Description
Book SynopsisExamines the rhetorical practices that generate and sustain discrimination against disabled people. Demonstrates how ableist values, knowledge, and ways of seeing pervade Western culture and influence social institutions such as law, sport, and religion.
Trade Review“Cherney shows how the powerful but mostly invisible rhetoric of ableism shapes beliefs about disability. Carefully argued case studies—from The Exorcist, to the cochlear implant debate, to the Casey Martin controversy—illustrate how ableism operates through the warrants of ‘deviance is evil,’ ‘normal is natural,’ ‘body is able’ and across epistemic, ideological, and visual dimensions. They form the heart of the book, making it accessible and engaging for use in an undergraduate rhetoric or disability studies course.”
—Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson,coeditor of Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture
“As illustrated in this rich examination of ableism in Western society, ableism’s tendency to adapt to different time periods and zeitgeists while naturalizing itself through rhetorical repetition means that Cherney’s study heralds a new field of inquiry that takes ableism, geographical specificity, and rhetoric as its nexus.”
—Dominique Salas The Quarterly Journal of Speech
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
1. The Rhetorical Dimensions of Ableism
2. Fearing Disability and the Possession Narrative
3. Ableism and the Cochlear Implant Debate
4. Sport as Ableist Institution
5. A Rhetorical Model of Disability
Notes
Bibliography
Index
