Dear Mark,
Apologies for self-promotion, but since you mentioned 'Disability
Discourse', you might also like to look at my articles:
'Differences, conflations and foundations: the limits to the accurate
theoretical representation of disabled people's experience.' Disability &
Society, Vol. 14, Number 5, September 1999
and
'A view from the bridge: an interdisciplinarian's overview of the social
relations of disability studies,' Disability Studies Quarterly, Volume 19,
No. 4, 305-317
In the latter, I use the relationship between the different fields of
disability studies as a parody of what I see as the relationship between
disability and impairment. In the former, I argue that because they operate
between the individual and society, communication, identity (and also
learning), they are pivotal to understanding this relationship. When
disability is conceptualised as a relationship, or in Bakhtin's (and
therefore, possibly, Kate's) terms, a dialogue between the individual and
society, people with sensory,language, communication and cognitive or
intellectual impairments assume a more equal role alongside people with
physical impairments. Such a 'theory' is therefore potentially more
inclusive. I think it's also important to make a distinction between
Bakhtin's ideas about dialogue and Habermas' theory of communicative
action, which, I think, assumes a model of the ideal communicator (whom in
terms of disability politics, I would describe as the disability
activist/academic) in a democratic society (I've written something about
this in relation to anti-discriminatory law in a chapter for an edited
collection by Anita Silvers and Leslie Francis, which should be out around
June/July).
Paul Abberley's critiques of Marxist approaches have a great deal of
resonance for me, and I've recently been swotting up on Marx and other
critical social theorists for a book that's under consideration with a
publisher at the moment. Carol Thomas' (1999) analysis of materialism in
Female Forms (OUP) is very helpful here also, and so is John Davis' recent
article in Disability & Society (March 2000) on ethnography in relation to
disability research.
The one difficulty I have though, odd as it may sound, is that if we call
the relationship 'disability' what are we then to base the work of the
social model on? That is to say, the social model is an invaluable tool for
a materialist analysis of disability, but it's based on a conceptual
distinction between disability and impairment. Since the relational model
works with both disability and impairment, how do we make sure that it
doesn't muddy the waters? I don't think it's helpful to sweep away the work
of Finkelstein and Oliver. It still has tremendous significance and it's
good at what it claims to do.
Best wishes,
Mairian
Mairian Corker
Senior Research Fellow
Department of Education and Social Studies
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE
Address for correspondence:
Deafsearch
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Minicom/TTY +44 [0]20 7359 8085
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"To understand what I am doing, you need a third eye"
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