A rhetoric of remnants : idiots, half-wits, and other state-sponsored inventions / Zosha Stuckey.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stuckey, Zosha, 1971- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Intellectual disability facilities--United States--History.

Intellectual disability facilities.

Intellectual disability facilities--New York (State)--History.

People with mental disabilities--Education--United States--History.

People with mental disabilities.

Intellectual disability facilities patients--United States--History.

Intellectual disability facilities patients.

Intellectual disability--United States--History.

Intellectual disability.

Sociology of disability--United States.

Sociology of disability.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (178 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Albany, New York : SUNY Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In the nineteenth century, language, rather than biology, created what we think of as disability. Much of the rhetorical nature of "idiocy," and even intelligence itself, can be traced to the period when the New York State Asylum for Idiots in Syracuse first opened in 1854—memorialized today as the first public school for people considered "feeble-minded" or "idiotic." The asylum-school pupil is a monumental example of how education attempts to mold and rehabilitate one's being. Zosha Stuckey demonstrates how all education is in some way complicit in the urge to normalize.The broad, unstable, and cross-cultural category of "people with disabilities" endures an interesting relationship with rhetoric, education, speaking, and writing. Stuckey demystifies some of that relationship which requires new modes of inquiry and new ways of thinking, and she calls into question many of the assumptions about embodied differences as they relate to pedagogy, history, and public participation.

Contents:

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: Rhetoric, Historical Recovery, and the New York State Asylum-School

Minding the Gap

Rhetoric

Rhetoric and Remnants

The Asylum-School, Its Pupils, and the Closing of the Institution

Disability Studies and Feminist Rhetorics

Review of Chapters

2. "Confusion into Order Changed": The Rhetorics That Govern(ed) Institutionalization

Introduction

The Noble Asylum

The School

The Prison

The Described and the Counted

The Nameless Idiot

The Visited and the Displayed

Conclusion

3. In Pursuit of the Active Life: The Roots, Rhetoric, and Recursiveness of "Special" (All) Education

The Roots of "Special" Education

All Sensations Are Touch, All Ideas Are Sensations

The Object Method, the Hand, and the Garden System

The Face, the Posture, Walking, Then Thinking

Sensations, Notions, Then Ideas

Imitation as Social Relation

Speech, Language, Listening, and Recitation

After Speech, Drawing, Writing, Then Reading

The Excited Will of the Teacher, the Dull Will of the Pupil

Moving the Will: Order, Social Decorum, and Appearances

A Discourse of Rights and Participation in Worldly Affairs

The Farm and the Sewing Room

Burgeoning of the Asylum

A Pedagogy of Sensation, Functional Action, and Participation

4. In Pursuit of the Underlife of an Archive

Layers of Discourse

Overview of the Letters

Letters To Mrs. Thornton

Harmony and Accord

Tension and Discordance

Listening Further

Letters from Families and Pupils: In Praise of the Institution

Listening Even Further

5. Conclusion: "Idiocy" An Old, Worn-Out Story

The Sheltered Workshop versus the World

The Price of "Education"

Inscribing Presence

Straightening Up and Straightening Out

Strength in Variation

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781438453033

1438453035

OCLC:

893679934