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

“想象残疾在漫长的十八世纪”审查的方式，其中身体损害的定义，理解和讨论在英格兰之间的1660年和1830年。残疾史在过去十年中的发展表明，损伤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，这方面的研究大多集中在十九世纪和二十世纪，并追溯了残疾人在当今获得公民身份所面临障碍的历史根源。对1800年之前残疾的研究往往集中在其更“怪异”的方面，如“畸形出生”的侧面描述，而不是其更常见的表现。此外，现有的残疾史一般是建立在对残疾人所做的机构和自上而下的历史基础上的;人们对历史上的残疾经历知之甚少。尽管人们认为，从17世纪末到19世纪初，残疾人的待遇和社会对残疾的看法都发生了重大变化，但这一时期尚未得到详细的历史关注。“想象残疾”试图弥补这一忽视，分析残疾的文化表现和残疾人自己的证词，以探讨这一时期的损害的意义。该项目的主要产出将是一本专著，提供这一期间第一本关于身体损伤的书籍篇幅的研究。残疾的文化意义将通过各种来源进行探讨，从布道和医学文本到笑话，报纸和印刷品。这本书还探讨了残疾男女如何通过分析精英回忆录和信件以及贫民信件、请愿书和刑事法庭记录中残疾穷人的各种叙述来理解自己的经历。它的挑战占主导地位的历史假设的时期，作为一个见证了残疾的观念从一个基于“宗教”模式的一个基于医学理解的转变，通过显示不同模式的概念化障碍之间的重叠。它还挑战了公认的十八世纪对身体残疾不敏感和不适应的形象，促进了对启蒙社会的更广泛的讨论。它为恢复残疾人历史的更广泛项目做出了重要贡献，作为赋予传统上被边缘化的群体权力的一种形式。18世纪关于残疾问题的关键辩论在现代再次出现。公众对残疾退伍军人的看法和待遇是英国当前的一个问题，这是关于继续军事干预阿富汗可行性的更广泛辩论的一部分。与此同时，在关于国家福利提供资格的争议背景下，对残疾福利“欺诈性”申请人的担忧（这与18世纪对“假残疾人”在街头乞讨的抨击相呼应）再次出现在英国媒体上。这项研究有可能通过审查界定真正和虚假的救济申请人的历史问题，对有关获得支助资格的政策辩论产生影响。它借鉴了历史证据，敦促政策制定者不要迎合媒体的偏见，在他们的看法是什么是'禁用'和判断索赔的合法性。一篇旨在向政策制定者传达“历史教训”的文章将展示研究在这方面的相关性。由此产生的出版物将吸引残疾史、十八世纪社会和文化史的学者以及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.