Abstract
This is a book about impairment both as a physical and political phenomenon, and a key aspect of human experience. The book is written in the first person singular by a person who has experienced disability in his own life and uses his own experience to conceptualise the experience of impairment through a critical phenomenology approach. Jonathan Sterne was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and had a paralysed vocal cord. The three big impairments that he focuses on in his monograph are vocal impairments, hearing impairments and fatigue. In his book, he talks about the link between impairment and disability, and his aim is to explain how ‘impairment is a problem, opportunity, and occasion for approaching larger questions about disability, subjectivity, power, technology, and experience in new ways’ (blurb). The book is split into six chapters. Chapter 1, ‘Degrees of Muteness’, explores Sterne's experience of vocal transformation. Chapter 2, ‘Meet the Dork-o-Phone’, introduces the dork-o-phone – ‘a personal, portable speech amplifier, and revels in the traditions of crip humour, play with stigmatizing terms and self-deprecation’ (p. 15). Chapter 3, ‘In Search of New Vocalities: An Imaginary Exhibition’, revolves around an imaginary exhibition indeed, and is written predominantly in the second person as a guide to the exhibition. Chapter 4, ‘Audile Scarification: On Normal Impairments’, is about the problematic normalisation of hearing loss. The newly coined term ‘audile scarification’ (p. 15) refers to ‘the transformation of hearing as something normal and desired in many cultural contexts’ (p. 15). Chapter 5, ‘There are Never Enough Spoons’, is about fatigue. The final chapter then offers a user's guide to impairment history. While a prime example of a cultural study and potentially of interest to disability scholars, the book does not have a clear communication focus.