Disability Studies

In contemporary medical discourse as well as in the field of Disability Studies, the problems concerning the Cochlear implant (CI) gave rise to a series of controversies. While medical discourses or viscourses imply a natural process of hearing, the counterargument is that “normal hearing” is a social and cultural construction, which depends on a corresponding “thought style”. However, such constructions of normality, disability, inclusion and exclusion are not only produced or criticized by scientific or journalistic mediatizations but also to a large degree by popular narrative media. Consequently, this paper analyzes the specific filmic-narrative appropriation, reworking and interpretation of discourses on the CI in popular media formations such as TV series, medical-technological viscourses in documentaries and Youtube videos. The thesis is that narrative media cannot be considered a mere reproduction of scientific or social discourses, but instead functions as productions of reality. Thus, narrative media is capable of (co)producing (in mutual exchange with social and medical discourses) interpretations, evaluations of normality and disability.

To cite:
Wilkins, A. 2017. Rescaling the local: Multi-academy trusts, private monopoly and statecraft in England. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 49 (2), 171-185

For the past six years successive UK governments in England have introduced reforms intended to usher in less aggregated, top-down, bureaucratically overloaded models of service delivery as well as secure conditions for greater school autonomy.  Yet the ‘hollowing out’ of local government has not resulted in less bureaucracy on the ground or less regulation from above, nor has it diminished hierarchy as an organising principle of education governance.  In some cases, monopolies and monopolistic practices dominated by powerful bureaucracies and professional groups persist, albeit realised through the involvement of new actors and organisations from business and philanthropy.  In this paper I adopt a governmentality perspective to explore the political significance of large multi-academy trusts (MATs) – private sponsors contracted by central government to run publicly funded schools – to the generation of new scalar hierarchies and accountability infrastructures that assist in bringing the gaze of government to bear upon the actions of schools that are otherwise less visible under local government management.  On this account, it is argued, MATs are integral to statecraft and the invention and assemblage of particular apparatuses for intervening upon specific organisations, spaces and peoples.

The paper traces argumentations by the Deaf community in favor of deafness against the Cochlear implant and the impact of concepts like ethnicity, kinship, communities, and  the intimate living with a technical device - in german language - in: Karin Harrasser, Susanne Roeßiger (Hg.), Parahuman. Neue Perspektiven auf das Leben mit Technik [Schriften des Deutschen Hygiene-Museums Dresden, Bd. 12], Köln (Böhlau) 2016, 91-103

This research highlights the crucial role of an intimate link between a disabled person's self-identity and the perceived fairness of legal procedures. In doing so, it brings to the foreground a wholly ignored aspect of procedural justice. Earlier researchers have failed to delve into the role identity politics plays in the relationship between the institutions and the beneficiaries of their services, and the way different members of a group understand and define themselves. This research explores the way people with disabilities in the United States, with different kinds of disability identities, experience and evaluate the procedure of claiming Social Security benefits. The findings suggest that disabled people who identified with the social model of disability (as opposed to the medical-individual models) hold a critical view of the procedure for retaining benefits. They felt they had no control over it, could not voice their opinions, were mistreated by representatives, and had to present an image that was not necessarily true of their disability. They also saw the procedure as discouraging them from participating fully in the labor market, and consequently integrating better in society, an idea that was not present among disabled people who identify with medical-individual models. Exposing this relationship between the way people perceive themselves and the way they experience and evaluate legal procedures can contribute to the creation of better policies, while improving communication between the state and members of the disability community, along with other marginalized groups.

Personalisation of care services has the potential of empowering users through maximising their choice of services and improving their control on how such services are provided and by whom; there is some debate, however, of the suitability of such approach to some groups of users and potentially increased risks. Advocacy groups have long played a crucial role in promoting the rights of users whilst ensuring their safeguard. The current seminar presents examples of advocacy work from the UK and Europe that are specific to social services and care provision. It will discuss the role of advocacy that is present at various stages of care delivery from facilitating the input of users in the process of workforce training and qualifications to their involvement in service delivery. The presentation also highlights the role of the wider context of national social policy strategies in establishing the role of advocacy. The discussion will stress the importance of the coordination between training, commissioning and service provision in ensuring access and choice while recognising the need for safeguarding. These are likely to be achieved through the application of a complementary framework of work that involves service users, the workforce, informal carers and independent advocates within current consumer driven systems.

This paper examines transhuman technologies that seek to eradicate disability - primarily prostheses and implants. While most would agree that disability denies individuals the same quality of life as those deemed “abled,” this eradication ultimately relies upon secular humanist notions of the perfect human. Transhuman technologies hold obvious implications for the human body, however they also hold implications for what it means to be an acceptable body; ultimately these technologies aim to create the perfect human by eradicating the disabled Other. This paper uses these notions to question concepts of “hierarchies of life,” at which disabled individuals are most commonly moved towards the bottom, or at the very least considered nonhuman. This article seeks to provide alternative theory to the eradication of disability, which states that these individuals may not have the same mode of existence, but that their mode/s are just as valid as those lived by “abled” individuals through an examination of Braille

The response to an uncontrolled spread of disease often incites a commingling of medical, moral, and political panic. Whether in the context of threats presented by early plagues, to contemporary super viruses, to lead toys, contagion, via transmission , makes interconnections visible, among and across peoples, cultures, objects, forms of commerce, and more. In this article, I use an intersectional disability studies framework to first discuss how, faced with the bio-insecurity of contagion, responses typically invoke discourses of war, empire, and what Priscilla Wald calls " medical nativism " (2008, 9). I then discuss how metaphors of autoimmunity often simply shift this discourse from concerns about external terror to that of internal terror (Sengupta 2014). Viewing autoimmunity from this vantage point, the body/nation is still viewed as vulnerable to attack, but the victim and the villain are the self/same. In the final section, I posit that a reimagined ethic of autoimmunity could offer new and fruitful ways to think about self/other relations that rely on mutual recognition and reject the binary, oppositional stance that undergirds annihilation. Keywords: autoimmunity / contagion / intersectional disability studies / metaphors of disease and illness / war metaphors

Recent decades have witnessed concerns over representation, inclusion, and social justice move from the margins to the centre of museum practice. While a growing number of institutions seek to reflect the diversity of their communities in exhibition-making, gaps remain in understanding applied approaches and practices. This book presents the inclusion of new voices and perspectives into the museum via “inclusive curating,” a facilitated process empowering a wide demographic of people to become curators. Grounded in a case study, this book offers guidance in putting inclusive curating into action alongside a range of practical resources and key debates. Curating is often considered an exclusive job for a privileged few. But, by breaking it down using methods demonstrated throughout this book, not only does curating become more usable for more people, it also contributes to understanding the process and practices by which our cultural spaces can become democratized.

La sezione bibliografica offre una rassegna di pubblicazioni sul tema “Letteratura e disabilità”, segnalando contributi che affrontano il problema da prospettive diverse: teorica, storico-letteraria e analitico-testuale. Senza pretese di esaustività, si intende offrire una raccolta ragionata di riferimenti utili per coloro che intendano approcciarsi alle problematiche affrontate nel volume.

This article discusses the acquisition of a physical impairment/disability through voluntary body modification, or transability. From the perspectives of critical genealogy and feminist intersectional analysis, the article considers the ability and cis*/trans* axes in order to question the boundaries between trans and transabled experience and examines two assumptions impeding the conceptualization of their placement on the same continuum: 1) trans studies assume an able-bodied trans identity and able-bodied trans subject of analysis; and 2) disability studies assume a cis* disabled identity. The perception of transsexuality and transability as mutually exclusive phenomena results from a non-intersectional analysis of transsexuality as an issue of sex/gender, but not ability, and of transability as an issue of ability, but not sex/gender. Difficulty recognizing continuities between these phenomena thus stems from an ableist interpretation of sex/gender and a cis(gender)normative* interpretation of ability. This article aims to: 1) enrich intersectional analysis in trans and disability studies and transability scholarship; 2) complicate disability studies, in which disabilities are often presumed “involuntary”, and encourage the decentering of a cis* subject; 3) encourage trans studies to decenter an able-bodied subject; and 4) advocate for increased dialogue and the creation of alliances between trans and disability studies and movements.

Link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hypa.12113/abstract

The 'Setting Up' chapter of my new textbook (Palgrave, 2014, out as paperback, hardback and e-files): how to think about accessible classrooms.
Short Table of (full book) content:
1. Setting Up
2. Languages of Disability
3. Discourses of Disability
4. Embodiment/Enmindment: Processes of Living
5. Disability Culture
PART II
6. Life in the Institution: Discourses at Work and at Play
7. Freak Shows and the Theatre
8. Disabled Dance and Dancerly Bodies
9. Superheroes and the Lure of Disability
10. Looking at Autism
11. Classroom Activism and Resources
12. Appendix: For Teachers

The article examines three feature-length films produced in South Korea—director Hwang Dong-hyeok’s Silenced (2011), Song Il-gon’s Always (2011), and An Sang-hun’s Blind (2011)—that highlight a problem in contemporary disability rights cinema. While privileging individuals and groups that challenge normative understandings of character-based drama or documentary filmmaking, these motion pictures reflect an infantilizing tendency in popular culture more generally. The representations align with the standard medical approach to the topic, which sees disability as a sickness, a childlike helplessness (regardless of the person’s age) that results from an inability, a marked deficit in one’s physical or mental performance. However, it is argued that Silenced, a film that provoked legislative changes strengthening the protection of minors in South Korea, at least gestures toward the social model of disability.

The onslaught of neoliberalism, austerity measures and cuts, impact of climate change, protracted conflicts and ongoing refugee crisis, rise of far right and populist movements have all negatively impacted on disability. Yet, disabled people and their allies are fighting back and we urgently need to understand how, where and what they are doing, what they feel their challenges are and what their future needs will be.

This comprehensive handbook emphasizes the importance of everyday disability activism and how activists across the world bring together a wide range of activism tactics and strategies. It also challenges the activist movements, transnational and emancipatory politics, as well as providing future directions for disability activism.

With contributions from senior and emerging disability activists, academics, students and practitioners from around the globe, this handbook covers the following broad themes:

• Contextualising disability activism in global activism

• Neoliberalism and austerity in the global North

• Rights, embodied resistance and disability activism

• Belonging, identity and values: how to create diverse coalitions for rights

• Reclaiming social positions, places and spaces

• Social media, support and activism

• Campus activism in higher education

• Inclusive pedagogies, evidence and activist practices

• Enabling human rights and policy

• Challenges facing disability activism

The Routledge Handbook of Disability Activism provides disability activists, students, academics, practitioners, development partners and policy makers with an authoritative framework for disability activism.

Taylor & Francis 2019 Outstanding Handbook - Social Sciences - Award Winner

http://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Disability-Activism-1st-Edition/Berghs-Chaitaka-El-Lahib-Dube/p/book/9780815349303

http://www.disabilityactivism.com/

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, it is said, manifests the paradigm change from the medical model of disability to the social model of disability. This paper argues that it goes beyond and creates the human rights model of disability.

The law of 11 February 2005 modifying public policy for people with disabilities has been described as introducing significant disruption in defining disability. This article demonstrates that legislators strengthened administrative control in defining the population concerned by this government policy by applying the same label and a scattering of identical measures to a set of individuals, as well as by their inclusion in the same “local world of production of rights.” This sector, like many others, has deeper roots in the instruments structuring relationships between actors than it has in an explicit, objective, and commonly accepted definition of the limits to the sphere of activity and the principles to be applied. This instrumentalist construction of the sector has led to a lack of clarity in defining the boundaries of the population concerned, a lack of clarity affecting both the individuals declared to be eligible for these rights, as well as the internal arrangements of structuring relations between these actors.

La loi du 11 février 2005, réformant l’action publique à destination des personnes handicapées, a été décrite comme introduisant une rupture importante dans la définition du handicap. Cet article cherche à montrer que le législateur, à travers l’application à un ensemble d’individus d’un même label, d’instruments épars mais identiques et en inscrivant ceux‑ci dans un même monde local de production de droits, a contribué à renforcer l’emprise administrative sur la définition de la population ciblée par cette action publique. Par ailleurs, ce secteur – à la manière de beaucoup d’autres – repose davantage sur les instruments qui ont charpenté les relations entre les acteurs plutôt que sur une définition explicite, objective et communément admise des limites du champ d’action et des principes qui lui sont appliqués. Cette construction instrumentale du secteur a pour effet de laisser la définition des frontières des populations concernées dans un flou qui a des effets sur les individus déclarés éligibles à ces droits ainsi que sur les modalités internes de structuration des relations entre ces acteurs.

SOURCE: Baril, A. (2020). « Queeriser le geste suicidaire : penser le suicide avec Nelly Arcan », dans I. Boisclair, P.-L. Landry et G.P. Girard (dirs.). QuébeQueer : Le queer dans les productions littéraires, artistiques et médiatiques québécoises, Montréal, Presses de l’Université de Montréal, p. 325-341.

ABSTRACT
This research, situated at the junction of feminist, trans and disability studies, examines the limits of intersectional feminist analyses and the difficulties faced in their consideration of gender identity and ability through an analysis of two types of body modification: transsexuality and transability (voluntary disability acquisition). In response to the question “what are the limits of intersectional analyses and how can they be addressed?”, three objectives are proposed: 1) participate in the critical examination of specific limits of intersectional feminist analyses in order to diversify their axes through the consideration of gender identity and ability; 2) question the conceptual assumptions and cisgenderist and (cis)ableist privileges informing negative discourses around these body modifications and highlight points of convergence among feminist, transactivist and anti-ableist movements in order to encourage dialogue and solidarities among them; 3) provide feminist, trans and disability studies with an enriched model of intersectionality capable of addressing new claims for justice from oppressed groups, such as those of transsexual and transabled individuals. The negative discourses of certain feminists and other scientists regarding these body modifications are mapped and critiqued through a methodology combining archeological, genealogical and critical discourse analysis. The reflections presented here, inspired by poststructuralist and queer approaches, explore neither the “origins” of transsexuality and transability nor their motivations; this is a study of the negative discourses about these phenomena and the normative systems from which they originate. The result is an important contribution to theoretical, normative and political fields of knowledge: the examination of two “extreme” cases of body modification reveals the bodily normativities of dominant regimes, specifically cisgenderism and (cis)ableism, that remain as unrecognized in our societies as in our social movements. 


KEYWORDS
Intersectionality; feminist theories; trans theories; queer theories; disability theories; social movements; body modifications; bodies; transsexuality; transability; voluntary amputation; BIID; disability; mutilation; pathologization; normality/abnormality; stigmatization; discourse; critical discourse analysis; norms; oppression; autonomy; bioethics.


RÉSUMÉ
Cette recherche se situe à la jonction des études féministes, trans et sur la production du handicap. Elle s’intéresse aux limites des analyses féministes intersectionnelles et leurs difficultés à considérer certains axes identitaires, telles l’identité de genre et les capacités, à travers l’analyse de deux cas de figure de modifications corporelles, soit la transsexualité et la transcapacité (transformation visant à acquérir un handicap). Cette thèse s’articule autour de la question suivante : quels sont les angles morts des analyses intersectionnelles et comment pouvons-nous y remédier? Pour répondre à cette question, cette thèse propose trois objectifs : 1) Participer aux questionnements critiques entourant certaines limites des analyses féministes intersectionnelles pour en diversifier les axes à partir de l’identité de genre et des capacités; 2) Remettre en question les présupposés conceptuels et les privilèges cisgenristes et (cis)capacitistes qui sous-tendent les discours négatifs entourant ces modifications corporelles et mettre en valeur les points de convergence entre les mouvements féministes, transactivistes et anticapacitistes pour instaurer des dialogues et des solidarités entre eux; 3) Fournir un modèle enrichi de l’intersectionnalité pouvant être déployé en études féministes, trans et sur la production du (trans)handicap, apte à répondre aux nouvelles revendications de justice de groupes opprimés, comme celles des personnes transsexuelles et transcapacitaires. À l’aide d’une méthodologie alliant l’analyse critique de discours, l’analyse archéologique et généalogique, les discours négatifs de certaines féministes et d’autres scientifiques sur ces transformations corporelles sont cartographiés et critiqués. Les réflexions présentées ici, s’inscrivant dans une approche poststructuraliste et queer, ne proposent pas une recherche des « origines » et des motivations de la transsexualité et de la transcapacité, mais plutôt une étude des discours négatifs vis-à-vis ces phénomènes et des systèmes normatifs qui sous-tendent ces discours. C’est sous cet angle que cette recherche constitue un apport important aux champs des savoirs, tant sur le plan théorique, normatif que politique : en se penchant sur deux cas de figure « extrêmes », elle met en lumière les normativités corporelles des régimes dominants, notamment cisgenriste et (cis)capacitiste, occultées tant dans nos sociétés que dans nos mouvements sociaux.


MOTS CLÉS
Intersectionnalité; théories féministes; théories trans; théories queers; théories sur le handicap; mouvements sociaux; modifications corporelles; corps; transsexualité; transcapacité; amputations volontaires; BIID; handicap; mutilations; pathologisation; normalité/anormalité; stigmatisation; discours; analyses critiques de discours; normes; oppressions; autonomie; bioéthique.

The objective of this report is to compare and contrast anti-discrimination law in the 28 EU Member States, four EU candidate countries (namely the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey) and the EEA countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), based on the country reports written by the European network of legal experts in gender equality and non-discrimination,as updated in respect of 2017. The state of play and the major developments are summarised in this publication.

Following the neoliberal restructuration of the Turkish welfare and banking systems in the 2000s, many veterans of Turkey’s Kurdish war faced debt enforcement due to failed payments for prosthetic limbs. Veterans responded to debt collection by turning their own bodies into spectacles of debt and sacrifice by publicly removing and showcasing their debt-ridden prostheses. The media interest in these prosthetic spectacles further amplified the visceral threat of dismemberment evoked by veterans’ embodied performances. The public debates surrounding “prosthesis repossession” cases extended well beyond veteran welfare issues, inscribing all sorts of social and political anxieties on the amputee veteran body, such as anxieties around the incommensurability between the value regimes of nationalism and neoliberalism or around the Syrian refugees. Providing a window into larger questions about the interconnections between disability, gender, nationalism, and neoliberal capitalism, prosthesis repossession cases show us how debt and disability coproduce each other at the nexus of consumer debt and nationalist welfare in Turkey. By homing in on the prosthetic re-membering and dismembering of veteran bodies in a rapidly changing health milieu, we see how the political economy of violence and the violence of political economy become complicit in the production of debt, dismemberment, and prosthetic rehabilitation.

The essay seeks to explore body-focused phenomenological writing in disability studies and film theory throughout publically shared anecdotes, coming-out narratives, and embodied autoethnographies. Through the author’s own bodily experiences in academia, particularly writing, attending conferences, and teaching, Greenberg bridges the gaps between the disciplines through an embodied autoethnographic phenomenological methodology inspired by film scholar Vivian Sobchack.

In this paper, my aim is to elaborate disability movement praxis so that transnational struggles for justice over the production of impairment emerging from the Global South can be represented within the transnational frame of disability politics. The paper seeks to explore the potential of deepening socio-political understandings of impairment as a means to radically democratize disability movement politics at the transnational scale to encompass pluralist, yet subaltern, collective claims for justice. I am guided by the question: if impairment is the place that makes visible invisible debts, can the global disability rights movement begin a process of re-identification to open the boundaries of disability justice claims and develop a strategic orientation which recognizes those collective justice claims for geopolitically produced impairments?

In light of cultural discourses that position femininity at odds with technology, I was inspired by the work of
Donna Haraway to examine how women amputees experience and negotiate feminine embodiment with
prosthetic limbs. In her germinal Manifesto for Cyborgs, Haraway theorised the cyborg as a feminist symbol of a
utopian “post-gendered world,” asserting that techno-hybridity has the potential to destabilise embodied gendered
subjectivity—prompting a rethinking of sex, bodies, gender and humanity. In this paper, following a critical
discussion of Haraway’s work, I argue that the cyborg continues to be a provocative concept in feminist sociologies
of the body, enabling us to explore the complex new subjectivities that are made possible through feminine
techno-embodiment. Trough an empirical exploration of women amputees’ experiences of living with prosthetic
limbs, I found that women can embody and incorporate prosthetic technologies into their feminine selves in
multiple, complex, gendered ways. My fndings indicate that cyborgian hybridity may have the potential to
destabilise some aspects of gendered embodiment and performance for women with prosthetic limbs, which can
be experienced as both limiting and liberating.