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Journal of Intercultural Studies

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Disability in the Middle Ages:

Reconsiderations and Reverberations
a
Chandri Raghava Reddy
a
Department of Sociology , University of Hyderabad , India
Published online: 21 Feb 2013.

To cite this article: Chandri Raghava Reddy (2013) Disability in the Middle Ages:
Reconsiderations and Reverberations, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 34:1, 104-106, DOI:
10.1080/07256868.2013.765379

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2013.765379

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 104 Book Reviews

I have only a few, perhaps related misgivings, concerning mainly the summary
dismissal of Althusser’s concept of interpellation as somehow purely structuralist,
restricted by the spectre of ‘false consciousness’. Considering the recent edition of his
work (Althusser 2008), one would think that this notion still has theoretical valence.
To my knowledge, it does so not only because it indicates the conditions, institutional
and otherwise, in which subjects are hailed into being, but also because it reminds us
that one is always already a subject, and cannot at will move in and out of, or
overcome the various modalities in which subjectivity is immersed, and the ‘leaps of
faith’ this immersion often entails.
Otherwise, I would have liked a more robust treatment of the way in which many
of the authors’ informants used the terms ‘Aussies’ or ‘Australians’ (which is not really
problematised) to refer to those that move within and across what could be called
overlapping fields of non-ethnicity. No doubt this says something about their feelings
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of national exclusion, but I wonder also how the practical use of the term serves to set
up and maintain a sense of restricted belonging. Another misgiving concerns the
conservatism some of the interviewees displayed in respect to parental authority and
expectation
a conservatism treated by the authors a little too gingerly. A further
minor point concerns the use of the phrase ‘the hidden injuries of class’, which could
have been referenced to Richard Sennett’s early book of that title.
But these misgivings certainly do not outweigh the important contribution On
Being Lebanese in Australia makes to both an understanding of the political culture of
multiculturalism in the post-Howard years, and a theoretical approach attuned to the
complexities of such an understanding.

References
Althusser, L., 2008. On ideology. London: Verso.
Elder, C., 2007. Being Australian: narratives of national identity. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.

NORMAN SAADI NIKRO

Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin
# 2013 Norman Saadi Nikro

Disability in the Middle Ages: Reconsiderations and Reverberations

JOSHUA R. EYLER (Ed)
Surrey, Ashgate Publishing, 2010
248 pp., ISBN: 978-0-7546-6822-0

Impairment of physical, cognitive, congenital and acquired, although as old as Homo

sapiens, has been treated as asocial, ahistoric demanding the impaired to adjust and
correct to overcome the lack or absence. Situating the impaired in the social context,
disability studies problematised social construction of disability, thus shifting the
 Journal of Intercultural Studies 105

attention from ‘lack’ to barriers. Setting the agenda for critical examination of human
impairment, researchers in social sciences and humanities developed disability as
a methodological and analytical category. Such attempts have not only led to the
intensive empirical examination of contemporary contexts but also to critical
interpretations of impairment in narratives to bring out the antecedents of disability
and evolving notions on impairment. The book under review is one such effort that
attempts at historical understanding of disability in medieval Europe. Constituting
14 papers offered in two parts
reconsiderations and reverberations with the former
having the majority (11 chapters)
the book attempts to decipher the interpretations
of impairments such as ocular infirmity, deafness, mental illness, immobility,
‘disability as such’ and ageing across Europe in the middle ages. The papers in the
volume disinter medieval disability articulated in literary accounts.
What makes the book relevant is the manner of representation of the impairment
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in texts subjected to critical academic scrutiny weaved with the contemporary

discourse to bring out the historical fixations of the lack or difference in medieval
Europe. The rendering of impairment and disability in the volume is a valuable
academic interrogation worth emulating in cross-cultural settings. Informed by
modern disability discourse, the volume provides critical insights into social
constructions of impairment in the historical past and brings out the shifts from
the ‘cultures of sin’ to ‘cultures of cure’ (pp. 6
7).
Short of building new models, as the editor claims, however, authors of the papers
‘wrestle with the terminology’ of impairment and disability in a historical context
dexterously. Particularly, Edna Edith Sayers’ attempt at handling dyads
‘experience
vs authority, orality vs literal, English vs Latin, wives vs husbands’
is invigorating.
Disinterring social dimensions of authority embedded in orality in deafness as
portrayed in Chaucer’s ‘Wife of Bath’ is an academic exercise of quality. Within the
broader framework of disability, some papers (Chapters 6 and 14) provide rich
insights into gendered notions of disability as well. Using deafness as an analytic,
Sayer in her paper on Chaucer’ ‘Wife of Bath’ not just exposes the antifeminist
authority but takes on larger problems of modern world through such questions as
‘does literacy make us deaf to experience? or does written authority deafen the
unlettered?’ to highlight the contradictions in representations (p. 90). Tory
Vandeventer Pearman dealing with medieval scholarship on bodily differences and
identity formations argues that a ‘female body is closely linked to the disabled body
in both contemporary and pre-modern’ medical and social interpretation (p. 27), and
through the analysis of ‘Merchant’s Tale’ she deciphers ‘the connections between
female bodies, the grotesque and the disabled’ (p. 30).
The discussion on disability during the middle ages in Europe in different chapters
recognises the complexity of the problematic ‘disability’, because as Metzler puts it
‘medieval people made no distinction between physical impairment and social
disability’ (p. 184) and treats appropriately. Also, paying attention to the over-
whelming influence of religion, particularly Christianity, the discussion negotiates
the contradictory notions of impairment
as an effect of sins and as a means of
 106 Book Reviews

penitence
by placing the ‘body’ in the social, cultural and political complex. The
example of Francis’ ocular infirmity (Chapter 5), acquired in his lifetime, as
‘approaching reunion with Christ in death’ and the narratives on Richard III’s
disfigured body (Chapter 13) as a metaphor to represent the disabling cultures
‘an
amalgamation of the religious, political, social and dramatic constructs and pre-
judices of society’ (p. 184)
reveal the contrasting credence to impairment in
medieval Europe. Dealing with other social constructions of impairment namely
nicknaming
‘the practice of dubbing a person with an evocative nickname extended
into the identification of physical markers’ particularly difference (p. 150)
and
‘impaired as poor, in need of charity and worthy to receive a good meal even though
they do not work’ (p. 124), the book details the thirteenth and fourteenth century
constructions of impairment. Works of Irina Metzler, David Mitchell, Sharon Snyder,
Lennard Davis and others though recur in various chapters do not overlap as they are
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dealt judiciously within the context of discussion.

CHANDRI RAGHAVA REDDY

Department of Sociology
University of Hyderabad, India
# 2013 Chandri Raghava Reddy

Forced Migration and Global Politics

ALEXANDER BETTS
Oxford, Wiley Blackwell, 2009
216 pp., ISBN: 9781405180320

In Forced Migration and Global Politics, Alexander Betts sets out to bring Forced
Migration studies within the fold of international relations, which he achieves in just
under 200 pages. His book is motivated by the premise that while scholastic inquiry
in international relations has moved substantially to include empirical studies which
inform our understanding of state behaviour, very little attention has been paid to the
politics of forced migration. Betts recognises that there have been some important
developments in the context of security studies, as well as scholarly accounts of the
refugee regime which sit more broadly within the fields of diplomatic history and
international legal studies. However, he notes the remarkably few attempts at
intellectual bridge building between the increasingly popular academic fields of
international relations and forced migration studies.
Betts’ masterful scholarship fills this gap by demonstrating with alarming fluency
how well charted theories of international relations can be used to advance our
understanding of the politics of forced migration. The book follows a lecture series
the author delivered to postgraduate students at the University of Oxford. Yet, the
target audience for this book is certainly broader and neither instructors nor students