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Hi David, You wrote: >Mairian.....I was NOT trying to be provocative, but rather present my >understanding of the UK and US concepts. > >On Fri, 16 Oct 1998, Mairian Corker wrote: > >> I think David is being provocative and perhaps has read rather selectively. >> He knows perfectly well that this is an innacurate interpretation of UK >> theory. > Obviously I am wrong. I did not know how wrong! But alot of my >incorrectness comes from a totally different idea of "theory" and alot of >my mistake comes from not using quotation marks to set off terms which are >not the ones I use. Thanks for clarifying this. Some of this may also be because we use different technology and some things can get scrambled. However, in the light of previous conversations we have had both privately and on the mailbase, I was concerned that i had not made myself clear. > >> I think we would also resist David's use of >> 'abnormal' which is unfortunate. > The term "abnormal" should have been in quotation marks, but it is the >term widely in use in the US for people who do not fulfil the "normal" >social roles and therefore are seen as deviants and those who also have an >impairment who are then viewed as "disabled." "Abnormal" and "normal" are >NOT terms I use. Their use is part of the reason I so strongly opposed the >ICIDH. OK though you would agree that there are others in the USA e.g. Lennard Davis, Rosemarie Garland Thomson and Simi Linton who do use the terms 'normal', 'normate' and 'normalcy' without quotation marks which I assume means they accept the usage of these terms? > >> though I accept that some in the USA think >> its important and then again there are some in the USA (e.g. Simi Linton) >> who seem to think in terms of 'different centres' rather than 'abnormality' >> i.e. disability is a dimension/form of difference. > As do I. Although I have a co-edited book about to appear which stresses >the "difference" and the "sameness" of pwd, I have moved on to stress that >disability involves discrimination because of that "difference." The >"sameness" is usually ignored in a pwd, I now argue, and is not important >to discuss. If this 'difference' or 'centre' is framed in minority group discourse (and I'm not saying this is how YOU see it), this is where I (and, I think, Barnes, Oliver etc) would disagree. UK theory, founded on UPIAS' Fundamental Principles document, sees social exclusion as a primary form of disabled people's oppression and there are elements of BCODP's policy which argue equally strongly for inclusive education. In the recent past there has been some resistance in the USA to our term 'inclusion' but this is yet another term that we use differently over here and it does NOT mean assimilation. Also I can see that there would be a middle way - that is inclusion as a collective rather than on an individual basis. What I would say is politically narrow in its focus is separatism based on identity politics, because it doesn't on the basis of sociohistorical evidence eliminate discrimination and, therefore, oppression - indeed it frequently reproduces it - and it compromises questions of rights. > > Rightly or wrongly I view this materialist strand as the dominant >"theory" or concept of disability in the UK. But I do not know how to >defend the position that it is dominant. It is my impression. Yes it IS dominant, but that is because it has been in existence for longer and because it has received a lot of support. Most of the other approaches are fairly recent and have emerged out of disatisfaction with the dominant view. There is certainly resistance to them which I think is unfortunate. It should be possible to see disability theory as multi-stranded with the different strands used to conceptualise different dimensions of the relationship between disabled people and society, culture or whatever you want to call it. > >>and [other] approaches which conceptualise >> disability in terms of prejudice and its relationship to identity >> (Shakespeare) and those which try to conceptualise which differences >matter > (myself). All of these approaches are valuable in different >ways and all of > them acknowledge that disability is a form of >social oppression. > I do have a problem with the term "society" here, but not with the term >"oppression" except that not all pwd are oppressed (in my opinion). I can >not view Christopher Reeve as oppressed. I too have a problem with the concept of SOCIAL oppression in union with materialist theory. But I'm wary of using the term 'culture' for the reason that 'culture' also has a number of meanings. > > For me "ideological" includes the political and the pragmatic. Is this a >semantic difference or is there some deeper difference? I don't know the answer to this - but I think there will be inbuilt biases against different cultural backdrops. That is what I mean by 'emphasis' i.e. all the dimensions are there in UK and US theorising but we may emphasise different elements. For me ideology also has a discursive dimension (which is clear, or we wouldn't be having this discussion) and, dare I say it, a cognitive one also, which both UK and US theory give only cursory mention to and generally view oas oppositional. This must be important for disability theory. I note Teun van Dijk's (1998) comment that: 'as a general concept, ideology is hardly more vague that similar Big Terms in the social sciences and the humanities. In many respects, the same holds for such notions as 'society', 'group', 'action', 'power', 'discourse', 'mind', 'knowledge', among many others. These notions defy precise definition and seem to happily live the fuzzy life inherent in such catch-all terms that denote complex sets of phenomena and that are the preferred toys of philosophers and scholars in the humanities and the social sciences. Where 'ideology' differs from these other general notions, however, is that its commonsense usage is generally perjorative .... Definitions generally are hardly adequate to capture all the complexities of such notions. Indeed such fundamental notions are the objects of inquiry for theories and whole disciplines.... In sum, the various versions of the concept of ideology are simply scholarly constructs of competing theories.' > >>Impairment, in UK theory is simply a >physical/mental/sensory > characteristic of the person, and does not >always have a value judgement > associated with it. > As I read that passage you are saying that impairment does not have a >negative value judgement in UK THEORY. Am I correct? I would argue that in >interpersonal relationships an impairment ALWAYS produces a negative value >judgement. No, I am saying that impairment does not ALWAYS have a negative value judgement if it is just a physical/mental/sensory characteristic of the person or if we place impairment in the context of different 'cultures' (Barnes 1996). There is a tendency in UK Theory to resist an analysis of impairment conjoined with an analysis of disability (Oliver 1996) and this could be interpreted as arising from a concern that the foundations of the social model (which depends on the conceptual distinction between disability and impairment) will be shaken. Do you mean interpersonal relationships primarily between disabled and non-disabled people (though of course, as Finkelstein has noted, there is hierarchical organisation of impairments in the disability movement). Are you saying that Deaf culture is a negative value judgement as something that is produced through interpersonal relationships between some deaf people, or that the disability movement as produced from interpersonal relationships between people with different impairments, is built on negative value judgements? > I echo your comment, in your other email, about this listserv but I think that sometimes we also need to learn how to 'listen' to text, because it is clear that our readings often diverge and misrepresent. As I've said before, I want to see this mailbase as a forum for considered debate not as a means of making cursory comments - but perhaps that is because this is the only forum where I can experience equality on my own 'textual' terms. That's another reason why I'm interested in Derrida - but that's another story. Best wishes Mairian ********* "To understand what I am doing, you need a third eye" ********* Mairian Corker Senior Research Fellow University of Central Lancashire c/o 111 Balfour Road Highbury London N5 2HE U.K. Minicom/TTY +44 [0]171 359 8085 Fax +44 [0]870 0553967 Typetalk (voice) +44 [0]800 515152 (and ask for minicom/TTY number) %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%