That time I punched a boy in the forehead: sibling stories ahead of research

In the past month, I have been building relationships with community members at a prairie-based research site in Canada by telling a story about my own sibling advocacy. Namely, the story about that time I punched a boy in the forehead when I was a kid. I observe that this story helps build trust between me and the families invested in a new research project. This is a current issue because recent research on the utility of sibling stories suggests that these narrative accounts, diverse as they may be, are foundational to knowledge creation about disability. Yet these stories are under threat of pathologization when they are understood through a clinical lens, rather than a critical disability studies lens. I conclude by suggesting that sibling stories ought to be claimed as pivotal to critical understandings of disability experiences.     

Engaging with materialism and material reality: critical disability studies and economic recession

Critical disability studies has been accused of preoccupation with cultural, lingual and discursive matters, and in doing so failing to adequately engage with the often-harsh material reality of disability. This has contributed to a circumstance in which disability studies has produced a lack of material focused directly upon economic processes. Concurrently, disabled people have encountered a momentous economic recession that has threatened their basic economic and human rights. This article seeks to address what is evidently a gap in the burgeoning critical disability and disability studies literature. That is, a gap largely uninhabited by attempts to apply a critical disability studies perspective to macro-economic processes. The article focuses predominantly on two facets of critical disability studies as identified by Goodley: the self and other, and intersectionality. The article concludes that critical disability studies has much to offer through the production of new understandings of economic processes.     

Feeling disability: theories of affect and critical disability studies

This paper explores connections between affect studies and critical disability studies. Our interest in affect is sparked by the beginnings of a new research project that seeks to illuminate the lives, hopes and desires of young people with ‘life-limiting’ or ‘life-threatening’ impairments. Cultural responses to these young people are shaped by dominant discourses associated with lives lived well and long. Before commencing our empirical work with young people we use this paper to think through how we might conceptualise affect and disability. We present three themes; ontological invalidation in neoliberal-able times; affect aliens and crip killjoys; disability and resistant assemblages.     

Voyaging on the seas of spirit: an ongoing journey towards understanding disability and humanity

In an important article in Disability & Society Hughes argued that ontology is becoming a ‘live issue’ in disability studies. Different sources, including non‐western and aboriginal conceptions of disability and cosmology and the literature on philosophy, religion, palliative and healthcare, suggest that we are missing a critical aspect of humanity in our discussions – the spirit. Drawing upon collectively defined or interpreted experiences of disability identified in non‐Western and aboriginal communities we identify gaps in our ontological discussions which result from taken for granted assumptions that there is only individual experience. When we incorporate spirit in our thinking we become open to emerging ways of understanding disability and humanity. Spirit is a critical, although often intangible, aspect of being alive. Drawing on these sources, ontological discussions around disability leads us to explore how experiences of disability teach us about the multiple dimensions of being human.     

The post(hu)man always rings twice: theorising the difference of impairment in the lives of people with ‘mental health problems’

A vital debate in British disability studies concerns the question of how impairment can be theorised, taking place between those who claim a critical realist ontology and those who argue for a critical social ontology. Recently, this discussion on impairment issues seems to merge with the agenda of the newly emerging perspective of critical disability studies. In contrast to the recent claim of Vehmas and Watson in Disability & Society that critical disability theorists only engage in a relativistic deconstruction of impairment, as critical disability scholars we explore the recent work of Braidotti who addresses a difference between a deconstructive anti-humanist stance and an affirmative post-humanist turn. Inspired by our empirical research, we theorise the difference of impairment in the lives of people with ‘mental health problems’ that can imply, in theoretical and in practical real-life terms, both a limitation and a potential that matters.     

Disability studies after the ontological turn: a return to the material world and material bodies without a return to essentialism

Over recent decades, poststructuralist theories have allowed critical disability scholars to challenge essentialist understandings of the human species and to contest discourses which divide humans into ‘normal’/‘impaired’ subjects with respect to a wide – and ever expanding – range of corporeal and cognitive traits. For critics, however, these theories are deeply flawed. By focusing primarily on language, poststructuralism shifts our critical attention away from the often harsh material realities of life for disabled people. This has led some to turn to critical realism and to effectively re-essentialise impairment. In this article, I wish to consider an alternative approach. I suggest that the recent ‘ontological turn’ in social theory has seen the emergence of new-materialist approaches – including Deleuze and Guattari’s ontology of assemblage and methodology of assemblage analysis – which allow us to consider disability as a material phenomenon without a return to essentialism.     

Ten years of the CRPD’s adoption in China: challenges and opportunities

This article examines the challenges and opportunities of implementing the CRPD's rights-based model in China, especially the effects of the diminishing space for civil society on the nascent disability rights movement. A disability rights movement emerged as a direct result of the CRPD’s adoption in 2008. Two recent restrictive civil society legislations, however, undermined this process. While the diminishing space of civil society has posed great challenges to the movement by marginalizing the rights advocacy approach, it has created an opportunity for service-oriented disability associations to thrive. While service-oriented associations are often ignored by disability studies scholarship and the disability rights movement, I argue that, through these organizations, persons with disabilities in China have done critical identity work and substantively increased their level of independence in their daily lives. As a result, a disability rights consciousness continues to be built in China, despite governmental hostility to political advocacy.     

Unsettling research versus activism: how might critical disability studies disrupt traditional research boundaries?

Abstract

This article responds to the call for producing activist-oriented scholarship by engaging with theoretical and methodological approaches that explore the inclusion of women and girls with disabilities in Vietnam. We consider possibilities for connecting different forms of knowledge and activism by reflecting on research practices designed to foster social change. Specifically, we ask: how can critical disability studies be more reflexive about knowledge which privileges particular ways of knowing from the Global North? What alternative possibilities can exist to foster more inclusive and transformative knowledge that tackles systemic forms of oppressions in colonial and postcolonial contexts? Reflecting on an ongoing collaborative project in Vietnam, we argue that critical disability studies which engages with different forms of activism through critical reflections on our privileges can tackle exclusion by opening a new platform for debating social justice transnationally.     

Inclusion in Singapore: a social model analysis of disability policy

A rhetoric of inclusion and increased social spending within a global context of austerity cuts has dominated disability policies in Singapore today. However, there is a lack of academic works that take a critical disability studies view towards the analysis of disability in Singapore. This work aims to address this gap by adopting a critical social model-led analysis of disability policies in Singapore. The article examines the rhetoric of inclusion, how disability is defined and its implementation through various policies in Singapore. It will examine the underpinnings of disability in Singapore today and its impact on the lives of disabled people.     

Disrupting global disability frameworks: settler-colonialism and the geopolitics of disability in Palestine/Israel

In recent years, Israel has seen an increase in disability studies scholarship and disability rights activism. At the same time, critical disability studies scholars have begun calling attention to the role of colonization and neocolonial powers, too often obscured in disability studies work, in disabling oppressed nations. This article brings these critiques in conversation with disability studies scholarship regarding Occupied Palestine to argue that disability is inextricably intertwined with the settler-colonial project of the Israeli state. By highlighting the geopolitical production of disablement, this work suggests that social approaches to disability have largely effaced disability injustice rooted in geopolitical power imbalances.     

The enforcement of normalcy in schools and the disablement of families: unpacking master narratives on parental denial

The notion that some parents may be ‘in denial’ is a pervasive theme in dominant discourses on families of children with disabilities. In this analytic essay, I deconstruct cultural and institutional master narratives on parental denial and discuss their role in the marginalization of students with disabilities in schools. I argue that discourses on parental denial privilege the perspectives of those in positions of power and control, leave the practice of ability-based segregation in schools unexamined, and discredit agency among families. Additionally, drawing from existing narrative-based research, I explore alternative interpretations of parents’ responses to their children’s differences, situating these in the framework of critical disability studies.     

Unravelling Mr President’s nomad lands: travelling to interdisciplinary frontiers of knowledge in disability studies

In this article the aim is to challenge essentialist ontological assumptions surrounding the impairment category of ‘learning difficulties’ as it was previously conceptualized in social theory and practice. I ground my knowledge production in self‐advocates connected to the self‐advocacy movement in Flanders (Belgium) and in critical feminist disability studies. Drawing upon the post‐structuralist feminist Rosi Braidotti, who introduced nomadology as a new figuration of layered, embedded and embodied subjectivity, I bring the illustrative nomadic subjectivity of the president of the self‐advocacy network to the public eye. In order to allow disability scholars and activists re‐inscribe new scenarios in our contemporary discourse and shared culture, I appeal for an interpretation of the impaired body and mind as a socio‐political field.     

Moving the Boundaries of Feminist Social Work Education with Disabled People in the Neoliberal Era

Until recently social work education in Australia has either marginalised or neglected disability by omission. Given the increasing number of disabled people in the community, the teaching of social work within a disability studies emancipatory paradigm as an essential part of the curriculum is long overdue. As many social work educators have suggested, we are at a critical moment in Australia, where the policy environment in which social work is embedded has largely been reframed in line with neoliberal trends. For disabled people, this has meant an ongoing state campaign to diminish disability entitlements, from decreasing disability social security regimes through to the rationalisation of adult disability support and care schemes. Social workers are negotiating the competing demands of these policy constraints alongside the needs of the disabled people they work with. New moral dilemmas have emerged where they are actively faced with the question of ‘who to serve?’.     

Benda Bilili – ‘look beyond the images’: representations and visual narratives of disability in Kinshasa

In this article we address a number of visual narratives that represent physical disability in Kinshasa, D.R. Congo. Drawing on visual material that was collected before and during anthropological fieldwork (between 2010 and 2014) we offer an insight into the interrelation between representations and physical disability within a Congolese context, as represented in four documentaries. The text briefly reflects on representations of the ‘Other’ and wants to add a reflection on representations of disability that originate from an African urban context. Our examples are complemented with in situ analyses derived from fieldwork that question how particular narratives portray disability and dis(en)ablement within a Congolese socio-cultural context. Thus we invite to look beyond the images. Finally, the article adds a critical reflection about these visual narratives as dis/enabling through their specific construction of dis-ability.     

Exploring internalized ableism using critical race theory

This paper is an attempt to theorize about the way disabled people live with ableism, in particular internalized ableism. Typically literature within disability studies has concentrated on the practices and production of disablism, examining attitudes and barriers that contribute to the subordination of people with disabilities in society. My exploration occurs through examining the insights of critical race theory (CRT) and the contribution that CRT can further make to thinking through the processes, formation and consequences of ableism. A focal concern is the possible ways that the concept of internalized racism, its deployment in CRT and application to critical disability studies. The paper is interested in working through points of difference between the way internalized racism/ableism are mediated in the processes of subjectification and identifying points of convergence that can benefit dialogue across varied sites of scholarship. The author concludes that the study of ableism instead of disability/disablement may produce different research questions and sites of study.     

Making disability conferences more actively inclusive

In this article I explore how generic disability conferences can become more inclusive of participants with intellectual disability. Increased inclusivity entails adapting to the support needs of people with intellectual disability, in line with the principles and practice of inclusive research. In the article I consider three specific areas where there can be more inclusion – access to information related to the conference, access to knowledge imparted during the conference, and financial issues. While many good practices have been developed in these areas, it is important to ensure that inclusion is catered for in a systematic and pro-active manner, so that people with intellectual disability have increasingly more meaningful and active roles within disability studies and disability research.     

Radicalising ‘disability’ in conflict and post-conflict situations

In this article, a radical social model of disability lens is taken to illustrate what counts as ‘disability’ within a neoliberal mindset. The South African and disabled activist Vic Finkelstein describes both an ‘outside-in approach’ that looks at the material conditions of how ‘disability’ is constructed and an ‘idealist’ ‘inside-out’ approach, or how people describe experiences of inequality and disablement. The ‘outside-in’ approach is where the focus of a social model of disability should be in terms of trying to understand how global capitalism or neoliberalism is (dis)ablest and creating impairment. The ‘inside-out’ approach is ‘idealist’ and where the other ‘components’ of the model such as ‘rights’ are located. This article begins with an overview of the relationship between disability and conflict. The article then moves to an inside-out framework to examine how disability is still viewed and created through a medical humanitarianism. Using an outside-in framework, I illustrate how states become disabled through neoliberalism. Lastly, I discuss how ensuring greater participation and rethinking neoliberalism in terms of sustainability may provide us with a way forward in a humanitarian setting and rethinking of disability.     

The politics of joking: narratives of humour and joking among adults with Asperger’s syndrome

The purpose of this article is to analyse how humour and narratives about humour are used in a natural group of adults with Asperger’s syndrome. Narratives about humour and use of humour in the group are analysed from a discursive psychological perspective, informed by insights from both disability studies and critical autism studies. The setting of the research is ethnographic fieldwork in an educational setting in Sweden. In the paper, I show the use of three storylines among a natural group of people with autism (PWA) when talking about humour: the storyline of humourless PWA that dominates within Swedish society; and two alternatives, a storyline of alternative humour among PWA and another storyline in line with the social model of disability, of neurotypical humour or disabling humour. When invoking these two alternative storylines, PWA challenge both the humourlessness storyline and the lack of social accessibility within mainstream neurotypical settings.     

Disability Studies: a historical materialist view

This paper presents an historical materialist view of recent accounts of disability in Western societies. This view is presented in two main parts: first, as an in-depth appraisal of the field of disability studies, and secondly, as an outline for an alternative, historical materialist account of disablement. The critical assessment of disability studies finds that recent accounts of disability are in the main seriously deficient in terms of both epistemology and historiography (though some important exceptions are identified). In particular, four specific areas of theoretical weakness are identified: theoretical superficiality, idealism, the fixation with normality, and an unwillingness to consider history seriously. It is argued that these deficiencies have prevented the field of disability studies from realising its potential to challenge the structures which oppress impaired people. From this critical epistemological perspective, an outline is made of an alternative, materialist account of disability, stressing both theoretical and political agendas.     

Being disabled: towards a critical social ontology for disability studies

In Disability Studies the question of ontology is establishing itself as a live issue. Whilst there are many arguments and tendencies emerging from this literature, this paper identifies and critically examines an approach to the ontological question in disability studies that is based on an appeal to frailty as a universal characteristic of humanity. The argument builds on the relatively familiar claim that everyone is only temporarily able-bodied. This approach is exemplified in recent work by Bryan Turner and by Tom Shakespeare and Nick Watson. I argue that their universalistic approach is problematic. While it may constitute a theoretical means of ameliorating the existential negativity associated with being disabled it does so at the expense of disability identity. What is required is a critical social ontology that problematises non-disablement and exposes the forms of invalidation that lie at the heart of disabling culture.