Augustin Thierry and the Many Eyes of a Blind Historian

By Giorgia Vocino

Born in 1795, shortly after the end of the reign of Terror, Jacques Nicolas Augustin Thierry was an enfant prodige. Born in a modest family, delicate and often sick, he could not live off his family income nor start a military career, but he could count on his sharp intelligence to climb the social ladder. Graduate from the École Normale, in 1811 he started working as the secretary of Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, count of Saint-Simon. Vibrant supporter of the liberal party and close to the milieu of the Carbonari, Thierry began an independent career as a journalist, but was soon drawn to the study of history: in 1820 he published in the Courrier Français nine Lettres sur l’Histoire de France, while in 1825 the publication of the Histoire de la conquête de l’Angleterre par les Normands crowned him as a historian and won him a place among the most reputed scholars and authors of his time. It was in those years of hectic and passionate study that his health problems started to take a toll on his life and his work.

Signed copy of l'Histoire de la conquête (Bibliothèque Abbé Grégoire)

Thierry’s eyesight progressively declined and eventually left him blind. Thought to be the consequence of a work rhythm that was too demanding, he was dubbed the Homère de l’histoire by Chauteaubriand. The legend of a young and heroic martyr for science started to take shape. Blind and progressively afflicted with paralysis, the historian showed the symptoms of an undiagnosed syphilis that made it impossible for him to work without the assistance of others. Despite his condition, Augustin Thierry maintained a remarkably intense work routine that allowed him to publish new works and to restlessly revise his oeuvre.

Corrected Proofs of the Récits des Temps Mérovingiens (Blois, AD41_F_1946B)

For the following thirty years, Augustin Thierry was assisted by secretaries and other collaborators whose names remain in the shadows. The archives of the Thierry family still preserved at Blois are a precious testimony to the functioning of the group of people surrounding the historian and working with him and for him. Thirty notebooks, known as the Cahiers de la chambre, were filled in between 1836 and 1844 with drafts, excerpts of sources, reading notes and personal memos that give shape to Augustin Thierry’s intellectual and social small world. Available for consultation on the website (shelf-marks Blois, Archives départamentales des Loir-et-Cher, F 1576 and F 1577), these notebooks constitute one of the most interesting, yet enigmatic documents in the Thierry archives digitised by the ArchAT project (Université d’Orléans – IRHT CNRS, project blog). Many hands can be spotted in their pages alongside one another, hands whose identification is a challenging operation that has never been attempted.

The Cahiers de la Chambre (Blois, AD41 F 1576 and 1577)

Among these hands one can find Augustin’s official collaborators: his personal secretary Charles Cassou as well as Martial Delpit, a graduate from the Ecole des Chartes salaried by the government within the frame of the national project of the Monuments du Tiers Etat supervised by Thierry. Scholars themselves, both men assisted Thierry in the study of the sources that laid the foundations of his history writing, chiefly the Récits des Temps Mérovingiens, and helped him with the revision of his earlier works and the drafting of new publications. The impossibility to lead his research autonomously casted a shadow on the originality of Thierry’s works already in his lifetime, as it is proved by an article published in 1837 in the Revue des Deux Mondes in which Désiré Nisard openly acknowledged the role of collaborateur for Augustin’s secretary Armand Carrel (deadly injured in a duel in 1836), while Thierry claimed full and exclusive responsibility for his literary output.

Draft letter to the director of La Revue des Deux Mondes (Blois, AD41, F 1576 02)

As a matter of fact, the blind historian could count on many sets of eyes, first of all those of his wife, Julie Thierry, herself a literate woman and a novelist whom he married in 1831. Julie’s pivotal role in Augustin’s everyday life can hardly be underestimated, but her work as an assistant emerge clearly from the notebooks where her hand drafted letters and noted down the words dictated by her husband. Furthermore, less literate scribes can also be found in the Cahiers de la chambre: their faulty orthography and unpolished handwriting make clear that they were not salaried secretaries, but off-the-record assistants most likely chosen among the household help. Augustin’s footman was probably responsible for writing down Augustin’s thoughts and work instructions, and years later, in the 1850s, it was his personal physician Gabriel Graugnard who not only took care of the by-then completely paralysed historian, but also helped him in his scholarly work.

Handwriting of Augustin Thierry's Footman (Blois, AD41, F 1577 8)

The study of Augustin Thierry’s archives and particularly his notebooks thus allows us to get glimpses of the creative process behind the writing of an author who could not write. In particular, the analysis of the complex documents that are the Cahiers de la Chambre opens for us a window on the everyday work routine of a blind historian. The centrality of the spoken word and the practical, and yet crucial organisation of the writing thus come to the fore as key research areas. The nineteenth-century Homère de l’histoire was surrounded not only by his official secretaries, but also by informal and too often forgotten assistants whose existence and importance should not be overlooked. The ArchAT project therefore has the ambition to describe the wider scholarly network as well as the small domestic world in which Augustin Thierry conceived and worked on his oeuvre and more specifically on his masterpiece, the Récits des Temps Mérovingiens. This means reconsidering the boundaries of authoriality and highlighting the choral dimension of the writing of his best seller, the influence of which can still be observed on the ideas about the Early Middle Ages, understood as a dark and violent time, that are deeply rooted in the collective imaginary.




Giorgia Vocino is a post-doc in the ArchAT projet (University of Orléans – IRHT-CNRS).
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Recommended citation
Giorgia Vocino (2019): Augustin Thierry and the Many Eyes of a Blind Historian. In: Public Disability History 4 (2019) 11.

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On Blindness in Poetry

By Reja-e Busailah

I am told that I lost my eyesight during the seventh month of my life. I was educated in boarding schools, in schools specially for the blind, and in public schools. I taught the blind when I was still living in Palestine, where I was born in 1929, when I lived in New York City, when I worked in Kuwait; and I hold a master’s degree in special education. Still, I should be embarrassed to admit that studying in a scholarly fashion the phenomenon of blindness (“disability”) has never seriously interested me. I have a Ph.D. in English Literature from New York University, and I taught literature for some thirty years. I am now a retired professor emeritus. I have enjoyed poetry all my life, writing it in Arabic when a child and later in English. I may say I have used poetry to react to all things that have interested me including, of course, the phenomenon of blindness, not academically, but as a poet. I have lived with blindness all my life, and have become accustomed to the ways and means, so to speak, of the phenomenon. To a large extent this “disability”, then, is only one of the phenomena of ordinary life, to be dealt with as an aspect of life, with, if you like, what most sighted people would judge with special consideration. I have lived so long with the phenomenon. I do not consider it special.

Reja-e Busailah with his latest publication Poems of a Palestinian Boyhood.

As I have said, I am a poet. I am a poet first and foremost, and my poetry is a reaction to as many phenomena of life as I am aware of: personal and general, emotional, social, political, and so forth. Needless to say that all these phenomena interact and influence each other. They give to each other and take from each other. My poetry deals with all of this and more. I write poems about blindness with as much comfort as I would write poems about “the honeysuckle, that divine commoner”, the call of a bird, the behavior of a politician, or the face of a girl as conveyed to me by her voice. Yet they are poems which, in a sense, focus on a specific phenomenon, the phenomenon of blindness, some directly, some not so directly, while still others deal with the theme from quite a distance. Moreover, these poems are all taken from a manuscript, Poems Out of Sight. Blindness, in one way or another, to assert once more, is in each of my poems, though none of them was written with the purpose of exploring the theme. They were written only in response to the dictation of the circumstance prevailing about the time of the writing.

Let me comment on a specific aspect of the many consequences of blindness. Much of the experience an ordinary blind person gets is through the ear, through sound and through the complexity of sound which produces the word. Space does not allow here for an at length discussion of touch. The blind person hears of a vast field and of a limitless sky, and the acquisition of this experience does not stop with hearing. The blind person has been given the word, and words are pregnant with concreteness and an infinity of growth, concepts, and connotations. Thus a word becomes the repository and vehicle of our intellectual growth, of civilization itself. A blind person, then, has the benefit of the word. Blind people are capable of participating in most of the social activities of the sighted. You find them engaged in all sorts of activities theoretical and practical, scientific, technical, and philosophical, in education, in politics, and so forth. I cannot forget the two blind men in Kuwait who came to learn Braille, the three R’s and so forth while still keeping their job of earning their daily living. After class or before it, they would swim to anchored ships to bring ashore in large leather sacks the sweet water the country needed then. This is why segregating the blind from the rest of society is a bad mistake. Integrating them with the rest of society is very beneficial to both.

Reja-e Busailah reading poetry for his YouTube channel.

Let me select only a few of the manifestations of the interaction between blindness and the world of sight or society as I have experienced it in action and in reflection. I will present the examples of these manifestations only as they are treated in my poetry. Blindness in the poems is not primarily the focus. The focus is on the poem and only an aspect of the phenomenon is used or mentioned, sometimes seriously, sometimes humorously, and so forth.

It has long been held that blindness is a mystery with supernatural roots and origins. Blindness is a curse or a blessing from God or from some mysterious power. Two superstitions emanate from this in “The Four Branches”: the husband who opens the day with rage and anger on glimpsing a blind person crossing his way, and the wife who ends the day pleased and contented because the blind person is the first to enter her store, which brings her so much business this day long. The blind person is aware only of

the morning greeting
of the sapling of a child
[which] reaches the blind ears,
hesitant yet resolute,
unaware of the cares of sight,
innocent of the confusion
on the awakening of the soul.

In “Journey of a Curse”, this attitude is given a clearer expression. The blind child throws a rock at the old man, who responds by

he panted up the hill,
he paused at what he saw,
he cursed under his breath:
“No wonder God smote you blind!”
He spat on his left,
his footsteps echoed into the dusk.

At the end of the poem, though, the blind boy has acquired some education, and is able to repeat to his interlocutors:

“When man is good,
he is higher than the angels;
when he is not good,
he is lower than the beasts.”
The couple listened with wonder and humility,
“God blessed the blind for reasons
man’s ken may never probe!”

In “Virgil and Beatrice”, the emphasis is on something that happens pretty regularly everywhere, and on the humor with which it is treated:

So normal was that day,
“normal,” you know what I mean
that you couldn’t but think of the cliché
which pops up into the blind mind’s remembrance
upon such a day:

“Does your dog bite?”
“You bet he does.
Virgie would love to have a hunk
of your flesh for his dinner!”
After all, if it had to be so,
let it be him, not me!
I would be lying,
if it were the reverse.

Or upon another such day:
“What’s your dog’s name?...
Isn’t he adorable?...
He’s your best friend, isn’t he?”

“To tell you the truth, he isn’t.”
This bemused the poor woman,
shocked her into a strange silence,
staring as a blind man thought
until he enlightened:
“Betty is my best friend,”
touching his wife’s arm.
After all, wasn’t she the one
who was going to pacify his hunger that night?

“To Whom” is a commentary on factual events pretty common in life and quite similar in sound, and shall I say, looks too. The poem concentrates on violence. The blind child is a member, an essential member, of a community similar in fate and the workings of fate. The dog is helpless while being clubbed to death because he is tied. The blind child (actually the author) is lashed and lashed until his feet are bloodied and swollen when he is thrown on his back with his feet gripped tight. The girl is also held down on her back with the boots of two men on her hands, “that the third may thrust and thrust and thrust,” while the AK-47 is impatiently waiting to complete the job. Now, the fate of these three is the same as the fate of Palestine when Great Britain for thirty years held the people violently down in order to give the country to the foreigners. And this she did with great success, accompanied by dark horrors either unknown or wantonly ignored.

The speaker knows (mentally) that his wife sees with her eyes in the poem “Her Eyes.” But he does not see. How does he circumvent the frustration?

If the sound of her voice is the spark
which puts out the old stars, which inflames the dawn
and makes thirstier with the dew the beams of the sun
forever young
forever old;
if the sound of her voice is the start
which ripples through the day
hour by sparkling hour
and tipples in the bright and the red
before it comes ashore;
if the sound of her voice is the birth and the breath
and the pulse in the soul
and the spirit of the pulse—
I wonder what is left for the light of her eyes!

Far-fetched? Maybe, but there is an adequate substitution for the absence of sight, however subjective or arbitrary it may be. Sound, or the word here, has supplanted sight. In “Two Airs”, you may say the picture is reversed. The author would perhaps paint the sound of the cardinal were he not blind. Instead he imagines a parallel to the sound of the cardinal. Here the two songs of the bird resemble two objects, the carnation standing on its stem and a flourishing bell:

Two airs of a cardinal
(he has quite a few in his repertoire)
a cardinal who is either fully oblivious
to the world, or wholly of it.
Like children scaling up and down a fragrant dream,
one air scales up
the other scales down
the length of a white carnation
standing on its stem,
An air flushed starting downward
from the brim of a cup of sunlight,
another blushing as it flourishes
upward towards bell’s bloom.

Again, this may sound too far away from the “disability” blindness. All the same, blindness remains related to the poem. “A Note on Touch” best exemplifies the highly subjective, arbitrarily subjective, treatment of something physical with imagery acceptable perhaps only to its author. One aim is to reject the attitude among the sighted that touch replaces vision. Space is too narrow for discussing the poem at length.

The face of the sick child shocks the mother,
she sees it as a hard-boiled egg!
The child runs a blind hand
over the face of the peeled egg,
it is smooth and soft, it is delightful:

Touch, therefore, when shielded from the representations
of the sense of light,
grows its own garden of realities,
solid facts
as a matter of fact,

anchored outside the domain of vision.
The fallacy, therefore, of assuming
that hand and eye are relatives
only breeds the falsehood that the dynamics
of, say, a fish’s mouth

in either’s hold are similar
if not the same;
(but let us first dispose by way of footnote
of the man who out of touch with sight
once marveled greatly at the marble mouth1

all misled by its smoothness from its severity,
or of the goddess of beauty who short-touchedly
mated with a bandy-legged bore2):
to the touch pure and free
the mouth of that primary beast

becomes a mermaid’s
transported into a summer’s nigh-haze
composed of mist-moistened sun,
and a vase in her hand
gleaming through the morning

the special mouth beaming
as on a crystal range
the clarinet’s scale in bloom—
visual sensibility tamed fantastic
if you like by the alchemy of touch.

Blindness then is the deprivation of sight. In such poems as we have just mentioned mixed imagery is resorted to, not perversely, but in reaction to the pressure of necessity. The visual experience which is absent here is expressed by, or translated into, the experiences of the remaining faculties. It is hoped that this arbitrariness is still compensated for by these new experiences. But it is the reader who will have the ultimate judgement on the treatment of the theme in the poems as well as their artistic quality.

The “disability” of blindness, then, occupies much more of the human concern than do other disabilities. As we have seen, this is due to the nature of the impairment of the disability. It so lends itself to varieties of interpretations, expansions, modifications, and so forth. No wonder, then, that Jose Saramago devotes a whole novel to blindness as a metaphor in which a whole city goes blind.

Reja-e Busailah accepting the Palestine Book Award for Best Memoir 2018 in London.

Reja-e Busailah’s latest publications are In the Land of My Birth: A Palestinian Boyhood (Institute for Palestine Studies 2017), winner of the Palestine Book Award (2018) and Poems of a Palestinian Boyhood (Smokestack Books 2019). He enjoys sharing his poetry with others especially reading his poetry on his YouTube channel. 

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Recommended citation
Reja-e Busailah (2019): On Blindness in Poetry. In: Public Disability History 4 (2019) 10.

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The exhibition “Prohibition of Handicap”: challenging public perceptions of disability in 1970s Sweden

By Anna Derksen

In the early 1970s an unconventional exhibition traveled Sweden: By inviting visitors to experience disability from the perspective of a wheelchair user, Prohibition of Handicap tested the boundaries between the individual limitations of a disability versus those created by society. The exhibition was a cooperation between the public exhibition agency Riksutställningar and students of interior design at Konstfack, the School of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. With a thought-provoking title and a crossed-out wheelchair as its symbol, Prohibition of Handicap was shown between 1971 and 1973 in 23 different locations all over the country and confronted about 75.000 visitors with the radical message that disability was not the result of an individual deficit, but an inaccessible social environment full of barriers, ignorance and prejudices. However, not everyone thought a state-funded exhibition to be the right place for such messages, or even saw it as it a “single-minded and one-sided political propaganda campaign.”

How could an exhibition about disability spark a debate on propaganda? In this post I will look at how Prohibition of Handicap, and the discussions it created, influenced perceptions and notions about disability in Swedish society.

Poster and image from the exhibition Prohibition of Handicap. The text on the right reads: "People are different. Both in the body (physical) and the soul (psychical)."

The main reason why Prohibition of Handicap caused such strong reactions was that the curators made use of the more critical ideas within the Swedish disability rights movement. Already in the 1960s disability in Sweden came to be seen more and more as a societal issue, caused by a mismatch between the individual and the social environment. The debate had been triggered by disability activist and wheelchair user Vilhelm Ekensteen and the group Anti-Handikapp with the book In the Backyard of the People’s Home (På folkhemmets bakgård, 1968) that critically analyzed the living situations of persons with physical and intellectual disabilities in the Swedish welfare state. Recognition of political responsibility, removal of social barriers and a change of common perceptions became the activists’ central demands.

With Prohibition of Handicap, this redefinition of disability was lifted out of its theoretical foundations and placed squarely in the center of societal debate. The title and poster were just the start. Even more direct were the texts displayed in the exhibtion rooms, adding social isolation, poverty, age or unemployment to the list of causes (and effects) of disability. That the message resonated with the public reflects in an article in Västerbottens-Kuriren after the exhibition was reopened in 1976: "Prohibition of handicap, someone wonders. That's impossible. Well, said Gunnar Olofsson in his welcoming address. By adapting society and the environment to the benefit and needs of all people, it is possible. We want to remove barriers that create disabilities." (1 April 1977).

Drawing from Riksutställningar’s exhibition How to make a rotten exhibition, in: Westerlund, Knuthammar (1981), p. 177.

Experiencing disability
How can a traveling exhibition engage the local public? This was a recurring question for Riksutställningar. Although media differed in their opinions on the critical understanding of disability, they agreed that Prohibition of Handicap offered a stimulating, for its time even trailblazing visiting experience. To enter the exhibition, visitors were placed in a wheelchair and navigated their way through different rooms: a sitting room, a street with impeding curbs, a job center and a grocery store. Critical texts, interviews and video clips gave further information about how persons with disabilities lived, their dreams and hopes, and what kinds of problems they encountered in society.

However, evaluations of the exhibition show that this 'disabling' of the visitors led to mixed results, and that the difficulty of using a wheelchair in the confined space of the exhibition also had its setbacks. Most importantly, the focus on mobility pushed back more subtle messages of social and economic exclusion. Point of departure was still the disabled, ‘wheelchair-bound’, individual, as a report on study visits to the exhibition testifies:

"The participants were completely focused on getting around with the wheelchairs and did not stay so long in the different rooms to read the many texts. Not even the TV with its moving pictures could stop many in their tracks." (SOU 1974:43).

Visitors moved through the exhibition in wheelchairs and could try out an accessible kitchen with movable and height-adjustable components.

Politicizing disability
That a state agency like Riksutställningar decided to endorse a critical conceptualization of disability, one that also laid bare the state’s own failures and omissions in creating a welfare society for all, is in itself quite remarkable. But even before Prohibition of Handicap was officially opened in 1971, Riksutställningar made a sudden announcement: "We had to make the sad and unpopular decision not to continue the production of the exhibition. We had hoped to give people an exhibition where there was the opportunity to interpret the problem in different ways. WE have not requested any opinions. WE have commissioned an 'informative' factual inquiry into the physical situation of the disabled." (Lennart Holm, Dagens Nyheter, 2 July 1971).

How political should a state-funded exhibition be? Where to draw the line between education and propaganda? These questions eventually entered more general debates on the aims and limitations of cultural policy in the Swedish parliament. "The most serious objection was that the preliminary exhibition material with its clear ideological reference tried to put an ideological hallmark even on the efforts to increase accessibility in society for the disabled. The management of Riksutställningar could under no circumstances accept such a turn of the purpose and message of the exhibition." (debate in the Swedish parliament, spring 1972).

Outraged media discussions and pressure from disability organizations to revoke this ‘censorship’, as they called it, eventually caused Riksutställningar to back down and open the exhibition in late 1971 after some of the more controversial texts were revised. Prohibition of Handicap then traveled Sweden for about two years, sparking lively debates about disability in its wake. But the incident also had significance for the relationship between the disability rights movement and public authorities, as the latter were urged to recognize persons with disabilities as a group with serious political demands.

Left: Still from the YouTube filmRiksutställningar 1965-2017, "Why do I have to be isolated?" | Right: Image from the exhibition, The high rents furthermore force many people to live in old, rundown, unhygienic homes. They also become socially handicapped."

Reveal, challenge – and change?
Prohibition of Handicap had been a political forum from the start. That a state agency like Riksutställningar decided to broadcast a critical view on disability in a public exhibition anno 1971 is noteworthy, both regarding the topic and the early date. But its influences on public opinion were mixed. The social causes of disability were a powerful message that contrasted with prevailing images of persons with disabilities as pitiful, causing a rethinking of disability also outside the small group of activists like Anti-Handikapp. However, it quickly became overshadowed by the political debate on propaganda and censorship, and the ‘wheelchair experience’ caused the focus to remain on accessibility. In Lund, some older houses were made wheelchair-accessible. In Kalmar, participants of a study circle remonstrated in front of the post office after trying and failing to enter it in wheelchairs, and sent a protest note with a sketch for reconstruction. Finally, the exhibition brought different fractions of the disability rights movement together. Its reopening in 1976 happened on demand of the disability organizations:

"Bring along your family, friends and acquaintances to the exhibition when it comes to your area! Prohibition of Handicap is an important exhibition, and a united disability movement stands behind it." (Svensk handikapptidskrift 4, 1976)

Sources and further readings:
All photo credits belong to Riksutställningar and the respective photographers.

• Broms, Helene; Göransson, Anders: Kultur i rörelse. En historia om Riksutställningar och kulturpolitiken. Stockholm: Atlas 2012
• From travelling exhibitions to an information centre, in: UNESCO: Museum, XXXVIII, 4 (1986), temporary exhibitions, 205-206.
• Riksutställningar: Omtänkt. Ett magasin från riksutställningar om tillgänglighet i museivärlden, 2017.
• SOU 1974:43: Utställningar. Betänkande av 1965 års musei- och utställningssakkunniga.
• Swedish National Archives: Riksutställningar/Projektarkivet/Projekt nummer 1 073/F1A
• Swedish National Archives: Handikappförbundens Centralkommitté, SE/RA/730108/F /F 6/F 6e/7.
• Westerlund, Stella; Knuthammar, Thomas: Handicaps prohibited. Travelling exhibitions in Sweden, in: UNESCO: Museum, XXXIII, 3 (1981),Museums and disabled persons, 176-179.

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Recommended citation:
Anna Derksen (2019): The exhibition “Prohibition of Handicap”: challenging public perceptions of disability in 1970s Sweden. In: Public Disability History 4 (2019) 9.

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Three hundred years of legal incapacity in Russia

By Yana Litins’ka

The concept of legal capacity is one of the most important concepts related to the personal status in law. When a person loses legal capacity, it means that he or she is no longer allowed to make decisions for themselves. Instead, a guardian makes decisions for them about things such as what to buy, with whom to live, what treatment should one get. A common reason for depriving people of their legal capacity is, historically as well as today, intellectual or mental disability. But how has the law of a specific state developed to define when persons become unable to make some or all the decisions about themselves? Which criteria have been used? Have these criteria been transparent and non-arbitrary? Who should decide whether a person is incapable: medical professionals or lawyers? In this post, I will focus on the legislative history of Russia concerning the deprivation of legal capacity due to mental disability.

The legislation on the deprivation of legal capacity in Russia was next to non-existing before the reign of Peter the Great. The primary internal concerns of the monarch were related to building a modern, reliable and sustainable system of governance. In line with this aspiration, it was considered that persons unfit to represent the state must not carry out this function. The Decree on Examination of Fools in Senate of 1722 was therefore established. The legislation targeted the noblemen who had inherited their posts as public servants. The Decree made it possible to deprive noblemen of their right to work as officials or as scientists, inherit property, marry and receive an education if they were considered “fools”. A year later, the legislator also laid down the procedure for the capacity assessment. This procedure required that the members of the Senate question a person whose capacity was impugned on any topic. The person in question needed to answer as “a wise man answers” or they would be considered “fools”, and therefore deprived of the aforementioned rights. The criteria for assessment, formulated in terms of being a “wise” or a “fool”, and the possibility to ask about anything, inherently allowed the Senate to have a broad margin of discretion in making the decisions about incapacity.

Senate assembly during the reign of Peter the Great by Dmitry Kardovsky

Linguistically, “fools” in Russian legislation of the eighteenth century were not necessarily persons with mental disorders. The language of the act emphasised behaviour and intelligence, rather than the diagnosis. However, in practice, the Senate’s concerns were related to the differences between the real and fake mental disorders. In 1746 the Senate requested that the Medical Board clarified the scientifically proven methods of recognising mental disorders. The Medical Board’s report stated that a careful and consistent monitoring of the person, as well as a study of their medical records and external detriments of mental health was crucial. These accounts seem to emphasise that despite the fact that initially determination of legal incapacity was considered to be a legal procedure, the assessors – the Senate – struggled with this task and required additional competence.

In accordance with the Decree on Custody Due to Physical or Mental Disorders of 1809, all acts of mentally disordered persons were considered to be void. Assessment of mental disorders was then performed by the medical boards in the presence of those entrusted by the Government, e.g. the governors, prosecutors or nobility. If a person was determined to be insane, the boards were supposed to send the detailed report to the Senate. The Senate’s function was then to decide whether this person was legally capable or not, based on the report. These changes in the legal regulation signified transition of the Senate’s functions to the medical professionals, and a separation of the obligation: the Senate remained responsible for the legal consequences, but regarding insanity, which could potentially trigger incapacitation, was delegated to the medical experts. These amendments to the legislation did not focus on the specification of the criteria for legal incapacity. Mental disability as such could have led to legal incapacity.

Nikolai the First ordered systematisation of all laws of Russia. In the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire of 1832, the term legal capacity was neither defined nor explicitly regulated. In his monography of 1879, Slonimskii argued that the Russian courts were able to interpret the laws as requiring the recognition of the person’s incapacity only in the context of a specific transaction, rather than a “civil death” or incapacity in all legal relations. However, in practice the courts chose to follow a simpler approach: a person either had a legal capacity for all the legal transactions, or was fully legally incapable. The criteria for the legal incapacity were, similarly to the previous periods, not laid down in the legislation, which resulted in a broad of interpretation thereof. The project of the Digest of Laws of the Russian Empire called for a more detailed regulation of legal capacity, but because it never came into legal force, the regulation and the practice of the courts likely remained unchanged until the end of the Russian Empire in 1917.

In 1922, the first Civil Code of Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic laid down the provisions on legal capacity. The Code established that legal capacity was the ability to acquire and exercise civil rights, create civil obligations and execute them. This definition remains unchanged in the modern Civil Code of the Russian Federation. In accordance with Article 8 of the 1922 Civil Code, adults could be deprived of legal capacity because of mental disorders if they were not able to manage their own affairs wisely, and only courts could make decisions on incapacity. A more detailed clarification of the criteria for incapacity was not provided. The criteria were slightly modernised in the Civil Code of 1964: criteria for incapacity were formulated as inability to understand the content [significance] of one’s own actions or to manage them. The same definition is provided in the modern Civil Code of the Russian Federation.

This brief overview of the legislative history indicates that deprivation of legal capacity in Russia has been mostly regulated in broad terms, such as not being a ‘fool’, being ‘wise’, having the ability to understand and manage one’s own actions. The broad formulations of the criteria for incapacity are likely to be the reason for the deprivation of capacity resulting in an incapacitation in every aspect of life. While the deprivation of legal capacity was considered a legal matter, the struggle with the interpretation of the legal requisites can be traced back to the very early legislative history.

Where does Russia stand now in terms of criteria for the declaration of legal incapacity? Has the vagueness of the legislation been replaced by clearer definitions, at least in practice? In my doctoral thesis entitled “Assessing capacity to decide on medical treatment: On human rights and the use of medical knowledge in the laws of England, Russia and Sweden” published in 2018, I analysed the modern interpretation of the criteria for legal incapacity in Russia. These criteria are interpreted in a dramatically different manner depending on the case at hand. In some cases, having “a pretentious hairdo”, having too good or too bad relationships with relatives, being too religious, or not having enough knowledge about Immanuel Kant’s doctrine, can be considered a reason for being deprived of legal capacity. The cases studied suggest that almost any type of behaviour in conjunction with the diagnosed mental disorder may still fall within the ambiguous requirements of the legislation on legal incapacitation. This study serves as a reminder that the deprivation of rights has been based on vague criteria for approximately 300 years. It is time to move away from the approach that the legislator has taken finally to ensure foreseeability and non-arbitrariness for persons with mental disorders in capacity assessment process.

Yana Litins’ka is an associate lecturer in jurisprudence at Uppsala University, Sweden.

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Recommended citation

Yana Litins’ka (2019): Three hundred years of legal incapacity in Russia. In: Public Disability History 4 (2019) 8.

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"From the darkness to the light": Memoirs of blind Canadian veterans of the First and Second World Wars

By Corinne Doria

On June 7 1917 Private James H. Rawlinson of the Ontario 58^th Infantry Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force was blinded by a fragment of shrapnel. He entered the St. Dunstan's Institute for Blind Soldiers and Sailors in London for rehabilitation; there he learned Braille, typing and carpentry before returning to his native Ottawa. In 1919 he published Through St. Dunstan’s to Light, a book in which he describes the drama of his wound, his rehabilitation, and his return to the civilian society.

Rawlinson, James H. (1919). Through St. Dunstan’s to Light.
Toronto: Thomas Allen., front page

James Rawlinson is one of the several hundred Canadians who lost their sight in war, and one of the few who decided to tell their story in an autobiographical work. We can also mention Blind Date (1962) by John Windsor, and Wings of Courage (2000) by Neil Hamilton, both of whom fought in the Second World War. Born in Calgary John Windsor was an officer of Lord Strathcona's Horse, a light cavalry regiment that fought during the Second World War as an armored unit. During an operation in Italy a shell fragment destroyed his eyes and blew away half his face. After a long stay in hospital and several reconstructive operations, he went to the training centre in Church Stretton, a St. Dunstan's facility opened in 1940. Neil Hamilton, was born in 1920 in Regina (Saskatchewan). In October 1941 he entered the Royal Canadian Air Force. In November 1943 he suffered a haemorrhage of the eyes during a training flight, which left him with only 10% vision in each eye. He attended the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB), an institution created in 1918 on the model of St. Dunstan’s to assist Canadian blind veterans, where he was trained in Public Relations and management, obtaining a job as manager at the CNIB Calgary’s branch.

C.N.I.B. (Canadian Institut for the Blind), facility in Toronto Durflinger, Serge Marc (2010). Veterans With a Vision. Vancouver/Toronto, UBC Press, p. 108

These books narrate individual journeys ‘from the darkness to the light’; they provide insight into the experience of blindness and what it means – from a psychological and a practical viewpoint – to be suddenly deprived of sight as an adult.

Portrait of John Winsor, Windsor, John (1963). Blind Date. Sidney, BC: Gray’s Publishing Canada, p.2 (left picture); Hamilton, Neil R. (2000). Wings of Courage: A Lifetime of Triumph over Adversity. Calgary: Nacelles, p. 1 (right picture)

This post aims at presenting the organizations of support to Canadian blind veterans of WWI and WW2, and to analyze the impact of blindness on individuals through the study autobiographical accounts.

At the beginning of the 20th century Canada had almost no training institutions for blind adults. There were only three schools for children born blind (in Brantford, Halifax and Montréal) providing mediocre education. The question of social and professional reintegration for the blind arose because of the Great War. Some 140 Canadian servicemen returned home blind, and nearly 1,300 with severe visual impairment. The Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) was founded in 1922 by Edwin Albert Baker, an electrical engineer from Collins Bay (Ontario) who was injured in the Ypres Salient in 1915, at the age of 22. In April 1922 was also set up the Sir Arthur Pearson Association (SAPA), a social club and veterans’ advocacy group. These associations were committed to provide assistance to blind ex-servicemen and to pressure the federal government to organize assistance at a national level. Their actions had a measurable impact. At the end of World War I, Ottawa voted the covering of the accommodation and re-educational programs undertaken by CNIB and SAPA in the aftermath of war. The Second World War raised the public profile of blind veterans even further. More than 200 soldiers were blinded in that war. By that time the CNIB expanded, opening offices in Calgary, Vancouver, Regina and Ottawa. In 1956 pensions for war blinded were increased and their widows could continue getting a full pension for one year following their husbands’ death. In 1970 was voted the Exceptional Incapacity Allowance, that entitled blind ex-servicemen to an attendance allowance of 3,000 dollars/year.

Rawlinson, Windsor and Hamilton depict the loss of sight in the first place as a trauma. The very moment of the injury is recalled in dramatic detail. “I felt a slight sting in my right temple as though pricked by a hot needle – and then the world became black. Dawn was breaking now, but night had sealed my eyes, and I could only grope my way among my comrades” (Rawlinson). The awareness of blindness provokes horror, panic, and the desperate hope that it is only a temporary situation. Then, when they realize that there is nothing more that can be done, comes despair. “My life, the worthwhile part of it, seemed to end at that moment leaving nothing but a husk, filled with despair and inner hurt” (Winsor).

These men describe losing their sight as the end of life as they knew it. But if blindness is in one way compared to death, it also represents the beginning of a new life. Blindness obliges them to learn everything anew, as if they were new-born. “[The blinded man] at first has much to unlearn. All his old methods of work have to be forgotten. He is, in a sense, a child again, born the day his sight is taken from him” (Rawlinson).
All three authors present blindness as a condition that can only be understood by the blind, and it is impossible for an able-bodied individual to apprehend. The authors’ narrative is sometimes “elitist”: they patronize and even complain the sighted and even complain for their lack of understanding. “One of the annoying things to a sightless person is to have some sighted friend sit by him at a play, describing costumes and scenery. The blind have no need of such aids” (Winsor). Spending time with people in the same condition reinforces blindness as an identitarian factor. Rawlinson and Winsor have several pages on St. Dunstan’s inmates and the spirit of solidarity and companionship they experienced during their stay. By making the acquaintance of other blind people, learning their histories and sharing their own they start to feel they belong to a different group, and to distance themselves somewhat from “sighted” society.

Rawlinson, James H. (1919). Through St. Dunstan’s to Light. Toronto: Thomas Allen, p. 24

This sense of uniqueness is felt alongside a profound desire for normality. The possibility of becoming a worthy member of society again is what motivates their commitment to training. This aspiration to normality and social integration is also apparent in the desire to start a family (both Windsor and Hamilton married and had children). Another sign of the desire for “normality” is the constant concern to display masculinity. They have no intention to decline their male identity because of their impairment. This is evident from several signs, starting with the place accorded to war in their narratives. It is also highlighted by their determination to be the breadwinner, and the subordinate position of their wives.
The reason why Rawlinson, Windsor and Hamilton decided to write their autobiographies is to challenge existing stereotypes about the blind. At the beginning of the 20^th century a blind man was considered as an individual whose impairment excluded him from society. Blind people were frequently the objects of pity or derision. Their books are inspirational stories, depicting the overcoming of difficulties through an undefeatable will-force. Prejudices about blind people remain, however, throughout the 20^th century in Canadian society. Hamilton recalls how people generally were indifferent to the needs of the blind, and he often encountered cases where they were victims of abuse.

By describing the authors’ journey “from the darkness to the light”, these autobiographies illustrate the multiple personal and social issues that a blind veteran had to go face and remind reminding that disability is both a personal and a social concern.


Corinne Doria is Associate Research Fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, Columbia University, New York.
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Recommended citation
Corinne Doria (2019): "From the darkness to the light": Memoirs of blind Canadian veterans of the First and Second World Wars In: Public Disability History 4 (2019) 7.

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Jacques Chevillet (1786-1837), a rare emotional voice of a Napoleonic amputee

By Bert Gevaert

L’invalide (around 1823) by Nicolas Toussaint Charlet

(Musée de l’Armée, Paris)

Under Napoleon (1769-1821) the face of warfare changed dramatically: huge armies consisting of thousands of soldiers, equipped with firearms, were involved in massive battles resulting in more (deadly) casualties. While edged weapons, which were still the main weapon of the cavalry, caused ‘clean’ and easy to be treated wounds, the nature of gunshot wounds was completely different. Bullets penetrated the body and drove pieces of clothes inside the wound, this, usually in combination of severe fracture of bones, increased the risk of gangrene. More serious wounds were caused by artillery in the shape of iron balls, canister (small pieces of iron or balls) or explosive shells and grenades. This kind of ammunition caused such serious damage that entire limbs could be blown away or shredded to pieces. In the eyes of surgeons, only an immediate amputation could save the life of soldiers inflicted by gunshot wounds or artillery fire.

Terry Crowdy (2014) provides us a very faithful number of amputees in one battalion consisting of 995 effective soldiers. After the famous Battle of Wagram (5-6 July 1809) in Austria 152 soldiers of this Battalion were wounded, amongst them 12 soldiers became amputees. At the same battle the famous French surgeon Dominique Larrey (1767-1842) performed 300 amputations on the 1200 wounded soldiers he treated. Larrey, who even made his doctoral thesis on amputation as treatment for gunshot wounds (Dissertation sur les amputations des membres à la suite des coups de feu, 1803) proudly claims that he performed about 200 amputations in 24 hours at the Battle of Borodino (7 September 1812) in Russia. During this Russian campaign in the year of the same battle, amputation had to be applied several times in the case of toes, fingers or noses inflicted by frostbite.

Without modern anaesthetics, amputation was horrible, not only the process of being amputated, but many people also considered life as an amputee as a ‘useless’ life. Nevertheless, there are some examples of officers with amputated limbs who continued their service as commander of a fortresses (e.g. Pierre Daumesnil, 1776-1832) or as instructor in a military school (e.g. Clément de la Roncière, 1773-1854).

Doctors were encouraged to remove amputated limbs out of sight of approaching soldiers to make sure that they were not discouraged for the next battle. General Jacques Casimir Jouan (1767-1847) was wounded at Dresden (26-27 Augustus 1813) and still remembers the pain when his left arm was amputated:

“I always heard that when one was sawing the bone, the pain was the worst. I don’t consider myself to be differently built than other men, but it is still that the amputation of the bone of my arm was not as painful compared with the cutting of my flesh.”

Soldier wounded at Waterloo (18 June 1815) with missing left arm, lying on his side, grasping a rope, watercolor made by the Scottish surgeon Charles Bell (1774-1842). The rope was used by the patient to change from position or to rise up from his bed. (© Wellcome Library, London)

It was a custom in the French army to give a compensation to all amputees. This could be an honorary rank for a private (e.g. lieutenant) or a sum of money. This amount of money was not fixed and it depended on the years of service, the soldier’s rank and even on the outcome of a battle. Doctor Pierre-François Percy (1754-1825) mentions how an infantry soldier, who lost both arms, received the small sum of 60 francs in 1806 ¹. During his banishment on Elba from the 4th May 1814 till the 26th of February 1815, Napoleon proclaimed that disabled soldiers had the right to obtain 400 francs for two arms, 500 for two legs and 600 for three body parts. Disabilities were also taken into account when a soldier retired from the army and a lost limb made it possible to have a higher pension. Soldiers could also apply to stay in the famous Hôtel des Invalides in Paris, or other places for poor, retired and disabled soldiers. Besides that, private initiatives also existed to support disabled soldiers. General d’Aboville (1776-1843), who had lost an arm at Wagram, funded 1000 francs for ten year to a manufacturer who employed blind soldiers or amputees. It was also a custom to give disabled soldiers an honorary place at festivities and they were highly respected by their comrades. In 1810, due to the occasion of his second marriage, Napoleon offered 6000 dowries of 600 francs to all disabled soldiers who married. It took six months delay for about 4000 veterans to actually receive this money. Later, Napoleon even gave land – ‘veteran camps’ - in the conquered countries to his disabled veterans.

Despite the high number of amputees, not so many soldiers described in detail how it felt to be amputated and how they looked at their life as a disabled person. A notable exception is Jacques Chevillet (1786-1837), trumpeter of the 8th Chasseurs à cheval, who was engaged at the Battle of Wagram.

When he was fighting for his life, around 9 PM on the first day of this famous battle a shell exploded in front of his horse. Chevillet, who was just promoted sergeant, writes:

“Ahh!” I cried, feeling myself struck in the arm. My horse was struck down at the same instant and I found my leg stuck underneath him. My first action was to try to get myself up and to bring my left hand to my arm… But alas! I felt that my arm had been cut off. My horse, my poor Rondeau made several movements of his feet and head while moaning. In less than five minutes he was dead. (…)" (translation T. Cardoza, 2017, p.177)

While the battle between French and Austrians continued in all vigour, Chevillet had to stay on the battlefield and witnessed the horrors of war, unable to move because his leg was stuck under his dead horse. Meanwhile he had to watch how the horse of his friend had lost his two front legs and was lying next to him and how several wounded French and Austrian soldiers were hit by fragments of the shell and died around him.

After the fight Chevillet’s comrades discovered their friend between the corpses, they lifted his dead horse and Chevillet was put on a captured Austrian horse, while his arm was still hanging on his shoulder by a bit of flesh. One hour after midnight they finally found a doctor who could dress his wound, but since there were so many wounded, Chevillet had to wait for treatment until 5 AM. The surgeon, Mr. Valette, trimmed the flesh and the nerves, after tying off the bleeding artery in the wounded arm of our wounded chasseur.

As said before, Chevillet is one of the very few soldiers who expressed how it felt to be an amputee:

“I cannot tell you thee emotions I felt seeing myself an amputee for the first time. Then, taking my right arm in my left hand, I looked for the last time on the most beautiful flower of my life that I had to lose forever. The biggest of my regrets was to think that with my arm, I lost all hope of being happy, the talents that I had acquired in music, playing the clarinet, good handwriting, and finally all means of working.” (translation T. Cardoza, 2017, p. 180)

Chevillet gave his right arm to an Austrian peasant and asked him to bury the arm at the foot of a tree in his garden, saying that his arm was the arm “of a French soldier, who gave a good beating to the Kaiserlicks (the Austrians), but that is now over. He won’t beat anyone anymore…” (translation T. Cardoza, 2017, p.181)

Chevillet, and many other amputees, received a bonus of 100 franc from emperor Napoleon, but this was – in his opinion - not enough compared to the sacrifices he made for the Empire. Thus, when the birthday of Napoleon on the 15th of August came close, Chevillet put all his hope and efforts in obtaining the Legion of Honor. After a failed attempt to give his petition personally on the 15th, Chevillet succeeded four days later. In front of Napoleon, he was called a ‘hero’. Napoleon spoke to Chevillet ‘like a good father’ and granted an annuity of 500 francs from the domains of the crown, because this would – financially - be a better compensation than the Legion of Honor, which would only bring half of this sum. Even the descendants of Chevillet could benefit from these 500 francs in perpetuity.

For Chevillet meeting his beloved Emperor and hearing of the promise of receiving the annual sum of 500 francs, must have been one of the most beautiful moments of his life.
Another beautiful moment was his arrival home after almost six months of travelling, including a sickness which forced him to stay in the hospital for three months.

Chevillet doesn’t mention what happened to him after his amputation. When a leg was amputated, soldiers had to help themselves with simple peg legs, though certain officers could even use more sophisticated artificial legs. But in Chevillet’s case, his amputated limb could not be replaced by a piece of wood. As so many other soldiers who had lost an arm, he continued his life wearing a shirt or jacket with an ‘empty sleeve’. For many family members of Napoleonic veterans, the sight of a disabled veteran was not uncommon, so they had no other choice than to help Chevillet and other veterans in their needs. It may certainly not be forgotten that disabled veterans as Chevillet also provided a substantial income with their military pension.

Amputated Napoleonic veteran by Nicolas Toussaint Charlet detail from Réjouissances Publiques, 1822 (© National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne)

But how would Chevillet feel when he looked at his stump, years after the fall of Napoleon in 1815? Did he feel pride, thinking about the French victories in which he participated? Or did he feel regret, thinking about that final battle which caused him to lose his right arm? Given the fact that he knew many other disabled veterans, he certainly didn’t feel isolated or marginalised. He was mutilated, he was a survivor and as so many people with disabilities, he tried to make the best of his life…


Bert Gevaert (Bruges, 1978) wrote a PhD on disabilities and deformities in ancient Rome and combines teaching in a secondary school with writing books and articles about various kinds of subjects (e.g. martial arts, disability studies, classical antiquity,...).

^{[1] In 1806 the price for bread was around 60 centimes and most men earned a daily salary between 75 centimes and 4,5 francs. Compared to men, the salary of women was usually much lower, sometimes even less than one third.}
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Recommended citation
Bert Gevaert (2019): Jacques Chevillet (1786-1837), a rare emotional voice of a Napoleonic amputee. In: Public Disability History 4 (2019) 6.

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Goodbye "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend", the show that revolutionized popular depictions of mental illness

By Ylva Söderfeldt

The musical sitcom Crazy Ex-Girlfriend just finished its fourth and final season. Up until the end, fans were biting their nails and debating which of her three love interests the main character Rebecca would end up with. Throughout, we got to enjoy the creative, funny, and intelligent song and dance numbers the show has become known for. But there’s more than the musical element that sets Crazy Ex-Girlfriend apart from other sitcoms. In particular, it’s an unusual series in that it makes mental illness a central topic.

Of course, mental illness in not an uncommon theme for film or television. But characters with psychiatric illnesses are rarely the heroes, usually the villains. The idea we get from media about people with psychiatric disorders is that they’re either dangerous, ridiculous, or both. Even in a story set in a psychiatric clinic, such as One flew over the cuckoo’s nest, the patient-hero is not “truly” mentally ill. For all its criticism of oppressive system and practices in psychiatry, that narrative centers not on people who experience psychological suffering, but on someone who in “reality” does not belong in the clinic. The uniqueness of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is therefore that it allows a person actually suffering from a psychiatric disorder to have agency and gain audience sympathies.

The series centres on Rebecca Bunch, who impulsively leaves a successful career as a lawyer in New York City to pursue Josh, who was her boyfriend during a youth summer camp. She moves to a small town in California and starts building a new life and tries to win Josh back. This, she believes, will make her “truly happy”. The way she goes about her mission, however, is extreme and manipulative – that’s how she fulfils the sexist and ableist stereotype of the “crazy ex-girlfriend”. She breaks in to apartments, sets fires, stalks, and plots murder. All the while, the series is asking: is Rebecca “just a girl in love”, is she a criminal, or “crazy”?

Still, while recognizing her lack of boundaries and often appalling behaviour, it’s easy to root for Rebecca. This sets her apart from arguably the most classic fictional “crazy ex-girlfriend”, Alex Forrest from Fatal Attraction (1987). While Alex is closer to a horror movie monster than an actual woman, Rebecca gets to be a complete character. Early on in the series, it becomes clear that her obsession with Josh has a deeper root than just a typical love story. Her involvement with him, and the other men she ends up dating in the series, is motivated by a profound lack in her sense of self-worth. Through flashbacks, we learn about her childhood in a dysfunctional family, with a self-centered mother and an absent father, and that she previously has been hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic after having a violent mental breakdown.

The series, thus, becomes a narrative of living with mental illness. We get to follow Rebecca through different coping- and treatment strategies: going on and off medication, individual and group therapy, building a supportive social network and reassessing her career choice. We see her sink into a deep depression, deal with intense anxiety, and even attempt suicide.

This sounds like harsh topics for a musical comedy, and they are. But we also get to know Rebecca as a talented, funny, and clever person – and this is what makes the character unique as a portrayal of a person with mental illness. Whereas the role of “the mentally ill” in popular culture – in particular “crazy” women – is usually stereotypical, one-dimensional, and negative, Rebecca is a full person, and someone to relate to and identify with. Her mental illness is neither over-emphasised, nor erased. Rather, the series relentlessly examines the ambiguities surrounding narratives about love and shows that there is a thin line between what, in our culture, is considered romantic and what pathological.

Late in the series, Rebecca gets diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), one of the most stigmatized mental illnesses. The cultural stereotype around BPD is prevalent not only in the public but far into the community of mental health providers (Knaak 2015). The way that the disorder is often characterized reads like a catalogue of the most undesirable, even immoral, personality traits. BPD patients are described as manipulative, unlikeable, violent, attention-seeking, not possible to treat and unable to have healthy relationships. The destructive effects of this stigma become clear in the series when Rebecca falls into despair after she reads up online on her new diagnosis. And at the same time, the entire series destroys the stigma. It’s impossible to dehumanize Rebecca based on her diagnosis when we get to see her as the full person that she is. It’s also abundantly clear that the fact that she has a personality disorder does not disqualify her from meaningful relationships – here, it’s worth noting that the way that the series portrays female friendship is also particularly refreshing.
The series has been praised for its diverse cast and the way that it addresses and challenges stereotypes around mental illness, gender, sexuality, and race. However, it’s a shame that the series never took the opportunity to extend its clever take on these issues to other disabilities as well. A broader disability perspective is absent and actors with visible disabilities almost non-existent.

Nevertheless, there is a lot to be learned from the series about how to think about and present the social and medical aspects of disability. In the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend universe, mental illness is inseparable from the social and cultural context in which it emerges. At the same time, however, it does not write off emotional pain as “just a social construction”, but presents it as as a very real, tangible, and common type of suffering. Medicine does provide some answers to it, but not all.

This is a perspective that could be extended to disability in general: we don’t need to make a black-or-white choice between social construction and medicalization. Medical interventions and services are valuable, but cannot alone explain or remedy disabling experiences, physical or psychological.





Ylva Söderfeldt is associate senior lecturer at the Department of History of Science and Ideas at Uppsala University.
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References

Knaak, S. et al. (2015): Stigma towards borderline personality disorder: effectiveness and generalizability of an anti-stigma program for healthcare providers using a pre-post randomized design. In: Borderline Personal Disord Emot Dysregul 2: 9.

Recommended citation

Ylva Söderfeldt (2019): Goodbye "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend", the show that revolutionized popular depictions of mental illness. In: Public Disability History 4 (2019) 5.

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