残障权利学术文章5-McRuer Robert Abby Wilkerson-Cripping the (Queer) Nation.pdfVIP

INTRODUCTION Robert McRuer and Abby L. Wilkerson Cripping the (Queer) Nation I n disability communities, one feature of many post–September 11 conversa- tions was a consideration of the physical space of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. These conversations, not surprisingly, often extended far beyond the subjects covered by the mainstream press, which tended either to celebrate the people with disabilities who had escaped from the buildings or to center on the tragic stories of the people with disabilities who had been trapped inside.1 Articles on the deaths of people with disabilities seemed less concerned with the disability issues raised by the built environment, rescue efforts, and emergency procedures and more intent, first, on producing the same old disability journalism intended for able-bodied consumption and, second, on the somewhat newer project of locat- ing people with disabilities in a much larger, nationalistic narrative.2 In the United States, after all, the imagined post–September 11 commu- nity has been incredibly diverse; the national identity crisis played out in the mainstream media has, on the surface, accommodated a wider range of identities than any other phenomenon ever has. As one retrospective on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, suggests: What is known is that a group of men and women, randomly thrown together, somehow rose up as they faced death. Ages 20 to 79, from Manalapan, N.J., to Honolulu, from Greensboro, N.C., to New York City, they were energetic salespeople, ambitious college students, corporate executives, lawyers, a retired ironworker, a waiter going to his son’s funeral, a four-foot-tall handicapped rights activist, a census worker, a fish and wildlife officer, a retired couple who were