On discourse theory (Laclau & Mouffe) + the podcast Invisibilia

I have been sick with the flu the past few days, so I am a bit nervous this post will come out less than clear. As I've been sick, I've had some difficulty reading and concentrating on what I am reading so have listened to some podcasts. Most recently I listened to a new NPR podcast, Invisibilia, titled How to become Batman on the social construction of blindness. 

As I listened to the reporters interview Carol Dweck and frame the social construction of blindness as connected to societal expectations of people living with blindness, I felt frustrated. I couldn't even figure out why I felt frustrated at first (perhaps it was the flu medicine). Basically, the podcast told the story of a man who went blind around age 4, and how as an adult he is a completely autonomous individual - he rides a bike, goes hiking, and lives in the world as those with sight would. They interviewed him and his mother, and both stressed how the fact that he had been allowed to do anything he wanted changed his life. He had learned to solve the problems around him - from spatial awareness to bruised knees - on his own. The skills he acquired to do so were all connected to the fact that his mother pushed back against expectations that he would need her to do things for him. On one level, this explanation sat quite nicely for me: this was how I was taught to be a teacher. We learned to have high expectations in our classrooms because then students would match them.

Eventually, I figured out what I felt frustrated by. That there is another way to explain what was happening in terms of the social construction of blindness, and now I can name it more firmly: discourse theory. I am going to try to use the terms correctly here, because I have gathered from the Jørgenson & Phillips chapter on Laclau and Mouffe that this is important. Thinking back through the way the reporters framed this man's story, I recalled that most often when they spoke of expectations they shared stories of teachers, bystanders, and others making statements to the effect of, "but he can't do that!" His mother repeatedly shared that if she stifled him, of course he wouldn't be able to. And this is the mantra the man has had his whole life. This set up for me the idea that the concept of capability had become a nodal point in the larger myth of blindness, that turned on the master signifier of expectation. Combined these have (more largely in society) created a discourse that understands blindness as impacting (negatively) an individual’s capability, thus impacting others’ expectations of what is possible. This constructs individuals who understand their identity as connected to being less capable due to their blindness, and a group of individuals who are understood in essentialized ways as being incapable and connecting them to lower expectations.

The reporters on the podcast also shared stories of where this man had become overdetermined by this identity – at once ‘blind’, at once ‘capable’. But perhaps most interesting for me – given in particular that I was not surprised that altered expectations could change behavior – was that the way we understand discourses as constructed was proven in additional ways through brain scans. People who are able to echo locate, which this man can do, have brain scans that are very similar to people with sight. So, my major point seems to be that while I had always subscribed to the theoretical implications of discourse theory, and have encountered it in other forms perhaps, I was astonished, and encouraged, at how solidly our bodies relay a reason for me to stick to these types of theories of the world.

Jørgenson, M. & Phillips, L.. (2002). Discourse analysis as theory and method. London, UK: Sage Publications.

http://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to-become-batman?showDate=2015-01-23