Abstract
Taking in equal measure from the pragmatically orientated work of Michael Schillmeier, and Siebers’ notion of ‘disability as ability’, this chapter argues for the importance of personhood in the work of the late Dutch documentarist Johan van der Keuken. Using Herman Slobbe: Blind Child 2 (1966) and moments from Face Value (1991) and Amsterdam Global Village (1994) as case studies, this chapter argues that the filmmaker celebrated forms of defiance and resistance that worked against socially accepted stereotypes. Yet this also incorporated an experiential sense of beauty that has been described by Dissanayake as a form of ‘making special’, extrapolating the extraordinary from the ordinary. It is for this reason that van der Keuken’s work transcends the able/disabled divide and remains relevant today.
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Notes
- 1.
See MacDougall (1998, pp. 125–139) for a less polemic account that reconciles observational and Rouchean reflexivity from a practitioner’s perspective.
- 2.
See also McLaughlin and Coleman-Fountain (2014) for their work on the agency of disabled children, which also includes a notion of the ‘unfinished’ and ‘aspirational’ body.
- 3.
In a more directly Pragmatist vein, Peirce also maintains that ‘were the ends of a person already explicit, there would be no room for development for growth, for life; and consequently there would be no personality’ (CP6.157).
- 4.
This also marks van der Keuken’s emphasis on inquiry as arguably somewhat distinct from Rouch’s tendency to what MacDougall calls ‘psychodrama’ (1998, pp. 110–111).
- 5.
Doubt is also a major part of Peirce’s early work, especially the essay ‘The Fixation of Belief’ (CP 5.358–387), which influenced the Pragmatism of James and Dewey.
- 6.
I am referring especially to MacDougall’s notion of ‘external reflexivity’, whereby an excess of knowingness and supposedly ‘objective’ information reifies older scientific models.
- 7.
Van der Keuken’s friendship with Herman Slobbe continued for many years after the completion of the film. The latter’s disaffection with the condescension of non-disabled society towards the disabled is documented in a filmed interview between the filmmaker and Thierry Nouel in 2001, which is included in the commercially available DVD of his complete works from Facets Video.
- 8.
- 9.
Garland-Thomson also describes ‘acts of generosity, of political and interpersonal leadership, that stares offer starers’ (2009, p. 194) as part of her work on ‘staring back’.
- 10.
See also Siebers (2010, pp. 100–108).
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Tsang, H. (2017). Rethinking Ability and Disability in the Work of Johan van der Keuken. In: Brylla, C., Hughes, H. (eds) Documentary and Disability. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59894-3_8
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