Been away in Cuba therefore I've been unable to contribute to the many
strands or should that be 'strains' around the "impairment/disability" debate.
This debate is one that I've engaged with since the 1970s when I was an
original member of the Union (UPIAS) recruited by Paul Hunt. We all make choices in
life, mine has been to be an 'activist' rather than writing and/or publishing
my views on this subject.
I've seen Disabled people from across the globe 're-invent' the wheel so many
times - as to what is, or is not, "THE social model of disability" - rarely
do these processes bother to engage with the historically specific nature of
what members of UPIAS were trying to do during the 1970s.
If one begins from the position that dominant ideologies and practices, (not
singular), subject specific groups and/or individuals to "deferential and
unequal treatment" then one of the first tasks is to try and 'understand' how and
why this has come about.
This is what members of UPIAS did; set about constructing a critical analysis
of 'the treatment' of people who had experiences that were deemed "common".
As with most peple who analyse things, you can only work with material
available to you at the time of production - the social model was a "working model" -
it was never cast in stone, never viewed as the 'finished article' - it was a
means of "making sense" of what UPIAS believed many of us experienenced.
The model had a specific and narrow task - since that debate there has been
countless other "social models of disability" using the original in some form
or other - UPIAS never meant it to replace the Bible or Des Capital or any
other "the meaning of the world" from a Crip perspective - it was a tool to be
used in an attempt to assist the emanipation of "people with physical
impairments" (sic)
Talk of "replacing" or "going beyond" the social model is a nonsense -
because this constructs it as something it never was in the first place - a solid
entity!
Personally, I've always hated the word, "impairment" for reasons which have
been adequately articulated during this discussion. I didn't understand the
notion of "social construction" at that time, but I saw "impairment" as viewing
me as "otherness" in negative and oppressive ways - flawed, damaged, abnormal,
etc. At the same time, I recognised the need to acknowledge the implications
- at personal and social levels - of being someone "born with CP".
People often argue 'the' social model ignores or doesn't address
"impairment", but this fails to accept/acknowledge/understand the social construction
contained within UPIAS' model - the particular interest UPIAS had was: the
exploration and articulation of the implications of societal responses to people
'viewed' as impaired. To some degree, therefore, this model began as a
"re-working" of the medical model!
I find it weird that many people appear to argue that only dominant
ideologies contain "social constructions" - please explain to me how we "make sense of
the world"?
See, I "know" I have CP and various other biological 'diffferences' - how
this reality is viewed and articulated, etc is something separate. The question
of the relationship between the reality of my presence as an individual with
CP and how this becomes "read" and by whom - is of extreme importance. How we
see ourselves and how others view us becomes "sites of struggle" with a variety
of determinations taking place.
People such as Vic Finkelstein addressed 'disability' as the "negative
interactions" between people with impairments and their social environments - each
side of the interaction influencing to a more or less degree (the nature of the
interaction). How we 'unpack' this notion raises all kinds of questions.
I don't believe such 'interactions' are clear-cut, for example, because
"social environments" in my view includes the social construction / "reading" or
"determination" of who is, and conversely, who isn't 'a person with an
impairment'.
Much of my own thinking relates to "normality" and, dare I say it, the need
to construct and de-construct social theories around the meanings of normality
and impairment - addressing, for example, the impact of Darwinism, Nazism,
etc.
Oh, by the way, I loved Shelley's jibe about "British imperialism"!
Bob Williams-Findlay
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