This is my presentation for the Art Historians' Conference 2014. I presented at the stream 'What art has to say about the law'. The paper is dedicated to the memory of LB.
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The Law's Progress in relation to disability? Hogarth's art as evolving legal commentary
1. The Law’s Progress in Relation to
Disability? Hogarth’s Art as
Evolving Legal Commentary
Dr. Andreas Dimopoulos
Brunel University
2.
3. Introduction
• Scene in a Madhouse as the unavoidable end of a
Rake’s life: moralising/medicalising view
• A compassionate depiction of deplorable conditions in
mental asylums: enlightened view
• An accurate depiction of how people become disabled:
the social model view
• What is disability? What is the social model of disability?
• What is the relevance of Hogarth’s art for current law on
disability?
4. Signposting
• Part 1: Disability law and the social model
• People become disabled due to negative social
interaction
• Part 2: Hogarth’s Scene in a Madhouse as testament to
disabling attitudes of both law and society
• Lunacy Acts and law relating to asylum
• The ‘disabling gaze’ of the fashionable ladies
• Part 3: Hogarth’s relevance for today’s law
• Institutionalisation outside the asylum system
• Death by indifference: the case of Connor Sparrowhawk
5. Disability Law
• Disability as human rights issue
• Disability-specific human rights were required
• Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
was adopted in 2006
• Social model of disability: distinction between
impairment and disability – disability is created by
negative social/legal interaction with impairment
• Disablism: view of persons with disabilities as inferior
6.
7. Scene in a Madhouse
• Medicalising view of disability as tragedy
• Certainly resonates with 18th c. views on madness
• Hogarth protesting against the material conditions of
confinement in mental asylums?
• Enlightened view, but unsupported in Hogarth’s writings
(Kromm, 1985)
• Hogarth depicting the ‘disabling gaze’
• Reading the interaction of the women visitors with the
inmates through the social model of disability
• Protest against disablist law
8. Relevance for today
• The relevance of Hogarth’s Scene in a Madhouse for
contemporary viewers
• Challenging disablism and disabling law
• Death by indifference: the case of Connor Sparrowhawk