女性失能者的解放典範梅爾斯與梅塞的日常書寫

Libratory Paradigm of Women with Disabilities Life Writing of Nancy Mairs and Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer

傳記是最貼近日常生活的文類與書寫場域，自傳往往也是弱勢族群最喜歡採用的一種文類，他們以傳記書寫日常生活，透過自我形象與個人生活的再現，累積鮮活的文字能量，質疑並省思主流論述所加諸於他們的權力與控制。根據亞當斯（Lorraine Adams）2002年四月在華盛頓月報（Washington Monthly）的報導，二十世紀末開始，身、心失能者的傳記開始成為傳記出版中的最大宗。失能者的傳記論述躍然紙上，蔚為一股力量，影響至廣。兩千年來，能者論述向以一無所不在的凝視（gaze）或視角，形塑與結構失能者在社會、經濟、文化中的主體位置。相對於其他弱勢族群，女性失能者則常需面對著雙重的困境，亦即來自能者主義（ableism）以及性別歧視（sexim）的不平對待。二十一世紀初，許多失能女性會透過日常書寫模式找出自我定位與解放的路徑。本文依據庫賽（G. Thomas Couser）表徵失能者的社會模式（social paradigm）以及嘉蘭－湯姆森（Rosemarie Garland-Thomson）所提的女性主義失能研究（feminist disability studies）的論述重點，討論梅爾斯（Nancy Mairs）與梅塞（Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer）如何在日常書寫中讓女性失能主體及相關議題浮上檯面，如何突破封閉、箝制的「能」者論述規範，再現能者論述中知識與權力的結構如何箝制與壓抑失能女性，進而促成改革。兩位作者從失能經驗出發，論及欲望、認同與公共政策；由個人身體私領域轉向公領域的社會箝制與否定，再現失能女性在政治、人權、人文藝術中如何被「噤聲」與「銷身」。她們的日常書寫具有雙重運動性：一方面細數所經歷的生活大小事，另一方面則質疑並反思主流論述強加於他們身上的權力與控制；一方面凸顯能者論述的權力結構，另一方面也詰問此權力結構的正當性與合理性。梅爾斯與梅塞的日常書寫累積了高度的改革動能，開啟了女性主義失能研究之先河。

Disability studies has developed in an unprecedented way across the globe in the last three decades, and disabled theory and activism have matured to a new paradigm which goes beyond access and considers people with disabilities as autonomous and independent subjects rather than objects of charity. As claimed, women with disabilities often experience numerous inequities and injustices on a daily basis and face double discriminations from both sexism and ableism, which exclude, devalue, and marginalize women with disabilities to the degree that intentionally or not stigmatize them. At any rate, it has become trendy that disabled women begin to write their life story as a mode of resistance to social oppression. This type of life writing booms at the beginning of this century. This paper intends to claim that life writing as a genre for women with disabilities may not only construct an autonomous being with individualistic and subjective identity but also expose the oppression from the dominant or hegemonic ableist social order, which instills forms of subjectivity, disciplines ways of living, and governs forms of body and mobility in all corners of the world. Nancy Mairs' life writing of Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the Non-Disabled and Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer's I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes set cogent examples in this regard insofar as they reveal the discrimination and exclusion from the symbolic, the medical, and the social models of treating people with disabilities. The essay shows how their life narratives function as liberatory texts to enact disability justice and how they construct liberatory paradigm heralding the emergence of feminist disability studies.