they are ‘powerful and flexible mechanisms of social discipline’ (17). Like many functionalists, Samuels has a poor explanation of the exact power structures that drive this process, except for a vague reference to ‘the dominant power structure’s deep and abiding desire for such a fantastical solution’ (12).
Interestingly, the language of ‘the dominant power structure’ reveals another oddity in this book: the close connections between race and class are consistently noted throughout most American analyses of disability, but class is not a key factor in Samuels’ analysis. It is occasionally mentioned, but is never systematically integrated into the analysis. Without a clear explication of the role of class, she resorts to the language of an (undefined) ‘dominant power structure’ – which again seems more akin to the functionalists of the 1950s than contemporary social theory.
Most people believe that the civil rights movement resulted in profound cultural and material changes throughout the United States, but Samuels suggests that they ‘have not functioned, either historically or in their current incarnations, to significantly disrupt or dilute the influence of fantasies of identification’ (10). I felt this sweeping generalization was not only inaccurate, but did a great disservice to those people who sacrificed so much in this struggle. Instead, she believes that the great challenge to such fantasies comes from literature and the arts. She believes ‘works of literature, film, and visual art’ are ‘now functioning primarily as sites of resistant counterdiscourses to the fantasy’ (10). In my opinion, this idea is fanciful and dismissive of the often-difficult and dangerous political organizing which people are doing in many communities (particularly communities of color) specifically to challenge racist, gendered, and disablist patterns of prejudice and discrimination.
University of Toledo, OH, USA
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© 2015, Mark Sherry
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2014.995515