Who Speaks for the Retarded?

Abstract

In the field of retardation, it appears that we confront a series of issues that never particularly concerned our predecessors. Critical analyses of the perceived worth of the retarded are novel. To ask who speaks for the retarded is also novel. In large measure, these questions were not asked before either because they were not deemed important enough — the retarded were “sports” who did not warrant sustained attention — or more frequently, because the answers seemed self-evident and hence, uninteresting. Quite obviously, this has changed and changed dramatically. The questions are now considered worth asking and the answers are anything but self-evident.