Michalko's analysis draws from his own understanding of blindness and narratives by other disabled people. Connecting lived experience with social theory, he shows the consistent exclusion of disabled people from the common understandings of humanity and what constitutes the good life. He offers new insight into what suffering a disability means to individuals as well as to the polity as a whole. He shows how disability can teach society about itself, about its determination of what is normal and who belongs. Guiding us to a new understanding of how disability, difference, and suffering are related, this book enables us to choose disability as a social identity and a collective political issue. The difference that disability makes can be valuable and worthwhile, but only if we choose to make it so.
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"This is a savvy and provocative analysis of the cultural structures undergirding the reception of disability in contemporary North America (particularly of blindness). Michalko creates a compelling analysis of disability as a cultural construct and as a meaningful phenomenological category of identity and experience. There is a wonderful weave of theoretical and personal insight that makes The Difference That Disability Makes a joy to read and an important contribution to the academic field of disability studies. Such a combination is rarely found."
—David Mitchell, Director, Ph.D. in Disability Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago
"Michalko advances contemporary scholarship not just by his reflections on the underlying grammar of our everyday talk on 'suffering' and on 'persons with disability' but by the self-exemplifying nature of his own text. The Difference That Disability Makes will make as important a contribution to theoretical developments on the 'self' as it will to our understanding of disability."
—C.N. Doran, Department of Social Science, University of New Brunswick
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Good. Ex-Library copy with usual markings. The book is otherwise in great condition. No writing or major blemishes.; 9.2 X 6.4 X 0.8 inches; 194 pages. Seller Inventory # A-1484-11M-2-99.99
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