Mind over Body? Stigma, Staring, and the Self

Abstract

novelty is fragile and staring volatile because the longer we look, the more accustomed a once surprising sight becomes . . . seeing disability reminds us of what Bryan s. Turner (2006) calls “ontological contingency,” the truth of our body’s vulnerability to the randomness of fate. Each one of us ineluctably acquires one or more disabilities—naming them variably as illness, disease, injury, old age, failure, dysfunction, or dependence.1