Instead of a private estate, an emerging academic field would be better thought of as a newly endowed public park. Disabled people have been silenced for too long. But the culture of disabled people should not be synonymous with the intellectual field of disability studies. An area of inquiry must bring together diverse perspectives to be challenging and productive. While some work in any field is bound to be bad, the freedom for all to range about and make mistakes is also what produces contributions that make a difference.
Disability studies shows clearly how dubious that practice is.
For one thing, distinctions within the broad area of disability are far from clear. The borders surrounding disability are similarly blurry. For example, children of deaf adults straddle the worlds of the disabled and the able-bodied, and as the literary critic Lennard J. Davis has shown in his work, they essentially inhabit both worlds, living bicultural lives. As Annette Kolodny, a literary critic and former dean at the University of Arizona, observes, we're all destined for disability as we age, unless we die first. To be sure, the able-bodied are hardly in need of passionate defense in the world.