Disability and the Practice of Wonder

In her landmark volume Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson argues that the Enlightenment heralded a striking change in the way European and American thinkers conceptualized disability-away from earlier notions of disability as a marvel or wonder, toward a discourse of normalcy and deviance that framed disability as an aberration. Might returning to wonder offer us a path to approach disability differently? This article probes two risks: the way treating disabled people as wondrous can be used to objectify, turning disabled bodies into sites that matter because they spark feeling in others; and the way a call to experience wonder can figure certain feelings or modes of perception as prerequisites for a meaningful life. Considering the way that disabled writers narrate our own experience showcases wonder's possibilities: new orientations toward beauty, care, interdependence, and a sensuous engagement with the complex present of disabled people's lives.