Annotated Biblography Assignment | Online Assignment

I want a well organized annotated bibliography, that can relate to the topic of people with disabilities. And please use the given source as well as go over the attached instructions. F.Y.I my primary resource talks about a disability myth of isolation and individuated. and my third resource is Mitchell, David T, and Sharon L. Synder. The Body and Physical Difference: Discourse of Disability. Ann Arbour: University of Michigan Press, 1997On Being An Ink Blot:
Disability Meets Euthanasia
By Andrew P. Porter
Abstract: People encountering the disabled often reveal in their reactions a distaste for disability that comes
from pity rather than solidarity; when that pity is traced to its roots, such people are capable of urging the
disabled toward a ‘‘merciful death,’’ rather than offering any solidarity. The result is acceptance of euthanasia
for the disabled. At stake is the difference between grace and works: for a disabled person by his or her mere
presence reveals one’s dependence on grace. But if one can ‘‘help’’ the disabled one, then one gains a sense of
control that comes with works.
Key Terms: Disability, euthanasia, grace, works, compassion, world-affirming historical religion.
In January 1974, I broke my back on a toboggan sled
at Lake Tahoe, and spent three or four months recovering,
coming home in May of that year. It was a low
injury, as spinal cord injuries go, and I have full use of
everything above the brim of the pelvis, and negligible
function below. A manual wheelchair is sufficient, and
I can drive a car easily. It took me about a year to work
through my own grieving, largely in my dreams. Preoccupations
of school made it a good deal easier. I
took and passed the comprehensive exams for my first
PhD, in computational physics, in the early summer
of 1974. And I had much support, having landed in
the arms of the Reno Anglican Cursillo community,
later returning home to St. Bartholomew’s parish and
the Cursillo community of the Livermore Valley.
After finishing that thesis, I signed up to take a
first year Bible course to see what was up with the
strange duplications of stories in Genesis. Forewarned
as I was, it was wild beyond even my rather
wild dreams, and I stayed to do another doctorate in
philosophical theology. The pivot was the thesis that
biblical religion—world-affirming historical religion, if
you will—is committed to affirming all of life as good,
even its hard and painful parts. In a stroke the problems
between science and religion evaporated (a story for
another time), and they were replaced by other, more
interesting problems. And the central affirmation of life
in biblical religion stands out in clarity.
My experiences with the general public since
acquiring a disability have been mixed, and in ways
that I could not have foreseen. Other people’s reactions
have not always been what I would have
expected based on my own subjective experience.
Sometimes it feels like I am a rolling Rorschach
test, an inkblot: a projection test, a screen onto
which people project their distaste, and so reveal
themselves. What they see is what they do not
want to be. I can handle my disability well
enough—but they cannot. They cannot handle my
disability. It is too much for them, emotionally and
Andrew Porter is a Roman Catholic, holds doctorates in computational physics and philosophical theology, is adjunct faculty at the Graduate
Theological Union, and has worked for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
338 Dialog: A Journal of Theology . Volume 43, Number 4 . Winter 2004
existentially. What does the ink-blot test reveal? It
discloses more than that people don’t want to be
disabled. Who would? But there are more important
things in life than being able-bodied, and in any
case, sooner or later, we are all disabled. To put it
more precisely, many able-bodied think that to be
disabled is hopeless, a defect in life that can neither
be remedied nor redeemed. The ink-blot test shows
fear and rejection of disability, and more radically,
rejection of limitation as such.
‘‘Disability Cool’’!?
In response to this widespread attitude, someone on
a disability listserv once quoted the sub-text of a
poster whose main title was ‘‘Disability Cool’’.
Huh?? What does that mean? It means we’re
fine the way we are. It means the hard part of
our life is barriers, lack of assistant services
when needed, and some people’s attitudes.
Way more than any disability. It means we
like our funky bodies and quirky minds. It
means our wheels are our tools—and we’re
really over people assuming walking, no matter
how, is always better.1
We don’t think our lives are less blessed because
we are inconvenienced. We would happily walk
again if medicine could offer that, but we don’t
think we are pitiable because we ride. Many other
people evidently do.
Too many think they know what I need better
than I do, they think they can just move in and
‘‘help’’ without even asking for permission. And
they want to put their hands on my shoulder, in a
gesture to give me courage to bear disability, as if
they knew how to bear disability and I do not. This
is like someone who can’t do arithmetic without a
calculator trying to comfort mathematicians in their
perplexity amid the unsolved problems of the twentieth
century. They think they can give me the wherewithal
to bear limitation, not knowing that I wrote a
long book on, among other things, limitation.2 Supposedly,
seminarians go through Clinical Pastoral
Education in order to learn that the disabled pastoral
client knows more about handling disability than the
pastor does. Many seminarians do a passable job of
learning that. Among ordinary folk, some seem to
know this instinctively, and others resist tenaciously.
Some people cannot handle my disability unless
they take charge, take control, master the situation,
and ‘‘help.’’ Really, unless I asked for help, what the
other is doing is just ego-gratification at the expense
of a paraplegic. He can feel good about himself, and
he can evade confronting his own limitations, his
own mortality, and what he perceives as his own
relative good fortune if he ‘‘helps’’ the person in a
wheelchair. He thinks he is relatively more fortunate,
because not disabled, and he feels guilty. It is as if
the people who think disability is tragic cast me in
the role of Jesus meeting the daughters of Jerusalem
in the Stations of the Cross. These people think they
should weep for me, they think they should ‘‘help’’
me. Jesus told the daughters of Jerusalem to weep for
themselves, not for him. They had serious problems
with their own lives. And so the inkblot test discloses
serious problems in the lives of the people I meet.
Mostly, in casual encounters with people who
cannot refrain from ‘‘help,’’ it is enough to smile,
ignore their reaction, and politely decline help. That
suffices as an offer of grace for them, and they can
then deal with my disability. But their problems
with the disabled are symptoms of a much more
radical problem with life. They reject limitation in
life as barren, un-redeemable, a defect in life that
renders the world not fully good. They think the
disabled suffer from unredeemable disappointments
that they themselves do not share, and so their
solicitude is a form of pity (and thus contempt),
and not of genuine shared humanity. They are capable
of compassion as pity, but not of compassion as
co-suffering with others who have found blessing in
limitation. Co-suffering that could grow into fellowship
and celebration is too costly in self-image; the
last thing they are interested in.
The Rejection of Limitation As
Such
But the encounter with disability is only a special
case, a clearing where you can see what they are
On Being An Ink Blot . Andrew P. Porter 339
doing with their lives. What it shows is rejection of
limitation as such. The growing ‘‘culture of death,’’
about which Pope John Paul II has warned the
world, is a serious threat to people with disabilities.3
That has practical (and, recently, lethal) consequences
for the disabled. Look at two developments
for the disabled in recent decades.
The first, the Americans With Disabilities Act
(ADA), under assault in the courts though it is,4
nevertheless exemplifies the longstanding if ambiguous
biblical instinct that the disabled are not to be cast
out, marginalized, or hidden from view. Today people
survive what would earlier have been fatal injuries,
and the ADA mandates including the disabled in
society instead of marginalizing and hiding us.
The second development is less comforting: the
euthanasia movement, variously styled as ‘‘death
with dignity,’’ ‘‘the right to die,’’ ‘‘compassion in
dying.’’5 It would deny help to the disabled; rather,
it would help the disabled die. The euthanasia movement
has been slowed down by defeats at the polls
and the refusal of at least some judges to legislate its
program from the bench, but only because of determined
opposition from, among others, disability
rights groups. The disability community rightly
fears being the beneficiary of legal permission for
‘‘a merciful death,’’ for that would downgrade the
status of all the disabled, not just the medically
unattractive and those deemed terminal. To define
some disabled as ready for euthanasia is to define all
other disabled as not-yet-ready for euthanasia. That
such status is not simultaneously accorded to the
able-bodied goes without saying.
In the 1980s, political groups advocating legalization
of euthanasia were not particularly focused on
disability, and they made little progress with public
opinion. In the 1990s, the disabled figured large in the
horizons of the euthanasia movement. If some
disabled could be recruited to claim a ‘‘right’’ to die,
no better poster-children could be imagined. And if an
appeal to pity could be coupled with a claim for
individual autonomy and choice, then the substantive
claims need not be spelled out candidly or overtly, and
the proposed agenda could be asserted by presupposition
and never opened to criticism or question.
The public knows all too well that a ‘‘right’’ to die
can be abused, and the vulnerable can be encouraged
to exercise that right by those who would benefit at
their expense. And so proposed right-to-die laws
have always included ‘‘safeguards’’ against abuse.
The problem is that these bills would establish in
law the principle that there are times when death is a
good that may be actively sought, whether for oneself
or for another. Once that principle is established,
safeguards mean nothing, because safeguards can
never be very effective in preventing one person
from giving something good to another. Flouting
safeguards against ‘‘love,’’ against ‘‘compassion,’’
will always be excused.6
A Theology of Disability
A theologian might well ask what is going on. The
doctrine of creation says that the world is created
good, all of it. That was the whole point of the
Priestly account in Genesis 1, and the goodness of
the world is core theology for biblical religion. What
does it mean for human beings to be good, to be
created as blessed? And what are we to make of
disability, when it occurs? The Bible is ambiguous.
In the Common Documents, the documents shared
in common by the Church and the Synagogue, the
disabled are sometimes marginalized or excluded,
sometimes typical of all Israel, and at least once
(Isaiah 53), the saviour of Israel. In the New Testament,
the healings of the blind, the lame, and those
possessed by demons are well-known. This much is
clear: the disabled are not outcasts but people to be
healed. Indeed, the disabled are the icon of Israel in
the Gospels, they stand for everybody, a point that
readers often miss: Jesus cleanses and raises and feeds
Israel.
Theologians in the last two centuries have learned
to hear more radically the Bible’s unconditional
affirmation of the goodness of life. Gnosticism
stood out in conspicuous contrast in the ancient
world, for it candidly deprecated human life in this
world. There are many places where you can see the
affirmation of life even in its pains in modern theology.
The reader can trace for himself or herself in
Karl Barth’s Commentary on Romans the places
where Barth says that when life says ‘‘No’’ to you,
340 Dialog: A Journal of Theology . Volume 43, Number 4 . Winter 2004
God is saying ‘‘Yes’’ to you. That ‘‘No’’ appears in
theoretical clarity in H. Richard Niebuhr: ‘‘The
causes for which we live all die.’’7 Yet, a few lines
later, he attributes this finitude of all our causes to a
‘‘great abyss into which all things plunge and as the
great source whence they all come. What it is we do
not know save that it is and that it is the supreme
reality with which we must reckon.’’ He continues:
‘‘Now a strange thing has happened in our history
and in our personal life; our faith has been attached
to that great void, to that enemy of all our causes, to
that opponent of all our gods. . . . [W]e have been
enabled to call this reality God.’’
Niebuhr stands at the near end of a long tradition.
It is in the Bible, starting in Genesis 1, where
God seven times declares the created world to be
good. In Isaiah 45.7, ‘‘I am the Lord, unrivalled; I
form the light and create the dark. I make good
fortune and create calamity.’’ This text is the seed
of transformation of everything that comes after.
These are late texts, post-exilic, but this theology
goes back to the J source, in the covenant with
Abraham in Genesis 12 and the creation stories in
Genesis 2–3, where Adam and Eve inaugurate sin by
distinguishing between the good and the evil in life.
The lesson is that parts of life hurt, but all of life is
good. It is wrong to reject the painful parts of life as
evil. This is picked up long after Isaiah, in the
Talmuds (Bavli Berakhot 60b), where the rabbis
ask whether we are to bless God for the evil in life
as we do for the good. They hesitate, for they know
what they are saying, but they answer in the affirmative.
In between stands Romans 8.28, that all things
work for good for those who love the Lord.
Between Paul and the Mishnah are the Gospel
healing stories. We normally think of them as medical
cures, but that is not obvious from the texts. The
typical healing story has the structure of a television
advertisement: someone with a problem has the
problem ‘‘miraculously’’ solved, and a product is
announced for sale after the special effects.8 But
what is the product, and are we to take the special
effects ‘‘literally,’’ i.e., as medical healings? Put it a
little differently: are we to seek remedies for limitation
in life by getting out of the limitation, or should
we seek blessing in the limitations themselves, when
they are inescapable, when they are truly limitations?
Disability is only a particular instance of this question,
albeit a conspicuous and symbolic one.
The texts make better sense if read as advertisements
for finding blessing in limitation rather than
for trying to get out of limitation. For despite the
fact that there are many unexplained medical recoveries,
even today, there are many medical problems
that we do not recover from. Ultimately we all die.
Limitation is real. On this reading, the special effects
in the New Testament miracles are to be taken in the
same spirit as the special effects in TV ads.
And on this reading, lepers, mutes, the possessed,
the lame, the halt, the blind, the poor, and the hungry
are not an exceptional and marginal group with special
problems, they are typical, they stand for everybody.
How so? Most of the time, limitation does not typically
come first as physical disability. Formost people,
most of the time, limitation is first encountered in
family life: the demands of other family members.
Beyond that, in the limitations of social structures,
some changeable, some not; some just, some not.
But if you want a visible icon, the disabled are it.9
People read into the Gospel miracle stories what
they want from those stories. Those who would like
to get out of limitation accordingly read the stories
as medical healings, as about getting out of limitation,
rather than finding blessing in limitation. What
goes for limitation goes also for other people’s needs.
The Gospels tell us to meet an other’s need with
open eyes, open hands, and an open heart. But we
would rather not: for others’ needs are a demand on
my resources and self-image that I would rather not
face. Usually missed in the healing stories is the
companion challenge of exposure, which appears
briefly at the start, in a bare sentence at most,
when the one to be healed has his or her sins
forgiven. The importance of the trio of exposure,
limitation, and need as prototypical loci of providence
has been argued elsewhere.10
Grace, Works, and Unwanted
Blessings
The first task on meeting someone disabled is not to
offer help. (Usually help is not needed at all.) Before
On Being An Ink Blot . Andrew P. Porter 341
help comes respect for the other person, but not
even that is really the first task. The first task is to
revise your own self-image, so that you can see
yourself as one just like the other person. Think of
yourself as a crook, a cripple, a schizo, or a bag lady.
Without that change of mind, without that change
of image, helping the other is just a way to stay in
control, and so to fend off the deeper claim of the
needy. Once they have been ‘‘helped,’’ you no longer
need think of yourself as just folks like them. Euthanizing
the disabled, the terminal, and the medically
unattractive is just a special case of ‘‘helping’’ them.
We are not normally comfortable with the doctrine
of grace. We would prefer works, because with works,
we are in control. When we are beneficiaries of grace,
we would like to pass off grace as works. Always, if we
can add works to grace, we need not feel indebted, we
need not feel morally vulnerable, we need not feel
guilty. And we feel especially helpless in face of a
disabled person, because our own dependence on grace
is revealed by the mere presence of the disabled one.
The pains of life bring blessing, but we nevertheless
would rather not have such blessings. We would like to
avoid limitation rather than have to find the blessings
in limitation. And we would rather avoid the emotional
and tangible costs of meeting an other’s needs,
especially when the other needs lots of medical care.
Insulting the Euthanizers
Matters have come to a head in the courts, as social
change often does in America, and caregivers would
like permission to withdraw all care, even nutrition
and hydration, from those who cannot speak for
themselves (recently, the Wendland11 and Schiavo
cases12). Robert Wendland died of natural causes;
and the Schiavo case is still in the courts. When
starvation and dehydration are legalized, the next
step will be active euthanasia, because starvation
and dehydration are ugly and take a long time, and
the central principle (that death may be sought as a
good) will have been established in law.
Those with severe cognitive deficits are most at
risk, especially those who cannot talk. If you can
talk, if you can insult your caregivers, you are safe
from starvation and dehydration. An actual insult is
not necessary. If it is clear that you have the ability to
insult, you are probably safe, at least from being
euthanized against your will. The insult can be
spelled out quite precisely: it is the reproach of a
prospective victim of a utilitarian homicide toward
those who would eliminate him (or her). Those who
cannot insult others do not, as a practical matter,
have much protection from utilitarian homicides.
As we have seen, however, the roots of the problem
go much deeper than just euthanasia. They lie in
the universal desire to reject limitation, need, and
exposure, the pains of life, as barren and devoid of
blessing. That is no surprise.
One would have expected the churches to point
this out. They have not, at least not with much clarity
or emphasis. The more conservative have rejected the
utilitarian homicides on moral grounds, but that is
largely a matter of blessed instinct, not theological
clarity. All too often, with respect to finding blessing
in the disappointments of ordinary life, the more
liberal churches provide neither instinct nor clarity.
In the Wendland case, for example, the lawyer’s
Lutheran pastor stood by the effort to keep him
alive, but both Lutheran and Catholic bishops were
silent. Despite the pope’s public stand against the
‘‘culture of death,’’ the Catholic hospitals behaved
disgracefully, filing an amicus brief in favor of starvation
and dehydration.13
To pursue these matters to their roots in recent
theology would be a topic much bigger than I want
to take on in this article. It is enough to diagnose the
uncompleted act of faith as the trust that human life
in this world is good, all of it, in full view of its
pains, without reservation or qualification, and without
any conditions placed on God. That is what it
takes to do a theology of the cross; anything less is a
theology of glory. What the inkblot test discloses is
usually a theology of glory.
Endnotes
1. Not Dead Yet listserv, 2002 June 17; quoted with permission.
2. Andrew P. Porter, Elementary Monotheism, Lanham, MD: University
Press of America, 2001. Volume I is Exposure, Limitation, and Need.
342 Dialog: A Journal of Theology . Volume 43, Number 4 . Winter 2004
3. Pope John Paul II, The Gospel of Life [Evangelium Vitae] (New York:
Random House, Times Books, 1995).
4. Mary Johnson, Make Them Go Away: Clint Eastwood, Christopher
Reeve, and the Case Against Disability Rights (Louisville, KY: The Avocado
Press, 2003).
5. Cf. Ian Dowbiggin, A Merciful End: The Euthanasia Movement in
Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2003).
6. The argument at more length can be found as ‘‘Euthanasia in the
Past and in America Today,’’ http://www.jedp.com/euthanasia.brief.html.
7. H. Richard Niebuhr, ‘‘Faith in Gods and in God,’’ originally ‘‘The
Nature and Existence of God,’’ Motive, December 1943; reprinted in
Radical Monotheism and Western Culture (New York: Harper and Row,
1970), p. 122.
8. Edward C. Hobbs, ‘‘Gospel Miracle Story and Modern Miracle
Story,’’ in Gospel Studies in Honor of Sherman Elbridge Johnson, ed. Massey
H. Shepherd Jr. and Edward C. Hobbs, {ATR} Supplemental Series,
Number Three, March 1974, pages 117–126. Available online as http://
www.pcts.org/journal/miracle.html, .pdf, .dvi.
9. I would not have noticed this, and am indebted to Judith Z. Abrams,
Judaism and Disability: Potrayals in Ancient Texts from the Tanach to the
Bavli (Washington: Gallaudet Univ. Press, 1998), for this insight.
10. Andrew P. Porter and Edward C. Hobbs, ‘‘The Trinity and the
Indo-European Tripartite Worldview,’’ Budhi (Manila) Vol. 3, nos. 2&3
(1999) 1–28; available online at http://www.jedp.com/trinity.html.
11. Some details of the Wendland case can be found at http://www.
angelfire.com/ca7/robertsangels/. The California Supreme Court decided
against euthanasia in the Wendland case.
12. The particulars of the case from the point of view of her parents, who
are trying to keep her alive and get for her the cognitive therapy that her
husband has apparently denied her, can be found at http://www.terrisfight.org.
13. Janie Siess, lawyer for Robert Wendland’s mother, private
communication.