Writing Institutionalization and Disability in the Canadian Culture Industry: (Re)producing (Absent) Story

Canadian Journal of Disability Studies

Chelsea Temple Jones¹ 

[1] Ryerson University

关键词: Disability, journalism, culture industry, survivor narratives, institutionalization;   

DOI  :  10.15353/cjds.v6i3.369

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Canadian Disability Studies Association

【 摘 要 】

From the lens of a non-survivor ally who is also a journalist, activist, sister, and educator, I offer a reflexive account of reconciling with failed media activism. By applying Horkheimer and Adorno’s (1972) concept of the culture industry to my own experience of pitching a story about the impending closure of Saskatchewan’s Valley View Centre to a Canadian publication, this article investigates the theoretical underpinnings of a Canadian culture industry confronted with the politics of institutionalization, survivorship, and intellectual disability. The culture industry operates on the inclusionist premise that the public needs to understand cultural locations of disability that bestow an artificial sense of bodily agency on the spectator, thus placing media producers in “expert” roles by culture industry standards. This article combines memory and critical theory in a writing-story that addresses the unresolvable task of un/covering disability’s presence and absence in a journalistic practice that cannot penetrate the walls of an institution. 

【 授权许可】

Unknown