Hi all,
Mairian asked me to give some examples of the sort of analyses I find
problematic. I'll try to do this, and encourage people to make me
clarify anything that I don't explain to their satisfaction. Let me
say, too, that I'm not directing this challenge to any person or
discipline in particular.
What concerns me, and what I think we need to re-evaluate are certain
pedagogical and institutional approaches to studying disabled people,
ones which naturalise impairments. I want to make a distinction here
between Abberley's arguments with respect to the naturalisation of
impairment and my own. He was concerned to show that *some discrete*
impairments are socially produced. I want to argue that the *idea* of
impairment has been socially produced. Of course, this claim makes my
argument vulnerable to the objection that my view relies on idealism.
But no one (in philosophical circles at least) really takes that
objection seriously anymore. Nobody holds the position Berkeley did,
i.e., that the only thing that exists are words and ideas; but the
materiality of "the body" can't be dissociated from the practices that
mark and form it. Even the idea of "possessing" a ‘body' (as in "I
*have* an impairment") didn't emerge until some point in the eighteenth
century.
Thus, I take issue with any work that assumes that "impairment" is some
‘real,' transhistorical and transcultural entity, that is, attribute or
characteristic. That is, I don't think people with impairments are a
‘natural kind' (to use some philosophical jargon). And I don't think
the term ‘impairment' is value-neutral, that is, "merely descriptive."
Any description of its materiality is a further formulation of that
materiality (and "reality"). In addition, ‘impairment' is a culturally
and historically specific medical-scientific classification which
emerged to serve certain political interests and legitimate certain
social inequalities. It is important to recognize that ideas and
classifications work in a cultural matrix of institutional practices. I
think two claims (among others) endorsed by proponents of the social
model have prevented us from recognizing that this abstraction called
impairment is itself always already disabling. The 2 claims are: 1)
disablement is nothing to do with the body; and 2) impairment is no less
than a description of the body.
Since this is my understanding of the emergence of the notion of
impairment, I am worried about work that attempts to provide
justification for claims of entitlement by appealing to some such
entity, that is, by searching for instances of it in this or that
historical epoch, this or that part of the world. In short, analyses
that claim that "people with impairments" have existed everywhere, at
all times. These seem counter-productive to me. We should rather work
to eliminate this ‘object' by showing how practices in various
institutional domains, including (self-critically) this field have
produced it and sustain it. In short, I think that by talking about
"imppairments" we have unwittingly contributed to this modern form of
power. As Foucault wrote,
"Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are, but to refuse
what we are. We have to imagine and to build up what we could be to get
rid of [a] political ‘double bind,' which is the simultaneous
individualization and totalization of modern power structures."
I don't know if this is the sort of response Mairian wanted from me when
she suggested I give more detail about my position. In any case, I hope
this thread will continue.
Now I have to go and have my coffee!
Best regards, Shelley Tremain
Mairian Corker wrote:
>
> Adam, Lynne, Shelley and Debs,
>
> Maybe it would help if we stopped viewing language as some by-product of
> society that operates independently of it. Language is part of situated
> social practice, part of the social processes that disable and I would
> argue strongly that it is (a big) part of the material reality of disabled
> people's lives. However, I don't think it's helpful to view the material
> 'body' as some sort of fixed 'site' or 'surface'. This makes Lynne's work
> as valid as that of people who look at housing for disabled people etc.
>
> I agree strongly with Shelley's comments, and have argued this position
> myself from a slightly different disciplinary perspective over the years -
> and disciplinary perspective does make a difference. I think it would be
> helpful for this discussion if Shelley were to identify examples of the
> kinds of analysis she takes issue with so that we can place her analysis
> alongside these examples so that we can see what she's getting at.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Mairian
>
> Mairian Corker
> Senior Research Fellow, School of Education and Social Science, UCLAN;
> Visiting Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, Kings College London.
>
> Address for correspondence:
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> Highbury
> London N5 2HE
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>
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> *********
>
> "To understand what I am doing, you need a third eye"
>
> *********
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