At last night’s Death Café, hosted by the Studio For Media Activism and Critical Thought as a part of their ARTivism Lab Speakers Series, moderators Eliza Chandler, Esther Ignagni, and Kim Collins shared their experiences around the synonymous relationship of disability with death created by our ableist society. The remainder of the event consisted of prompted conversations throughout the room around death, and a regrouping to close with final takeaways as well as time for members of the audience to share their experiences.
What stood out to me most was in the debriefing portion of the event, where Eliza spoke about living and dying well, and how that translates into different abilities, cultures, socio-economic positions in society (“Death Café”). Is living well and dying with dignity really made a priority or possibility even for anyone who is not young, able, and white? We live in a society that has made it easier to die than be who you are, looking at the resources put toward the implementation of physician-assisted suicide before disabled rights and access (Chandler and Ignagni 3). This point also ties into Rinaldo Walcott’s writing in “Black Queer Studies, Freedom, and Other Human Possibilities” about how death can become very familiar to marginalized communities, in this case gay, Black men with HIV/AIDS, and how people have learned to be comfortable with death, to die with dignity while dealing with exclusion and rejection from their communities (193). Death, however, is not only familiar to those who are already facing death through illness or disability, as mentioned by Walcott: “Death is a marker of Black diasporic life –– not a conclusion but its very origin or foundation” (196). A great deal of our society’s structures are built for and continue to cater to white, “able-bodied”, “able-minded”, cisgendered people, and these structures are built off the death and suffering of those outside of this identity. So much of Canada’s pride and reputation of goodness is almost reliant on the U.S. being worse. So much of our society and education seems to condition us to look outward when we think of discrimination and social injustice, as opposed to addressing the issues that lie everywhere in our own country. Differences are made disabilities, those who communicate or behave or think differently are at a disadvantage because we refuse to alter our ways or even open our minds to or accommodate different ways of living.
Another point in the evening that stuck out to me was when an audience member shared about the use of the discourse of pity through the death of indigenous peoples, used as a means to further political causes, striping individuality for the shock factor of statistics, almost perpetuating the generalization and dehumanization of indigenous communities. To me this connected to one of the prompts we were given in our conversations that asked: “Are there representations of death and dying that are absent or missing/missed in media representations?”, and the point shared by another audience member further reflected the fact there are indeed absent representations when he recounted the death of a deaf boy in his community in Saskatchewan that had died and the media covered only the death and not the efforts of the community to improve its support of disabled individuals. There seems to be a consistent capitalization on the suffering of disadvantaged peoples by the media, clearly disregarding the importance of creating awareness around issues within communities and taking what they please out of the story that will lead to the most clicks and views. The media, however, perhaps simply reflects how we use the plight of others to our advantage, how we pity others to feel benevolent and powerful (Hayes 116).
Chandler, Eliza et al. “Death Café: ARTivism Lab Speakers Series”. Studio For Media Activism and Critical Thought, 6 March 2018, Eaton Lecture Hall, Ryerson University, Toronto, Critical Thought Conversation.
Chandler, Eliza and Esther Ignagni. “Strange beauty: Aesthetic possibilities for desiring disability into the future.” (unpublished)
Hayes, Michael. “Troubling Signs: Disability, Hollywood Movies and the Construction of a Discourse of Pity.” Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 2, 2003, pp. 114-32.
Walcott, Rinaldo. “Black Queer Studies, Freedom, and Other Human Possibilities.” Understanding Blackness Through Performance, 2013, pp. 191-213.
Videos
Facing Race: Haroun Bouazzi: http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1157743171843/
“Grief needs to be expressed: How facing death allows us to live more fully”: http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1177937475711