Eli Clare Stolen Bodies Summary

An estimated one billion people are living with disabilities around the world, that is approximately 15 percent of all people on earth (United Nations, n.d.). Furthermore, in the United States, almost 57 million people, 19 percent, have some type of disability (United States Census Bureau, 2012). It is apparent that disabilities are prominent in life today, and unfortunately, the world views disability as individuals who are not abled. Eli Clare, author of "Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness", acknowledges that there is a vast majority of people living with disabilities and in light of this, he advises the world to accept irrevocable differences. In this case, Clare argues that irrevocable differences are bodily differences

Clare provides different paradigms of disability in order to demonstrate the wide variety of views concerning disabilities. He states that the paradigms of disability "all turn disability into problems faced by individual people, locate those problems in our bodies, and define those bodies as wrong," (Clare, 2001, p. 360). The first paradigm model Clare explains is the medical model which defines disability as a disease or a condition that is treatable. Next, he explains that the charity model defines disability as a tragedy and the supercrip model defines disability as a tough challenge that individuals overcome; the supercrip model makes individuals with disabilities out to be superheroes. Lastly, Clare explains that the moral model defines disability as a weakness. In order to demonstrate the paradigms and how they overlap, Clare cleverly uses an array of popular examples. One significant example is Jerry Lewis' telethon. During this time, Jerry Lewis attempts to raise money in order to find a cure for a condition. Overall, his Labor Day telethon raises money to end a disability by finding a cure for the broken bodies. This telethon employs the medical model because it demonstrates disability as a condition that needs to be treated. In addition, the telethon employs the charity model because it shows disability as a misfortune. All four disability paradigms are known as the social model because they are the ideas that society has about certain bodies. When society creates these ideas about disabilities, they create unnatural