Imagining Disability in the Long Eighteenth Century: Representations of Impairment in England c.1660-c.1830

《在漫长的18世纪想象残疾》考察了1660年至1830年间英国对身体缺陷的定义、理解和讨论。在过去的十年中，残疾史的发展表明，残疾的含义不是由生物学决定的，而是随着时间的推移而变化的。然而，这些研究大多集中在19世纪和20世纪，并追溯了当今残疾人在获得公民身份方面所面临障碍的历史根源。在1800年之前，对残疾的研究往往侧重于其更“怪异”的方面，比如对“畸形出生”的笼统描述，而不是其更常见的表现。此外，现有的残疾史通常是建立在对残疾人所做的制度性和自上而下的历史之上的；历史上人们对残疾人的经历知之甚少。尽管有观点认为，从17世纪末到19世纪初，在对待残疾人和社会对残疾的看法方面都发生了重大变化，但这一时期尚未得到详细的历史关注。“想象残疾”试图弥补这种忽视，分析残疾的文化表征和残疾人自己的证词，以探索这一时期残疾的意义。该项目的主要产出将是一本专著，提供这一时期身体损伤的第一本书长度的研究。残疾的文化意义将通过各种来源进行探索，从布道和医学文本到笑话、报纸和印刷品。这本书还通过分析精英回忆录和信件，以及在贫民信件、请愿书和刑事法庭记录中发现的残疾穷人的各种叙述，研究了残疾男女如何利用这些表现来理解他们自己的经历。它挑战了关于这一时期的主流历史假设，这一时期见证了对残疾的看法从一种基于“宗教”模式的转变为一种基于医学理解的转变，通过展示不同概念障碍模式之间的重叠。它还挑战了人们对18世纪的普遍看法，即18世纪是一个对身体残疾不敏感和不适应的时代，这有助于对启蒙社会进行更广泛的讨论。这项研究不仅具有历史意义，而且具有当代意义。它为让残疾人回归历史这一更广泛的项目做出了重要贡献，作为一种赋予传统上被边缘化的群体权力的形式。18世纪关于残疾的关键争论在现代再次出现。在英国，公众对伤残退伍军人的看法和待遇是当前的一个问题，这是有关军事干预阿富汗是否继续可行的更广泛辩论的一部分。与此同时，在有关国家福利提供资格的争议背景下，对残疾福利“欺诈性”索赔人的担忧（这与18世纪对街头乞讨的“假跛子”的抨击相呼应）在英国媒体上重新出现。这项研究有可能通过研究界定真正和虚假救济申请人的历史问题，对有关支持资格的政策辩论产生影响。它利用历史证据来敦促政策制定者不要在他们对什么是“残疾”的看法和判断索赔人的合法性时迎合媒体的偏见。一篇旨在向政策制定者传达“历史教训”的文章将展示该研究在这方面的相关性。由此产生的出版物将吸引残疾史学者，18世纪的社会和文化史和任何对人类多样性感兴趣的人。

'Imagining Disability in the Long Eighteenth Century' examines the ways in which physical impairment was defined, understood and discussed in England between 1660 and 1830. Disability history has developed over the past decade to show that meanings of impairment are not biologically determined but subject to change over time. Yet much of this research is focused on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and traces the historical roots of the barriers faced by disabled people in the present to citizenship. Research on disability before 1800 tends to focus on its more 'freakish' aspects, such as broadside accounts of 'monstrous births', rather than its more common manifestations. Furthermore, existing histories of disability are generally founded on institutional and top-down histories of what was done to disabled people; little is known about the experience of disability in history. Despite the view that the period from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries witnessed significant changes both in the treatment of disabled people and in social perceptions of disability, the era has not yet received detailed historical attention. 'Imagining Disability' seeks to make good this neglect, analysing cultural representations of disability and the testimonies of disabled people themselves to explore the meanings of impairment in this period. The principal output of the project will be a monograph that provides the first book-length study of physical impairment in this period. Cultural meanings of disability will be explored via a diverse range of sources, from sermons and medical texts to jokes, newspapers and prints. The book also examines how disabled men and women drew on these representations in making sense of their own experiences via analyses of elite memoirs and letters and a variety of narratives produced by the disabled poor found in pauper letters, petitions and criminal court records. It challenges dominant historical assumptions about the period as one which witnessed a transformation of perceptions of disability from one based on a 'religious' model to one based on medical understanding, by showing overlap between different modes of conceptualising impairment. It also challenges the accepted picture of the eighteenth century as a time insensitive and ill-adapted to bodily disability, contributing to wider discussions about Enlightenment society.The research is of contemporary as well as historical importance. It makes an important contribution to the broader project of restoring disabled people to history, acting as a form of empowerment to a group that traditionally has been marginalised. Key debates about disability in the eighteenth century recur in the modern era. The public perception and treatment of disabled war veterans is a current issue in Britain as part of the wider debate about the continued viability of military intervention in Afghanistan. At the same time, concerns about 'fraudulent' claimants to disability benefits (which echo eighteenth-century diatribes against 'sham cripples' begging on the streets) have resurfaced in the British media in the context of controversy about eligibility to state welfare provision. This research has potential to make an impact on policy debates about eligibility for support by examining the historical problems of defining genuine and fake claimants to relief. It draws on historical evidence to urge policy makers not to pander to media prejudices in their perception of what is 'disabling' and in judging the legitimacy of claimants. An article aimed at communicating 'lessons from history' to policy makers will demonstrate the relevance of the research in this respect. The resulting publications will appeal to scholars of disability history, eighteenth-century social and cultural history and anyone interested in human diversity.