A Rhetoric of Remnants: Idiots, Half-Wits, and Other State-Sponsored Inventions

Examines the rhetoric in and around the New York State Asylum for Idiots in Syracuse, New York from 1854 to 1884.

In the nineteenth century, language, rather than biology, created what we think of as disability. Much of the rhetorical nature of "idiocy," and even intelligence itself, can be traced to the period when the New York State Asylum for Idiots in Syracuse first opened in 1854-memorialized today as the first public school for people considered "feeble-minded" or "idiotic." The asylum...