Dissonant Disabilities: Women with Chronic Illnesses Explore Their Lives.

It is daunting to review a book whose content is brimming with the realities of “life in the chronic illness trenches,” as the editors so aptly phrase it. How does one critique personal experience? How dare one hierarchize pain, rank feelings of marginality or vulnerability, or judge whether a person has the right to feel anguish or pride in their everyday lives?

Realistically, a collection of testimonials such as this can only be reviewed on the basis of two criteria. The first is whether the editors have successfully elicited the distinct and very personal contributions and integrated them into a cohesive and coherent collection. And the second is whether the collection makes an original and meaningful contribution to disability studies, feminist studies, and/or critical cultural studies. The editors have succeeded in meeting both criteria.

From beginning to end, the editors have unified the project into the single act of critiquing society for its inability to take into consideration those of its members who have impairments. From the contradictory barriers preventing societal participation in allegedly accessible institutions (“the ivory fence”) to the medical establishment’s failure to comprehend the implications of emotional suffering, the editors argue that disability is not a disadvantage caused by one’s biology or psychology, but by a society incapable of including real diversity in mainstream activity such a labour, recreation, and family formation.

The variety of contributors leads to a vibrant and sometimes conflicting mix of theorizations of disability as constructed, produced, pathologized, endemic, and natural. It is a moving read and a sobering reminder of phenomenology as the richest method of understanding the subtle ways in which an un-inclusive culture weakens human autonomy and impoverishes experience. But what makes this effective analysis an original contribution to the scholarship in feminist, disability, and critical cultural studies is that the editors contextualize the testimonials in a framework that understands disability not as a personal state, but as a social structure of discrimination and oppression.