NCJ Number
188026
Journal
Violence Against Women Volume: 7 Issue: 4 Dated: April 2001 Pages: 370-392
Date Published
April 2001
Length
23 pages
Annotation
This article argues that the discursive historical narratives of institutionalization, idealized motherhood, eugenics, and sterilization can be found in the "brave new world" of 21st century attitudes toward physical and mental departures from idealized forms of human capabilities and behavior.
Abstract
From recently completed research that focused on the lifelong caring undertaken by Western Australian parents of children with intellectual disabilities, the genealogy of three influential discursive propositions of the early and mid-20th century are identified: eugenics, institutionalization, and motherhood. This article suggests that there are powerful connections between a continuing vision of a "brave new world" of "designer babies," who fit dominant standards of physical and intellectual excellence, and institutionalized violence. The commodification of services to people with disabilities is central to this utilitarian utopia. Abberley (1996) connects this commodification with the alienation of people with disabilities from the "work-based model of social membership and identity," so that they instead become connected to the "specific instrumental logic of genetic engineering, abortion, and euthanasia." The author's recent research has identified what she terms a "corporate/neo-eugenic discourse," which now surrounds and acts to influence the lives of people who are viewed as different from the norm of physical and intellectual acceptability. The author provides some Australian examples of this phenomenon. These examples show that current discursive practices of violence against women, both as mothers of children with disabilities and as women with disabilities, can be linked to past ideologies that have abhorred differences perceived as dysfunctional imperfections. People who are committed to sympathy and responsibility for the less advantaged must develop forms of resistance to the trend to normalize differences through neocorporate eugenic discourses. 4 notes and 52 references