Brilliant imperfection : grappling with cure / Eli Clare.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Clare, Eli, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

People with disabilities.

Disabilities.

Healing.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (241 pages)

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2017.

Summary:

In Brilliant Imperfection Eli Clare uses memoir, history, and critical analysis to explore cure-the deeply held belief that body-minds considered broken need to be fixed. Cure serves many purposes. It saves lives, manipulates lives, and prioritizes some lives over others. It provides comfort, makes profits, justifies violence, and promises resolution to body-mind loss. Clare grapples with this knot of contradictions, maintaining that neither an anti-cure politics nor a pro-cure worldview can account for the messy, complex relationships we have with our body-minds. The stories he tells range widely, stretching from disability stereotypes to weight loss surgery, gender transition to skin lightening creams. At each turn, Clare weaves race, disability, sexuality, class, and gender together, insisting on the nonnegotiable value of body-mind difference. Into this mix, he adds environmental politics, thinking about ecosystem loss and restoration as a way of delving more deeply into cure. Ultimately Brilliant Imperfection reveals cure to be an ideology grounded in the twin notions of normal and natural, slippery and powerful, necessary and damaging all at the same time.

Contents:

Introduction: writing a mosaic

A note on reading this book: thinking about trigger warnings

Brilliant imperfection: white pines

Ideology of cure

Birth

Prayers, crystals, vitamins

Beliefs about disability

Overcoming disability

Hope in motion

Rebelling against cure

The restoration of health

Walking in the prairie

Brilliant imperfection: twitches and tremors

Violence of cure

Defect

At the center of cure lies eradication

Personhood is a weapon

Great turmoil

Brilliant imperfection: maples

In tandem with cure

Cerebral palsy

Reading diagnosis

Disorder

Antibiotics and acupuncture

The price of diagnosis

Useful, but to whom?

Brilliant imperfection: stone

Nuances of cure

Wishing you less pain

Wanting cure

Birthmark

Cautionary tale

Body-mind yearning

Yearning for the peeper pond

Jostling my anti-cure politics

Your suicide haunts me

Brilliant imperfection: shells

Structure of cure

The medical-industrial complex

A far-reaching network

Troubled and troubling body-minds

Variations on cure

Skin lighteners and hot springs

Brilliant imperfection: hermit crabs

How cure works

Cure just around the corner

Charity events

Shifting technologies

A pharmaceutical history of eflornithine

Brilliant imperfection: rolling

At the center of cure

Carrie Buck I: yearning

Carrie Buck II: torrent of history

Carrie Buck III: feebleminded

Lives reduced to case files

Living with monkey

Schizophrenia

Brilliant imperfection: Myrtle

Moving through cure

Choosing disability

Airports and cornfields

Interdependence

Wanting a flat chest

Gender identity disorder

Claiming ourselves

Brilliant imperfection: drag queen

Impacts of cure

Endless questions

Ashley's father

Resisting intelligence

Feeling broken

Being fixed

Shame and pride

Brilliant imperfection: survival notes

Promise of cure

Normal and natural

Finding wholeness

Gender transition

Bullied

A maze of contradictions

Mama, what will you swear?

Walking in the prairie again

Brilliant imperfection: cycling.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780822373520

0822373521

OCLC:

946461709