Institute for Bioethics & Health Humanities, University of Texas Medical Branch, 301 University Boulevard, TX, 77555-1311, Galveston, USA.
J Med Humanit. 2023 Sep;44(3):311-326. doi: 10.1007/s10912-023-09792-3. Epub 2023 Apr 22.
Describing someone as disabled means evaluating their relationship with their environment, body, and self. Such descriptions pivot on the person's perceived limitations due to their atypical embodiment. However, impairments are not inherently pathological, nor are disabilities necessarily deviations from biological normality, a discrepancy often articulated in science fiction via the presentation of radically altered environments. In such settings, non-impaired individuals can be shown to be unsuited to the world they find themselves in. One prime example of this comes courtesy of H. G. Wells's "The Country of the Blind." This paper demonstrates science fiction's capacity to decouple disability's normative quality from classical medical models stemming from the medical Enlightenment movement by challenging the idea of the biologically normal. It first provides a brief account of disability before exploring the concept of medical normality. It then problematizes the biologically consistent being, arguing that health is only understandable when environmentally situated. Next, the paper provides an overview of "The Country of the Blind" before analyzing how it challenges the idea of biological normality, framing it as a social product rather than a universal constant. Finally, the paper concludes that science fiction narratives effectively interrogate our world's seemingly consistent trends by envisioning (un)desirable alternatives.
将某人描述为残疾意味着评估他们与环境、身体和自我的关系。这种描述的依据是他们因非典型的身体而被认为存在的局限性。然而，障碍本身并不一定是病理性的，残疾也不一定是对生物正常性的偏离，这种差异在科幻小说中经常通过呈现 radically altered environments（彻底改变的环境）来表达。在这种环境下，非残疾个体可能会被证明不适应他们所处的世界。这方面的一个主要例子来自 H.G.威尔斯的《盲人国》。本文通过挑战生物正常性的概念，展示了科幻小说将残疾的规范性从医学启蒙运动以来的经典医学模式中分离出来的能力。它首先简要介绍了残疾的概念，然后探讨了医学正常性的概念。接着，它对在环境中才有意义的一致存在的生物提出了质疑，认为只有在环境中才能理解健康。接下来，本文概述了《盲人国》，然后分析了它如何挑战生物正常性的概念，将其视为一种社会产物，而不是普遍的常量。最后，本文得出结论，科幻小说通过设想（不）理想的替代方案，有效地审视了我们这个世界看似一致的趋势。
