Contemporary American Family on Stage: Disability Justice and Access Intimacy in Stephen Karam’s The Humans

Year 2023, Issue: 59, 25 - 47, 15.06.2023

Duygu Beste Başer Özcan

Abstract

Traditional family dramas have long relied on disability and
queerness as metaphors to depict the dysfunctional states of American
families. Although Stephen Karam’s The Humans borrows elements
from the canon with its portrayal of a family tested by secrets,
resentments, and illnesses, it diverges significantly from the tradition.
As this article demonstrates, the portrayal of disability and caretaking
in The Humans is not stereotypical since it places access intimacy, a
term disability activist Mia Mingus has coined, to the center as a trope
that keeps the family together and gives them strength to be resilient
in the face of drawbacks. In the presence of access intimacy and
reciprocal care, the bond that connects family members to each other is
strengthened. This article argues that although Stephen Karam is not a
disability rights activist, his play The Humans contributes significantly
to the disability justice movement with its focus on access intimacy
within the family.

Keywords

American Theater, Stephen Karam, The Humans, Disability Studies

References

• Barnes, Marian. Care in Everyday Life: An Ethics of Care in Practice. Bristol UP, 2012.
• Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Duke UP, 2011.
• Fox, Ann M. and Carrie Sandahl. “‘Frenemies’ of the Canon: Our Two Decades of Studying and Teaching Disability in Drama and Performance.” Troubling Traditions: Canonicity, Theatre, and Performance in the US, edited by Lindsey Mantoan, Matthew Moore and Angela Farr Schiller, Routledge, 2022, pp. 147-160.
• Garland Thomson, Rosemarie. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. Columbia UP, 1997.
• Gibson, Janet. Dementia, Narrative and Performance: Staging Reality, Reimagining Identities, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
• Goodley, Dan, et al. “Dis/ability and Austerity: Beyond Work and Slow Death.” Disability & Society, vol. 29, no. 6, 2014, pp. 980-984, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2014.920125.
• ---. Goodley, Dan and Rebecca Lawthom. “Hardt and Negri and the Geo-Political Imagination: Empire, Multitude and Critical Disability Studies.” Critical Sociology, vol. 39, no. 3, 2011, pp. 369-384, DOI: 10.1177/0896920511431500.
• Kafer, Alison. Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana UP, 2013.
• Karam, Stephen. The Humans. Theatre Communications Group, 2016
• Kuppers, Petra. “The Wheelchair’s Rhetoric: The Performance of Disability.” TDR (1988-), vol. 52, no. 4, The MIT Press, 2007, pp.80-88, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25145469.
• Longmore, Paul and Lauri Umansky. “Disability History: From Margins to the Mainstream.” The New Disability History: American Perspectives, edited by Paul Longmore and Lauri Umansky, New York UP, 2001, pp. 1-29.
• Mingus, Mia. “Access Intimacy: The Missing Link.” Leavingevidence, 12 April 2017, https://leavingevidence.wordpress. com/2011/05/05/access-intimacy-the-missing-link/. Accessed 20 January 2023.
• ---. “Access Intimacy, Interdependence and Disability Justice.” Leavingevidence, 5 May 2011, https://leavingevidence. wordpress.com/2011/05/05/access-intimacy-the-missing-link/. Accessed 20 January 2023.
• Mitchell, David. “Gay Pasts and Disability Future(s) Tense Heteronormative Trauma and Parasitism in Midnight Cowboy.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, vol. 8, no. 1, 2014, pp. 1-16. Project Muse, https://muse.jhu.edu/ article/541082.
• Nielsen, Kim E. A Disability History of the United States. Beacon Press, 2012.
• Phelan, Peggy. “Reconsidering Identity Politics, Essentialism, & Dismodernism: An Afterward.” Bodies in Commotion: Disability and Performance, edited by Carrie Sandahl and Philip Auslander, University of Michigan Press, 2005, pp. 319-326.
• Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018.
• Rowen, Bess. “Ruhls of the House: Surreal Spaces for Queer Homes in the Plays of Sarah Ruhl.” Modern Drama, vol. 63, no. 3, 2020, pp. 330-353, https://doi.org/10.3138/md.63.3.1012.
• Samuels, Ellen. “Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time.” Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century, edited by Alice Wong, Vintage Books, 2020, pp. 189-196.
• Sandahl, Carrie. “Why Disability Identity Matters: From Dramaturgy to Casting in John Belluso’s Pyretown.” Understanding Disability Studies and Performance Studies, edited by Bruce Handerson and Noam Ostrander, Routledge, 2010, pp.225-241.
• Sins Invalid. Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People. A Disability Justice Primer, 2nd ed, 2019.
• “Theater Talk: ‘The Humans.’” Youtube, interview by Michael Riedel and Susan Haskins, uploaded by Cuny TV, 2 May 2016, youtu. be/w5zpkZxZLVY. Accessed 24 January. 2023.
• Valentine, Desiree. “Shifting the Weight of Inaccessibility: Access Intimacy as a Critical Phenomenological Ethos.” Puncta. Journal of Criminal Phenomenology, vol. 3, no.2, 2020, pp. 76-94, https://journals.oregondigital.org/index.php/pjcp/article/ view/4781.
• Volion, Ashley. Access Intimacy: The Missing Piece. 2020. University of Illinois at Chicago, PhD Dissertation. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.
• Wendell, Susan. “Unhealthy Disabled: Treating Chronic Illnesses as Disabilities.” Hypatia, vol. 16, no. 4, 2001, pp. 17–33. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810781.
• Working in the Theatre Live: The Humans.” Youtube, interview by Frank Rich, uploaded by American Theatre Wing, 18 May 2016, https://youtu.be/L82zzciWiNE. Accessed 20 January. 2023.