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3:58pm June 6, 2014

Here’s basically how I see Dave Hingsburger’s work.

And I’m not trying to persuade anyone of anything (seriously), I just want to explain it in more detail than I did before.  Because every time I recommend him to someone as an important thinker when it comes to disability rights, eventually someone will come back after reading his stuff and go “Holy shit how can he be such a good disability rights advocate if he thinks THAT?”

(I don’t think that’s exactly what has happened here, mind you.  But I’ve heard people say that exact thing about him, in about exactly those words.  So to anyone who does think that…)

The reason he’s one of my favorite thinkers on disability rights is because he doesn’t memorize a bunch of stuff that you’re supposed to believe.  Not only hasn’t he memorized a list of things he’s supposed to believe, he hasn’t even come up with a list of things he’s supposed to think about, period.  This comes with drawbacks as well as advantages.  The drawbacks are that there are giant gaps in his ethical ideas about disability.  There are things he simply hasn’t thought through, biases he simply hasn’t had the chance to confront.  Big, giant holes in his ethical ideas.

But the thing is..

He always keeps growing, he always keeps learning.  I’ve never seen him go through a day without finding stuff to learn from.  He doesn’t learn in the academic sense that most disability rights advocates are familiar with learning disability from.  He looks at a situation and says “What can I do better?”

And that’s a very different vantage point.  He doesn’t spend a lot of time analyzing ideas, which means he doesn’t spend a lot of time figuring out why some of his ideas are completely wrong.  Instead, he spends a lot of time analyzing his actions, looking for their direct effect on other people, looking for what actions would have served other people better.  And he does that a lot.  He doesn’t do it in the moment, but when he goes back and he thinks things over, that seems to be the way he does things.

That gives him an approach that is fresh and different from 99% of what you’ll hear in the disability field.

That gives him an approach that won’t let him see that behaviorism isn’t necessarily the best choice of teaching frameworks.

That gives him an approach that gives him insights that you will not find anywhere else unless you hang out with a lot of people who operate the way he does.

So for me, it’s worth it, reading his stuff.  Even his oldest stuff.  I’ve collected every book I can get my hands on that he’s ever written, including some that are way out of print and were different to get hold of.  Because there’s something about the way he does ethics that appeals to me strongly, even when I think he’s doing them completely wrong half the time.

And as Cal Montgomery said, every time I read him I find that the parts I agree with and the parts I disagree with have changed, drastically.  That in itself is a sign of depth that you won’t find in your average disability studies reader.

This also means that he aligns perfectly with my own biases about the world.  I think that ethics should, when possible, be done by looking at yourself and how you contribute to situations.  By looking at the specific situation, each specific situation, differently, rather than applying a generalized ethical code to a wide variety of situations all at once.  And that is why I absolutely love his books, can’t stand the fact that people keep walking off with them (including some I have not been able to get hold of again), and recommend all of them to everyone I know.

But that doesn’t mean I’m telling you to agree with everything he says.

And it doesn’t mean you won’t be surprised by things he doesn’t seem to know, at various points in time.

But I actually like that.

I like that there are big things he doesn’t know.

I like that he’s as flawed and human as I am and is willing to put it all on the page and let people read it.

I love all of that.

I wish I could be half as good at doing that as he is.

I don’t expect anyone to agree with me about this.  It’s just why I personally love everything about reading his work and watching him speak.  That quality that makes him screw up so badly, is actually part of the same quality that I love about him, I don’t think it can be separated out.

I could be totally wrong.  But I find him almost unique in “disability studies” type literature for all these reasons.  And yes, I should probably warn people that there’s giant things he doesn’t seem to know that most people involved in disability rights would think “wow he should know that already, shouldn’t he?”  But… yeah, I don’t think he’d be him if he automatically knew all those things.

I know other people like him.  They do amazing stuff.  Really amazing stuff.  And then they get kicked around by the movements they’re part of because they aren’t consistently amazing in all the areas the movement has decided people need to be amazing in.  I honestly think that if it weren’t for the time and place that I ended up as a “leader” and all that, I’d be in that position myself.  Dave is probably pretty lucky as well.

And yes, he’s said things I consider horrible, and still not realized why I or others would consider them horrible.  I’d still take him over ten more standard-issue disability-studies types, easily.  He’s extremely visibly flawed, and that makes him easier for me to relate to, easier for me to attempt to emulate ethically, easier for me to understand how he gets from A to B.