Semiotics & Dis/ability - SemioticSigns.com

VIII SEMIOTICS
AND DIS/ABILITY
always' In the tl-rree years rhat we have been working on this we have
also co-directed dissertations, written journar articres, and shared many
a happy lunch.
we dedicate this book to Dr. Rita Myers. she was a cherished col-
a wise
l:?.tu.,
voice, and one who worked iilig.ntly in the fielJoi ..hr_
bilitation counseling. Although we miss her, we are rhe richer for having
known her and for having her guidance.
Tr
INIRooucrroN
his.book emerged out of numerous
-l conversations with coileagues and
friends after we decided to appry a semiotic reading ,o ,h. .u..flay rives
of people categorized as having disabilities. we wiihed to takeour indi_
vidual and collective experience beyond the narratives encompassed in
the disciplines of special education, earry childhood, human'deuelopment'
or rehabilitation
_counseling and to use semiotics as a dynamic
analytical tool. \X/e wished-to uncover experience as shaped bi *or.
than.disco,rse, cognitive features, and ecological factois. v.
searching for the personal within the social; the stories of resisrance, -.r.
counter-naming, and complicating "common sense" knowledge and
perception of what constitures difference. $7e hope that this uoluri. .ontributes
to the opening of sign systems, to th. prr.e, of possibility for
others that these aurhors have crafted for themselv.r. \Xz. asked each
a.uthor to problematize their experience, to consider the markers of lives
that are considered "different." Did they believe there were caregories of
difference which definitively separated Lu-"n beings from one Inother,
or,, when they examined the desires, goars, diremmis, and rerationships
which their narratives encomprrr.J, *... they repositioning their
understandings in a more inclusive way back into ihe milieu"of all
human experience?
_ As long ago as 1929, yirginia Voolf called for people to con_
tribute and make known their understandings, "for books hru. , way of
influencing what is meanr by reality; (p. 90). She deplored her
ina.bility_ to draw upon the voices of individuals whose experienc., and
reflected discourse of living would have contributed ro hoi she framed
her own life and how she could come to know the worrd. Those absenr
discourses, that "emptiness on the shelf" (p. 44l,which woolf lamented
were represented by the so-called "maiority" as an affirming silence, as
thgugh all experiences y:re adequately repiesented by whati"as present
in books on "the" shelf. However, that trrat silence, did .,o,
recognize her life or the experience of much
"br.n..,
of the wider population.
Then, as now, there was a discourse that created an ,,;s,'' and an