Dear Alden,
As increasing numbers of disabled people fall into formation behind the
UPIAS Fundamental Principles (due in no small part to its proliferation
on this list), I think you have made an important intervention into
disability discourse.
That document with its top-down (or, what Foucault calls
"juridico-discursive") conception of power misunderstands the productive
constraints of modern power. While the Fundamental Principles purports
to describe the situation of "people with impairments" in modern
society, it actually contributes to the construction of that subject as
well as to the production of the category of impairment, and
inadvertently extends the asymmetrical relations of power it was
intended to subvert.
As Foucault remarked, commenting on the prevalent use of
juridico-discursive notions of power by oppositional social movements:
'We have still not cut off the head of the king'.
Happy New Year.
Shelley Tremain
Alden Chadwick wrote:
>
> 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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