Many in the disability rights community will have already have heard that Paul K. Longmore died. According to Longmore's Facebook page a friend posted that he died August 9, 2010. I am very upset by Longmore's death. Avid readers of this blog and my work will know I was heavily influenced by my former professor at Columbia University, Robert F. Murphy, author of the Body Silent. I deeply admired Murphy's scholarship. I don't get to write this statement too often though I wish I could. Longmore was another man whose scholarship and activism I admired. He was a scholar's scholar. Every citation I followed up on Longmore had referenced was correct. More than correct, the reference was well chosen and the quote perfectly apt. He was the first person in disability scholarship I read that seemed able to combine rigorous scholarship and activism--a requirement in my estimation for people in the field. Longmore also studied and wrote about disability history and I always learned something from his writings. It did not matter to me if the work he published appeared in Ragged Edge or Reviews in American History. I was always assured I would earn something new and original.
I sincerely hope Longmore's death will receive some public attention beyond the world of disability studies and activism. He was an important scholar and activist. I never met Longmore in person. However, when I was stuck on a complex and controversial issue I was writing about I would send him an email asking for help. Longmore always replied in detail and with obvious concern. He was in my estimation a giving scholar, willing to help others. We scholars tend to live in isolation but that I suspect was not Longmore's way. He was out there as my son likes to say about people who fail to conform. Last night as I fell asleep I took out one of Longmore's books and read various passages. The book I chose was my favorite--Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability (2003). I came across one passage I have read, reread, and highlighted with multiple stars and exclamation points. Hence it seems somehow fitting to end this entry with Longmore's own words:
"I have long believed that disability experiences can supply tools for a profound analysis of modern cultures in general and American culture in particular. The very features of disability that have caused those cultures to devaluate people with disabilities so fiercely can provide disabled people a degree of cultural--and moral-independence, clarifying distance of outsidership. From the perceptual advantage of that position, disabled intellectuals could formulate a distinctive critical inspection of contemporary societies, disabled people could fashion a distinctive set of values rooted in disability experience that could serve as an alternative to dominant values".