Hello everyone and a best wishes or 2001
In order to understand why some disabled people don't 'speak out' it might
help if we were to use some of Foucault's ideas about power and knowledge.
Foucault argued that oppression itself is a problematic concept.
Oppression assumes the existence of an alienated human potential that is
squashed or repressed by people with power. In this view, disabled people
would be the hapless victims of some all-powerful non-disabled group that
prevents us from expressing our essential selves. What would be required
to counter this oppression is lots of individual courage and the political
will to speak out about the truth of our existence.
I would argue that we should heed Foucault's observations, and step back
from this position and re-think how power works.
Power does not oppress it constructs. Power creates subjectivity, it works
with knowledge to invest, to train and to discipline our bodies. The
prevalent individual / medical knowledge of normality and disability
encourages disabled people to articulate their subjectivity in terms of
abnormality, inability and exemption; the individual discourse available to
disabled people (together with some of the many other identity creating
discourses available to humanity in total) creates and constructs a
subjectivity which does not (cannot) perceive of itself as unequal, and
therefore does not feel the need to speak out.
Yet, the Foucault has pointed out that the very existence of power
relations presupposes forms of resistance. The task is not one of
liberating the assumed human potential buried inside disabled people, but
of constructing an alternative discourse which people can use to create an
alternative subjectivity. Given an alternative discourse people might
speak out.
However, discourse hangs in the air in the same way that bricks don't.
Discourse is embedded in the very material structures of social
organisation. For example, a discourse of normality lies in the techniques
of measuring eligibility for goods and services; the techniques and
processes for measuring merit and reward, and countless other
organisational techniques and practices. It is at this level (the micro
level where power directly impacts on the subject) - the level of diaries,
schedules, timetables, forms and letters, appraisals and assessments where
much disability originates. It is here, where conferences and events are
planned, and where any 'speaking out' needs to take place - such speaking
out will include the identification and meticulous reformulation of mundane
and tedious disabling organisational practices; the application of social
model discourse(s) to everyday organisational activities.
Regards
Alden
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