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Cultural Front
General Editor
Michael Bérubé
Manifesto of a Tenured Radical
Cary Nelson
Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life
Edited by the Bad Subjects Production Team
Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity
Simi Linton
The Employment of English: Theory, Jobs, and the Future of Literary Studies
Michael Bérubé
Feeling Global: Internationalism in Distress
Bruce Robbins
Doing Time: Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture
Rita Felski
Modernism, Inc.: Body, Memory, Capital
Edited by Jani Scandura and Michael Thurston
Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism, and Other Difficult Positions
Lennard J. Davis
After Whiteness: Unmaking an American Majority
Mike Hill
Critics at Work: Interviews 1993–2003
Edited by Jeffrey J. Williams
Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability
Robert McRuer
How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation
Marc Bousquet
Foreword by Cary Nelson
Deaf Subjects: Between Identities and Places
Brenda Jo Brueggemann
The Left at War
Michael Bérubé
No University Is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom
Cary Nelson
Fantasies of Identification: Disability, Gender, Race
Ellen Samuels
Fantasies of Identification
Disability, Gender, Race
Ellen Samuels
New York University Press
New York and London
New York University Press
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2014 by New York University
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Samuels, Ellen Jean.
Fantasies of identification : disability, gender, race / Ellen Samuels.
pages cm. — (Cultural front)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4798-1298-1 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4798-5949-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Identification—Social aspects. 2. Group identity. 3. Identity (Psychology) 4. Disabilities. I. Title.
HM753.S26 2014
305.9’08—dc23
2013042415
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
A book in the American Literatures Initiative (ALI), a collaborative publishing project of NYU Press, Fordham University Press, Rutgers University Press, Temple University Press, and the University of Virginia Press. The Initiative is supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. For more information, please visit www.americanliteratures.org.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Crisis of Identification
Part I. Fantasies of Fakery
1. Ellen Craft’s Masquerade
2. Confidence in the Nineteenth Century
3. The Disability Con Onscreen
Part II. Fantasies of Marking
4. The Trials of Salomé Müller
5. Of Fiction and Fingerprints
Part III. Fantasies of Measurement
6. Proving Disability
7. Revising Blood Quantum
8. Realms of Biocertification
9. DNA and the Readable Self
Conclusion: Future Identifications
Notes
Bibliography
About the Author
Acknowledgments
A room of her own is a marvelous sanctuary for a writer, but even more necessary is the companionship and solidarity of other people. So many friends and colleagues have supported me through the many years of completing this project that no words I can write here can fully recognize the crucial role they have played. Every word in this book is a testimony to exquisite interdependence, and I am grateful to every person whose presence in my life enriched this work.
At Oberlin College, Carol Lasser, Yopie Prins, Wendy Hesford, and Sandy Zagarell taught me how to write, read, and exist as a feminist scholar. More than anyone else, Barbara Helfgott Hyett helped me to find my poetic voice. At Cornell University, A. R. Ammons, Ken McLane, Robert Morgan, and Debra Fried taught me fine-tuning, while Nina Revoyr, Angela Bommarito, Nancy Kok, Jennifer Gilmore, Bethany Schneider, Katie-Louise Thomas, and Dana Luciano helped me survive Ithaca winters. Lisa Diamond and Judi Hilman became family in the best sense of the word, and Sarah McKibben brought the deliciousness of salads and the