a stigmatized excerpt
From Erving Goffman’s Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963), 4-5. (Be mindful of the dated-ness of the text in regards to examples of some stigmatized individuals. However, this does not make the text any less useful for us. It even helps to explain the dated examples…)
“The term stigma and its synonyms conceal a double perspective: does the stigmatized individual assume his differentness is known about already or is evident on the spot, or does he assume it is neither known about by those present nor immediately perceivable by them? In the first case one deals with the plight of the discredited, in the second with that of the discreditable. This is an important difference, even though a particular stigmatized individual is likely to have experience with both situations…
Three grossly different types of stigma may be mentioned. First there are abominations of the body - the various physical deformities. Next there are blemishes of individual character perceived as weak will, domineering or unnatural passions, treacherous and rigid beliefs, and dishonesty, these being inferred from a known record of, for example mental disorder, imprisonment, addiction, alcoholism, homosexuality, unemployment, suicidal attempts, and radical political behavior. Finally there are the tribal stigma of race, nation, and religion, these being stigma that can be transmitted through lineages and equally contaminate all members of a family. In all of these various instances of stigma, however, including those the Greeks had in mind, the same sociological features are found: an individual who might have been received easily in ordinary social intercourse possesses a trait that can obtrude itself upon attention and turn those of us whom he meets away from him, breaking the claim that his other attributes have on us. He possesses a stigma, an undesired differentness from what we had anticipated. We and those who do not depart negatively from the particular expectations at issue I shall call the normals.
The attitudes we normals have towards a person with a stigma, and the actions we take in regard to him are well known, since these responses are what benevolent social action is designed to soften and ameliorate. By definition, of course, we believe the person with a stigma is not quite human…We construct a stigma-theory, an ideology to explain his inferiority and account for the danger he represents, sometimes rationalizing an animosity based on other differences, such as those of social class. We use specific stigma terms such as cripple, bastard, moron in our daily discourse as a source of metaphor and imagery, typically without giving thought to the original meaning…”
This passage brings up many important questions for the field of disability studies. It touches on the social aspects of disability, its use as metaphor in social discourse, and the pathology of certain traits an individual may posses. What is the relationship between visibility and credibility? Must one’s disability or non-normative trait be worn on one’s sleeve? Is it a greater risk to be discredited or discreditable?
