1Name
Muna Abdi [Panel 3d]
Email
m.abdi@sheffield.ac.uk
Title
‘Double consciousnesses’: Exploring identity issues faced by
young Somali men, through the use of self- representative
narratives
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to gain insight into the identity- related
experiences of 6 young Somali men (aged 14-18) living in Sheffield.
The study seeks to explore the ways in which these young men
construct, negotiate and possibly challenge their identities in the
midst of clashing cultural and social expectations (Somali and
British). The study will explore masculinity as ‘gender performativity’
(Butler, 1990) as well as race performativity to gain insight in to the
ways in which these young men represent themselves and feel they
are represented by others. The study seeks to explore socially and
culturally accepted ‘norms’ and how these young men deal with
situations in which they are often considered ‘non- normal’ or ‘odd’.
This is a critical qualitative study which will be using Frantz Fanon
(1964) and W.E.B Du Bois’ (1994) notion of ‘double/dual
consciousnesses’ as well as socio-psychological theories of cultural
dissonance and social constructionism (Berger, 1967; Burr, 1995;
Shotter 2002) as the principle theoretical frameworks. A three stage
narrative style methodology will be used in order to collect the data
for the research. (1) Initial focus group discussion (2) Individually
selected multi-modal narrative methods to represent their own
identity (3) Individual reflective interviews to discuss the selfrepresentative modes used in stage 2.
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#Normalcy2014 Muna Abdi: Double consciousnesses’: Exploring
identity issues faced by young Somali men
Bio
Name
Gaby Admon-Rick [Panel 4d]
Email
gaby_rick@hotmail.com
Title
The Humanity of Hands and Legs: Envisioning and Framing
Humanity within the Disability Percentages System
Since the early 1950's disability percentages have been widely used
in Israel for defining disability levels, determining many aspects of
people with disabilities lives, while binding them to lifelong medical
surveillance. The disability percentage system stabilizes a social
order in which disability is equated with impairment while other social
attributes of disability such as lack of accessibility and social
attitudes are set aside. Furthermore, within it a distinct image of
humanity emerges, as well as its counterpart, imagined as lacking
these attributes – the disabled.
Abstract
This paper applies a conceptual framework from Science Technology
and Society Studies (STS) to the analysis of the Israeli disability
percentage system, in an attempt to bring to light its underlying
assumptions regarding humanity. Specifically the paper will address
how issues such as productivity, need, individuality, independence,
development and injury are framed within the system. It shall be
contended that this image of the human is more than an ablest fiction
-- it is a part of a mundane practice, infiltrating the daily life of people
with disabilities, and stabilizing the roles of administration. This
framing becomes resilient to change and transformation, challenging
the implementation of civil rights legislation and the UN Convention
on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
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#Normalcy2014 Gaby Admon-Rick: The Humanity of Hands and
Legs: Envisioning and Framing Humanity within the Disability
Percentages System
Bio
Historian of medicine and disability in the program for Science
Technology and Society, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
Research dissertation titled Constituting Disability: Medical
Technologies, Disabilities and State, Palestine-/ Israel 1927-1958,
discusses the interrelationship between the medicalization of
disability and the formation of state, governance and citizenship.
Name
Paul Allender [Panel 2a.]
Email
p.allender@sheffield.ac.uk
Title
Post-humanism – a philosophy to come?
Abstract
Post-humanism is, for me, an aspirational philosophy, one that does
not yet exist, and needs to be examined as such. This must include a
thorough analysis of both the development and continuation of
humanist thought and its usefulness and deficiencies. Humanism, as
a name, can be dated back to at least the fifteenth century and
needs to be accorded the respect and attention that it deserves. It
cannot be ‘dispensed with’ lightly.
However, deficiencies or problems with humanism have been drawn
attention to by a wide array of thinkers including Heidegger, Foucault
and Derrida, to name just a few. More recently, many scholars,
including animal studies theorists such as Donna Haraway (2003,
2008) and Matthew Calarco (2008, 2009), have developed work with
an implicit (and in some cases explicit) underpinning of posthumanism.
This paper will examine some of the possible reasons for
humanism’s resilience and advance an argument for the
development of post-human perspectives from a range of concerns,
focussing upon human-animal relations; perhaps the dominant
concern of animal studies theory.
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#normalcy2014 Paul Allender: Post-humanism as an aspirational
philosophy
Bio
I work as a Teaching Associate in the School of Education at the
University of Sheffield and am also an artist (painter, performer and
director). Additionally, I lead a support group for a severely disabled
young woman and her primary carer in Nottingham. I have recently
become interested in post-humanism and completed an article for
Power and Education, Volume 5, No 3 2013, Derrida and Humanism:
some implications for post-humanist political and educational
practice.
Name
Larry Arnold [Panel 7d]
Email
lba657@bham.ac.uk
Title
This will kill that
Abstract
As Victor Hugo's King Louis said to the printer, suggesting that
technology
would destroy the spirit of la Cathedrale de Notre Dame.
I intend to look at two things, notions of transhumanity and
augmentation,
and at those dehumanising discourses equating certain categories of
person
as not quite human.
Stephen Pinker once equated autistic people to "robots and
chimpanzees". We
in common with other categories of disabled people before us have
been
categorised as less than fully human lacking some supposed vital
faculty to
keep us above the apes. In a Heirarchy as old as Hamlet we are
close but no
cigar.
Kurzweil and others have talked about transhumanism in
a discourse which
has included autism as some ulterior paradigm of natural
technological
symbiosis.
Is it all as simple as that, are we mechanistic automata, (as
Descartes
considered the animal world) vs the soul (whatever one considers
the
threshold for possession of such) ?
Or is it rather more complex, for where indeed do our bodies and
minds end?
I'll warrant that I am extending a lot further than I can see at this very
moment by virtue of my keyboard and screen.
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#Normalcy2014 Larry Arnold locates autism between
dehumanisation and transhumanism
Bio
Larry Arnold is a doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham
and is the principal editor of Autonomy, the critical journal of
interdisciplinary autism studies. He has had over a decades
experience with the National Autistic Society besides being more
widely known as an academic in the world of disability studies,
having had an involvement since the early 1980’s as an activist, and
researcher. More recently he has become known for his involvement
in the world of autism and neurodiversity where those early insights
have proved valuable to his perception of his own “impairment” He
has a particular interest in the ethics of autism research.
Name
Katie Aubrecht & Janice Keefe [Panel 10c]
Email
Katie.Aubrecht@msvu.ca
Title
Dementia and the Political Paradox of 'Normal Aging’
Abstract
A public health perspective currently shapes the appearance of
entitlements and supports for individuals with dementia diagnoses and
their family and friend caregivers. Such a perspective is embodied in the
2012 World Health Organization and Alzheimer’s Disease International
report Dementia: A Public Health Priority, which represents dementia as
a global economic and social burden that, as a result of continued global
population aging, can only be expected to get worse in the absence of
globally coordinated national dementia strategies. I explore how such
images and ideas of dementia act as conduits for expert and evidencebased knowledge of a disruption to the natural order of things, made
visible in the form of population aging. Within this context dementia
becomes an archetype of what Michalko refers to as “useless suffering”
(2002, p. 99). I examine how what is imagined to be suffered in and inrelation-to a life lived with dementia is the probability of a loss of self. I
conclude with a critical reflection on the expression persons with
dementia as a narrative prosthesis that supports recognition of the global
burden of dementia as a threshold at which the authenticity of a yet
nondisabled ‘all’ can be recovered and reaffirmed.
Works Cited:
Michaela alko, R. (2002). The difference that disability makes.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
World Health Organization & Alzheimer’s Disease International. (2012).
Dementia: A public health priority (pp. 1-32). Retrieved from
http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/75263/1/9789241564458_eng.pdf
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#normalcy2014 Katie Aubrecht & Janice Keefe: Dementia and the
Political Paradox of 'Normal Aging’
Bio
Katie Aubrecht is a Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Postdoctoral Fellow and instructor with the Graduate Department of
Family Studies & Gerontology at Mount Saint Vincent University, Nova
Scotia, Canada, and Research Coordinator at the Nova Scotia Centre on
Aging. Katie is also incoming President of the Canadian Disability
Studies Association. Her research adopts a critical disability studies
perspective and questions how embodied responses to the violence of
prevailing discourses of power are assimilated under colonial knowledge
regimes and in mental illness and aging discourses in health regimes. In
2013 she edited the special issue of the journal Health, Culture and
Society, “Translating Happiness: Medicine, Culture and Social Progress.”
Janice Keefe, Professor, Department of Family Studies & Gerontology,
Mount Saint Vincent University. Janice was the Canada Research Chair
(CRC) in Aging and Caregiving Policy from 2002-2012 and is Director of
the Nova Scotia Centre on Aging as well as the Maritime Data Centre for
Aging Research and Policy Analysis. In 2006 she was awarded the Lena
Isabel Jodrey Chair in Gerontology. Her research areas are family/friend
caregiving, Alzheimer disease & related dementia, seniors housing and
continuing care policy. She currently leads a CIHR-funded research team
to project human resources needed to care for the older Canadians
needing chronic home care over the next 30 years, and is also a CoInvestigator with the Canadian Dementia Knowledge Translation Network
(CDKTN).
Name
Jenny Bergenmar, Hanna Bertilsdotter Rosqvist & Ann-Sofie
Lönngren [panel 1d]
Email
jenny.bergenmar@lir.gu.se; hanna.bertilsdotter.rosqvist@umu.se;
ann-sofie.lonngren@gender.uu.se
Title
Autism and the question of the ‘human’ – normative subjects
and the significance of emotions and interaction in research,
fiction and life writing
Abstract
This presentation concerns how normative notions of emotions and
interactions are active in the construction of the categories of
‘human’ and ‘animal’ in a different discourses about autism: scientific
and autobiographical. In the scientific discourse of autistic
emotionality, a deficit-perspective of autism is central. Closely
connected to the general affective deficit discourse are discursive
notions of ‘humanity’ or ‘human emotionality’. Neurotypicals are
produced as ‘humans’, and neurotypical emotionality as human
emotionality. This human normativity is challenged in the Swedish
autobiographical texts by Gunilla Gerland, Iris Johansson and
Immanuel Brändemo. Along with Temple Grandin’s Thinking in
Pictures and Dawn Prince-Hughes’ Songs of the Gorilla Nation they
are destabilizing the categories by identifying with animals,
describing themselves as animals, or feeling themselves disqualified
as humans. These life writings, to a varying extent, present
posthumanist perspectives on human functionality and point out
‘human’ and ‘animal’ as normative categories pre-supposing a
neurotypical cognition and emotionality.
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#normalcy2014 Jenny Bergenmar et al: Autism and the question of
the ‘human’
Bio
Jenny Bergenmar is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at
the Department of Literature, Religion and History of Ideas,
University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research interests include
gender- queer- and posthuman studies in literature, and
representation of (neuro) psychiatric conditions in life writing.
Hanna Bertilsdotter Rosqvist is Associate Professor in Sociology
and a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Umeå University, Sweden.
Her research interests include autism politics and identity
constructions among adults with autism. Other areas of interest are
homonormativity, representations of bisexuality, and intersecting
notions of age, space and sexuality.
Ann-Sofie Lönngren is a Researcher affiliated with the Department
of Literature and the Center for Gender Research, Uppsala
University, as well as The Pufendorf collegium for Advanced Studies,
Lund University, Sweden. Her research interests include queertransgender-intersectional-and animal studies in literary scholarship.
Name
Jess Bradley [Panel 8d]
Email
education@ssdp.org.uk
Title
Crip ecologies
Abstract
In "Exile and Pride", Eli Clare paints a portrait of her identity as being
informed by her cripness, her queerness, and her connection to the
landscape. Drawing upon queer and feminist ecologies to imagine
what “crip ecologies” might look like, this paper seeks to pick apart
how landscape and the environment informs disability (and vice
versa), with particular reference to contemporary debates on
independance and autonomy within disability studies and
environmental sciences. A brief critique of the utility of "crip
ecologies" as a lens for analysis and tool for crip liberation is
advanced.
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#Normalcy2014 Jess Bradley: Crip ecologies
Bio
Jess Bradley, University of Manchester. Jess' main interests are crip
ecology, cultural discourses and identity, and how disability, gender
and sexuality relate to space.
Name
James Brighton & Andrew Sparkes [Panel 4b]
Email
james.brighton@canterbury.ac.uk; A.C.Sparkes@leedsmet.ac.uk
Title
(Dis)abled athletes as ambassadors of transhumanism
Abstract
Drawing on data generated from a four year ethnographic study into
wheelchair sport in England we examine how (dis)abled athletes
come to understand themselves as a “complex hybridisation”
between (Wo)Man and machine (Haraway, 1991). A structural
narrative analysis of the ‘big’ and ‘small’ stories (Bamberg, 2006) told
by the (dis)abled athletes in the field revealed four ideal types in
action. Techno-survival stories and techno-rehabilitation stories were
entrenched in, and sanctioned by the medical discourses of
restoration and normalisation that informed the way participants
made sense of their bodies and constructed their identities over time.
In contrast, using cyborg embodiment stories some participants
demonstrated a sense of agency in creating new ways of relating to
technology which allowed them to challenge and reject various
dualisms (e.g., able/disabled, normal/abnormal), and instead
construct ‘proud’ (dis)abled identities that imagine different kinds of
humanity in relation to various technological fields. Some reflections
are offered on the ways in which these cyborg embodiment stories
transgress established dualisms and offer what Haraway (1991) calls
“dangerous possibilities” for the empowerment of (dis)abled athletes.
In this process we suggest that in the future (dis)abled athletes have
the potential to become “ambassadors of transhumanism” as
described by Miah (2003).
(Dis)abled athletes as ‘cyborgs’: The dangerous possibilities of
technology in sport and the creation of proud (dis)abled identities.
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Bio
James’s theoretical and empirical research interests revolve around
how (dis)abled people experience embodiment in sport with specific
emphasis on the development of athletic identity, how (dis)abled
athletes negotiate themselves amongst the ‘tyrannies of body
perfectionism’, and the influence of technology on (dis)abled
corporeality.
Andrew’s research interests are diverse. Recent work has focused
on interrupted body projects (e.g., spinal cord injury) and the
narrative reconstruction of self; ageing bodies in sport and physical
activity contexts; sporting auto/biographies and body-self-culture
relationships; and sensual ways of knowing and being in sport,
physical activity and leisure.
Name
Nili R. Broyer & Adi Finkelstein [Panel 9c]
Email
nbroye2@uic.edu; adilan@netvision.net.il
Title
Searching for the 'this' in 'dis': Theorizing the embodiment of
lacking
Abstract
When it comes to disability we do not know what is. The knowledge
construct on disability answer what it is not. Disability is a label of
lacking; it is an identity comprised of absence, of dis: "Disability is the
'not' condition, the repudiation of ability" (Simi Linton, 1998:30).
Both poststructuralism and critical realism offer different theoretical
frameworks to conceptualize the body as lacking. While
Poststructuralism reads the lacking as a mark which society enforces
on the body surface; critical realism wishes to go back to the physical
body and to acknowledge its materiality within social and cultural
context. "Without returning to a medical model, which labels
individuals as defective, the next step for disability studies is to
develop a theory of complex embodiment that values disability as a
form of human variation” (Tobin Siebers, 2008:25).
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Bio
The article will bring forth critical discussion based on these two
theories’ perspectives mentioned above and on the lived experience
of both researches. Through the two narratives, the social construct
and the embodiment of lacking will be expressed and deconstructed.
#Normalcy2014 Nili Broyer & Adi Finkelstein: Searching for the 'this'
in 'dis': Theorizing the embodiment of lacking
Nili R. Broyer - Disability and Human Development, University of
Illinois at Chicago (UIC), USA
An international Ph.D. student in Disability Studies program at the
UIC's Department of Disability and Human Development. Nili Broyer
was granted the Ethel Louise Armstrong (ELA) Scholarship Award
which enables her to start this prestige program. In her Doctorate,
she wish to research the subject of Encounters, and to examine
certain critical aspects of it in concerning: Disability, Stigma, Identity
and the Body.
For more than a decade, Nili Broyer have been working actively and
creatively in disability studies within academia (primarily in Cultural
Studies, Education, Sociology and Anthropology) and through her
professional activities. Her ongoing work in this critical field
encompasses learning, research, publication, art, activism and
teaching. In her last capacity at Alin Beit Noam, Nili Broyer was one
of the founders of the Israeli Institute for Disability Studies. As the
Director of Training at the Institute, most of her work was directed at
disseminating, developing and expanding disability studies in Israel.
Among other things, her work included teaching in higher education
programs for practitioners at Ono Academic College and at Bar-Ilan
University.
Adi Finkelstein earned her PhD in medical anthropology from the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her PhD dissertation, awarded
summa cum laude in 2009, focused on the illness experience of
women with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome in Israel. Her
current research interests include the phenomenology of the body
and chronic illness; medical education; patient-doctor
communication; aging and disability.
Name
Emmeline Burdett & Lisa Davies [Panel 1c]
Email
eburdett58@hotmail.com; lisa.davies4@btinternet.com
Title
The Good Ship ‘Plucky Crip’: The Seductive Appeal of
Normalcy, or; Why Does Everyone Want to Be ‘Normal’?
Abstract
Fromm (2001) argues that normality is the preferred state - that the
normal person:
‘is able to fulfil the social role he has been given and to work in the
fashion that contemporary society requires of him’ (Fromm, 2001:
119).
Furthermore, according to Cameron (2010), the ‘normal person’
‘is allowed to escape the angst of being reminded of his own
temporality that regular interaction with people who have
impairments would involve’
Fromm and Cameron’s words establish why the appeal of normalcy
is particularly seductive. If the normal person can conform, and fulfil
the social role expected of him, then he is less likely to encounter
challenge, and less likely to have his actions questioned. Over
twenty years ago, Jenny Corbett wrote that
‘people in wheelchairs are abnormal’ (Corbett, 1991: 260).
As Emmeline Burdett and Lisa Davies will discuss in this paper, this
attitude endures in many respects. Prominent contemporary
examples of the seductive appeal of normalcy include the 2012
Olympic Torch Relay and the media coverage thereof, and the 2013
Guinness advert, entitled ‘wheelchair basketball’.
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#Normalcy2014 Emmeline Burdett & Lisa Davies explore The
Seductive Appeal of Normalcy
Bio
Emmeline Burdett gained her PhD from University College London
in 2011. She is an independent scholar, a board member of Disability
Arts Online, a book reviewer for H-Disability, and a contributor to Dr
Colin Cameron’s recent book Disability Studies: A Student’s Guide.
Lisa Davies holds an MA in Women’s Writing from Edge Hill
University. She is a member of the Expertise by Experience panel,
which is embedded within the Faculty of Health and Social Care, and
collaboratively teaches on the Disabled Adults module. Her teaching
is strongly influenced by her life experience and her sessions focus
upon Employment, Poverty, and Eugenics. She recently presented a
paper entitled: ‘It Was Like That When I Got Here’, at Hope
University’s Academic Avoidance conference. Her specific research
interests include, service user involvement in social work education,
Feminisms, and Disability. She is also a writer, poet and member of
the UCLAN writing group Reading the World.
Name
Harriet Cameron [Panel 1b]
Email
h.cameron@sheffield.ac.uk
Title
Being Dyslexic in Higher Education
Abstract
Under UK law dyslexia is a disability and the label entitles students
within higher education to certain supports. However, many students
with the label I have come across during my work as a specialist
tutor conceptualise dyslexia and themselves as ‘not normal’. Some
say they feel they are just ‘stupid’, some consider dyslexia a medical
condition, some feel that dyslexia is a positive, and others feel they
are simply different, part of a neuro-diverse population. My position
is that the ways dyslexia is constructed in any particular interaction,
or in any wider text, have implications for how students with the label
construct themselves and others as academic learners. In turn, I
believe certain ways of being and doing are opened up or closed
down by the ‘subject positions’ (Davies & Harre, 2001) these
constructions offer. My current research is a discourse analysis of
two focus group conversations between dyslexic university students
and myself. In this session I will talk about the different subject
positions participants took up or offered, the wider discourses they
drew upon, and the implications of these for ‘being’ and identity
within the higher education context.
Davies,B., and Harre,R. (2001) Positioning: The Discursive
Production of Selves. Reading 19 in in Wetherell,M., Taylor,S.,
Yates,S. (Eds.) (2001) Discourse, Theory and Practice: A Reader.
261-271. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications/
The Open University.
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Bio
#normalcy2014 Harriet Cameron: Being Dyslexic in HE: why & how
we talk about dyslexia matters
I have worked as a specialist teacher for dyslexic students for 11
years. I became interested in the various learning identities open to
my students, and thus began doctoral study in this area. My focus is
upon how dyslexia is discursively and ideologically constructed, and
why this is important.
Name
Matthew Connolly [Panel 4e / 1d? (In place of Namitha)]
Email
matcon85@hotmail.co.uk
Title
Power relations in a more-than-human world
Abstract
This paper draws on concepts developed within Science and
Technology Studies, and in particular the work of Bruno Latour, to
reassess the notion of power from a post-humanist standpoint. It
argues that epistemological tenets carried over from the so-called
‘post-modern turn’, namely social constructionism and discourse, not
only represent naïve approaches to knowledge, but also offer
inadequate critical analyses. Power is not what explains, but what
must be explained, that is, a consequence rather than a cause.
Therefore, considered in this light, ‘power’, like ‘the social’ or any
other conceptual object, does not exist a priori but is instead
performed through the enactment of both materially and discursively
heterogeneous relations; thus, indicating a move away from postmodernism and towards amodernism. Nevertheless, such a radical
perspective does imply a state of ontological relativism, and so
concludes by examining what this means for the future of politics,
research and practice.
#Normalcy2014 Matthew Connolly: Power relations in a more-than-
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human world
Bio
Matthew Connolly is a PhD student within the Research Institute of
Health & Social Change at Manchester Metropolitan University. His
research aims to develop a post-humanist approach to psychology
by studying how the concept is performed using actor-network theory
and governmentality studies.
Name
David J. Connor [Panel 9b]
Email
dconnor@hunter.cuny.edu
Title
Rethinking Ab/normalcy at The International Disability Studies
in Education Annual Conference: Explorations of Working
Within, and Against, Special Education
This paper focuses on the Disability Studies in Education (DSE)
conference as an example of expanding disability studies (DS) as a
way to challenge unquestioned notions of normalcy that pervade
education for educators. First, the origins, purpose, and history of the
DSE conference are described as a valid alternative discipline to
special education. Second, the following three questions are posed
in relation to DSE scholars: (1) To what degree can we transgress
within existing structures of teacher education and doctoral programs
without being provided lip-service, coopted, or dismissed as
ideological versus practical? (2) To what degree can we engage (and
critique) the field of special education within its journals and
conferences—and provide a greater plurality of perspectives within
them? And, (3) How can we strategize to widely circulate ideas within
DSE throughout education and its related fields? Presentations from
a recent DSE conference are analyzed, described, and used as a
collective response to help answer these questions. Fourth, DSE
scholars share post-conference thoughts on the future of DSE.
Finally, the deep debt of DSE to DS is acknowledged, along with
speculation about possible ways in which DSE may help inform the
growth of DS.
#Normalcy2014 David Connor: Rethinking Ab/normalcy through
working within and against Special Education
Abstract
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Bio
David J. Connor is a professor and Chairperson of the Special
Education Department at Hunter College, City University of New
York. His interests include disability studies in education, learning
disabilities, and qualitative research.
Name
Diane Driedger [Panel 3b]
Email
diane.driedger@umanitoba.ca
Title
The DisAbled Women’s Network (DAWN) Canada: Challenging
Normalcy on Three Fronts
The DisAbled Women’s Network (DAWN) Canada has been
challenging ideas around who is normal since 1985. It is an
organization of and for women with all kinds of disabilities. It was
founded by 17 women who realized that society, the disability rights
movement and the women’s movement did not recognize the
concerns of women with disabilities. The first group of disabled
women who met in 1985 talked about violence against women with
disabilities, sexuality, parenting and child care, self-image and selfesteem, and access to the women’s movement and to services for
women. While the Coalition of Provincial Organizations of the
Handicapped (COPOH, now Council of Canadians with Disabilities)
was the national cross-disability movement’s voice, few women’s
issues were discussed, as traditionally the organization’s leadership
was male and the organization was addressing the issues that “really
mattered” such as transportation, housing and employment. Seeing
that disabled women were invisible on three fronts, DAWN Canada
was born. In the ensuing twenty five years plus, DAWN has
addressed the question of “who is normal” on all these fronts. This
paper will discuss the concept of the “normal” disabled person and
the “normal” woman at the tine of DAWN’s founding and DAWN
subsequent redefinition of what is “normal” for disabled women in
the areas of sexuality, violence, parenting and self-image.
Abstract
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#normalcy2014 Diane Driedger, University of Manitoba, Canada.
DisAbled Women's Network (DAWN) Canada: Challenging Normalcy
on Three Fronts
Bio
Diane Driedger is Assistant Professor in Disability Studies at the
University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. She is author or editor
of eight books. Her latest book is Living the Edges: A Disabled
Women's Reader (Innana, 2010). She is also a poet and visual artist.
Name
Jane Dryden [Panel 2c]
Email
jdryden@mta.ca
Title
Posthumanism’s invitation to the concept of humanity
Abstract
There are different ways to interpret “human” as well as “posthuman.” The concept “post-human” has variously been used within
cultural theory and philosophy of technology such that it supports the
ethos to which particular theorists are already committed, whether it
be a radical crip or queer ethos, or a transhumanist-allied quasiEnlightenment logic of improvement. I argue that, given this flexibility,
one of the best uses of the concept “post-human” is to invite us to
reimagine human possibilities and thus to inform our continually
developing idea of humanity. Following a Hegelian logic, my paper
will show how the concept of “humanity” is capacious enough to
admit of this development, and that understanding it in this way helps
to underscore its connection to social and economic justice and our
responsibility to the human Other. The work of developing the
concept of the human is one that relies on taking seriously the onthe-ground lived experience of those who challenge its boundaries.
These challenges denote a dialectical “way of despair” that
nonetheless works to expand our moral community and deepen our
commitment to others.
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#normalcy2014 Jane Dryden - "Human" includes "posthuman";
Hegelian understanding of this important for justice/responsibility to
the Other.
Bio
Jane Dryden is associate professor of philosophy at Mount Allison
University in New Brunswick, Canada. She is working on a
monograph that draws from German idealism and disability theory to
investigate the relationship between autonomy and vulnerability. She
teaches courses on Kant, German idealism, feminist philosophy,
aesthetics, and biomedical ethics.
Name
Tracey Edelist [Panel 10a]
Email
Tracey.edelist@mail.utoronto.ca
Title
Cochlear Implants and the Production of Good Citizens
Abstract
Cochlear implants are marketed as devices that can make deaf
children “close to normal” and improve their chances of becoming
good citizens. My paper explores how the humanity of deaf children
is represented and manipulated in the local media by cochlear
implant stakeholders for socio-economic gain, with a focus on the
Cochlear Implant Program at SickKids Hospital in Toronto, Canada.
As a way to publicize the program and ensure continued public
support and government funding, various representations of d/Deaf
people without cochlear implants and/or who use sign language, as
incompetent, uneducated, unemployable, and devalued members of
society who are not “normal” are put into circulation by the program’s
director through local newspapers and television. The interest to turn
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deaf children into “almost normal” and so- called good citizens is
questioned. I conclude that the cochlear implant is the latest in a long
line of technologies used to make deaf people conform to the hearing
norm while denying deaf children a visual language.
#normalcy2014 [Tracey Edelist] [Exploring how the humanity of deaf
children is represented in the media by cochlear implant
stakeholders]
Tracey researches how socio-cultural conceptions of deafness and
d/Deaf people influence the medical, auditory (re)habilitation and
language learning options presented to parents by professionals;
early childhood education policies and practices; and how d/Deaf
children are “placed” and find their place within everyday life.
Name
Karen R Fisher, Sally Robinson, Kelley Johnson [Panel 6b]
Email
karen.fisher@unsw.edu.au
Title
Can recognition theory challenge subordination in the
relationships of young disabled people?
Relationships between disabled people and carers have the potential
to disable or facilitate a good life. We seek to understand recognition
and misrecognition in relationships of young disabled people as they
move into adulthood. We apply recognition theory in action research
to reconceptualise support relationships, shifting the focus away from
instrumentalism towards interactions that build mutual recognition
between young disabled people and carers. The aims are to
understand how young people experience and develop their
relationships; identify whether and how key modes of intersubjective
recognition (love, rights and solidarity) are experienced in the acts
and struggles for mutual recognition between young people and
supporters; and explore the potential of action research for capacity
building to enhance relationships through a focus on mutual
recognition. Recognition is rooted in the acknowledgement of each
other’s existence. Grounded in critical theory, the work of recognition
theorists is interested in social inequality and social justice. It
assumes that identity is constructed dialogically, through a process
of mutual recognition. Equally important is the concept of
misrecognition, a form of social subordination that prevents people
from participating as a peer in social life. Recognition theory
concerns mutual respect for the particularity and equality of all other
persons, consistent with critical disability studies.
#Normalcy2014 Karen Fisher et al.: Challenging subordination of
young disabled people via employment of recognition theory
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Name
Kelly Fritsch [Panel 3a]
Email
kellyfritsch@gmail.com
Title
Within Worlds: Disability, Material Feminisms, and Posthuman
Corporeality
Abstract
In this paper, I consider the import of material feminisms and
posthuman conceptions of corporeality for disability and critical
disability studies. Drawing on Stacy Alaimo’s trans-corporeality,
Karen Barad’s intra-action, Gail Weiss’ intercorporeality, and Donna
Haraway’s natureculture, I trace the significance of these concepts
for thinking and feeling disability and resisting, revising, and
reshaping notions of the human. In doing so, I explore the human
and nonhuman ways in which disability is enacted in the world,
contesting categories of the able, the disabled, and normalcy.
#Normalcy2014 Kelly Fritsch: Within Worlds: Disability, Material
Feminisms, and Posthuman Corporeality
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Bio
Kelly Fritsch is a PhD Candidate in Social and Political Thought at
York University in Toronto. In her dissertation, she explores the ways
in which neoliberal capital reifies disability as a thing that can be
known, solved, and profited from. In contrast, Fritsch explores what it
means to approach disability as a doing, or as a practice. She does
this by examining the affective uptake of the International Symbol of
Access, exploring non-human forms of disability by engaging with
disabled-animals, and critically charting the reproductive futures of
disabled bodies. Her work appears in Disability Studies Quarterly,
Health, Culture and Society, Critical Disability Discourse and Upping
the Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action.
Name
Peter Fuzesi [12a]
Email
p.fuzesi@lancaster.ac.uk
Title
Assistive technologies
Abstract
My starting point is that individual technological devices figure more
or less competent users, majorities and minorities, obstacles and
points of contact, therefore they offer a productive site to study
different normate figures (Garland-Thomson, 1997). In a project,
placed on the borderlands of disability studies and science and
technology studies (STS), I argue that, the question of adequate
compensation evokes the wider issue of what is an adequate body.
The variety of compensated and normalised figures suggest that
norms are rather multiple and entangled with different bodies,
technologies and forms of power. Whereas disabled bodies are
ascribed lack, and dependence and seen as in need of assistance,
the (normal) human is presented as independent and self-sufficient.
While disabled bodies are different, the category of „human” conjoins
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different normate figures,and appears as unitary and self-evident.
Firstly, I use examples of prosthetic and assistive devices to show
how these technologies disrupt the established visual order of the
'human' body, and how technologically compensated bodies bring
forth differences both between normal and disabled and different
normate bodies. Secondly, I question how technologies are
mobilised to erase the differences between dictinct nomrate bodies,
and present a unitary human?
#Normalcy2014 Peter Fuzesi: Assistive technologies
Bio
After completing my BA Sociology (Goldsmiths) I embarked on a Phd
projekt on the innovation of technologies for disabled people at
Lancaster University. My work is in the intersection of science and
technology studies and disability studies, and I deploy an
ethnographic approach to study how technologies and 'ability' are
configured.
Name
Alicia Grace [Panel 5d]
Email
lyricfrequency@yahoo.co.uk
Title
freaks On Nature: dancing out of normopathic desire & ableist
ecologies of body
Abstract
Discussing stigma as both a cultural and ecological phenomenon,
this paper asserts how poetics of heroic mobility, ruin, and bio-centric
‘green’ themes of wholeness, scarcity and apocalypse, play into
normopathic narratives of the human body. I will suggest how the
consequences of ‘normapathic desire’ (Retallack, 2003,p5) create a
kind of social choreography, determining how our bodies become
located in relation to normalcy.
By exploring 20th century literature (Mary Webb’s Precious Bane &
John Wyndham’s The Crysalids) and 21st century Disability Arts
practices (Aaron Williamson’s Bogey Man and Kevin Connolly’s
Rolling Exhibition) this paper demonstrates how some writers &
artists have ‘danced’ their way out of ableist representations of the
‘nature’ of the human body. For these artists & writers themes of
mobilisation, location & environment are key to understanding and
unravelling constructions of human normalcy.
Sharing images from my own performance portfolio (including an
Anchoress in a tangle outside her house, a Harlequin dancing in a
nuclear bunker and a piece about not being able to walk far on
Dartmoor) I will reference feminist perspectives on Romantic
heroism, and how my use of comic persona and improvisation
attempts to create a performance ecology not as a “heroic
undertaking but a strategic one” (Meeker 1997 p28).
#Normalcy2014 Alicia Grace: freaks On Nature: dancing out of
normopathic desire & ableist ecologies of body
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Bio
Alicia Grace is a writer, dramaturg, performer and activist working in
dance and experimental performance practices. Alicia also works
as an informal educator lecturing on gender and disability politics
within contemporary performance. Alicia has presented solo &
collaborative work nationally, presented research internationally, and
has an on-going practice in improvisation & somatic practices. Alicia
can often be found working in deeply rural, non-designated art
spaces on small-scale projects, which have included dialogues with
youth groups, local library services, and defense landscape experts.
Her publication includes poetry, arts criticism & academic research.
Alicia is currently writing a chapter on the work of playwright Kaite
O’Reilly for a upcoming Palgrave Macmillan publication on Disability
Literary Studies.
Name
Nancy Hansen [Panel 3c]
Email
Nancy.Hansen@umanitoba.ca
Title
Dispatches from the Field: Reflections of a 4- legged
Researcher
A four legged feminist human geographer. I find myself in a world of
bi-ped privilege (although it is rarely recogised as such). In many
ways I am perceived an alien on the scene.. The first or among the
very few to be in that environment . My arrival is often unexpected
disrupting to some degree the established research pace and
practice within outwith the academy. I am regularly thrust into bazaar
situations of space and place dissonance that are not of my own
making. The physical and attitudinal landscape shifting at a moments
notice. The opportunities for quick thinking and creativity abound.
These unplanned precarious encounters have led to numerous
interesting research opportunities. I am never without my leatherbound note book Field Notes Among the Non-Disabled as I
document and navigate my way around and through a bi-ped world.
This paper provides an insider perspective of a four-legged
researcher dispatching from the front-line.
#Normalcy2014 Nancy Hansen: Dispatches from the Field:
Reflections of a 4- legged Researcher
Abstract
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Name
Jonathan Harvey [Panel 12b]
Email
Jonathan.Harvey@open.ac.uk
Title
“What the fuck does the washing machine do?”… Using
participant experiences to navigate ontological conundrums
Abstract
In this paper I seek to raise some important questions regarding
acquired brain injury (ABI) and neurological rehabilitation following
ABI. I will draw upon my doctoral study which seeks to investigate
the identity of people who have sustained ABI, and at the same time
interrogate the process of neurological rehabilitation after ABI. I raise
these questions about ABI and ABI rehabilitation not with the
intention of finding final answers, but rather with the purpose of
enacting a thorough exploration of many possible answers. Following
recent calls for the discipline of Disability Studies to investigate the
possibilities that impairment(s) can enable, this paper seeks to
explore the theoretical discussions that the asking of questions can
stimulate.
Investigating phenomena from a number of different perspectives or
‘being critical’ of dominant institutional practices has been noted as a
key aspect of contemporary disability research (Goodley 2013;
Shildrick 2012). It is somewhat problematic then, that neurological
rehabilitation is often enacted in a way that seeks to silence any
critical voices, especially those emanating from the social sciences
(Gibson and Teachman 2012; Gibson, Carnevale and King 2012).
Furthermore, neurological rehabilitation following ABI has been
criticised for a failure to engage with the experiences of ABI survivors
(Sherry 2006). Considering these opinions, in this paper I seek to
draw upon the experiences of my participants with the aim of
disentangling the way the ‘reality’ of ABI has impacted on their lives.
#Normalcy2014 Jonathan Harvey: Using participant experiences to
navigate ontological conundrums
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Name
Tim Herrick [Panel 6c]
Email
T.Herrick@sheffield.ac.uk
Title
Asylum seekers in higher education: troubling identities
Abstract
Part advocacy, part academic exploration, this paper examines the
situation of students from an asylum seeker background who are
engaging or attempting to engage in higher education in
England. People seeking asylum are in a legal limbo as they await
determination of their residency status, a process of months or more
often years that effectively places their lives on hold. They are not
entitled to work and receive minimal state support; neither citizen nor
stranger, they trouble the boundary between the two, and undermine
a sense of normalcy in our society. For complex reasons including
responding to trauma, aspirations for a new life, and the tedious
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duration of the asylum process, it is an ambition of many people
seeking refuge to better their education (Morrice 2009, 2013;
Elwyn et al 2013). Yet policy and funding structures make many
forms of education accessible only to the most determined, and then
often on a precarious footing, subject to institutional and national
policy changes. This paper therefore outlines how individuals from
an asylum seeker background problematise assumptions about
conventional kinds of student, are regarded by educational
institutions, and, grounded in a relational social justice perspective
(Gewirtz, 2006), what individual institutions could do to better enable
access and support.
#normalcy2014 Tim Herrick "Asylum seekers in higher education" who are they, what do they want, and what can we do to support
them?
Bio
Tim Herrick’s background is in adult education and work with nontraditional students, and his academic publications include topics as
diverse as French post-structuralism, Vietnamese phenomenology,
and the lived experience of university teaching spaces. His teaching
is around study skills, radical pedagogies, and learning and teaching
in higher education.
Name
Arrianna Introna [Panel 7c]
Email
arianna.introna@stir.ac.uk
Title
James Kelman’s Dismodernist Visions: Revolting Subjects Speak for
the Human
My paper will explore the ways in which James Kelman’s narratives
of disability interact with his committment to revolt against practices
of dehumanisation through a redistribution of the sensible. In Disagreement (1999) Jacques Rancière contrasts the police, ‘an order
of the visible and the sayable’ which determines what can be seen
and what counts as discourse, with politics, an activity which ‘undoes
the perceptible divisions of the police order’. Aaron Kelly has
recently drawn on Rancière’s theories to address Kelman’s concern
with the dehumanisation to which working-class experience is
subjected (2013). Focusing on Kelman’s If it is your life (2010), my
analysis will examine how his contestation of the police order is
intensified in narratives of disability. First, it will delineate how
Kelman’s work is informed by a dismodernist ethic (Davis, 2002)
which invalidates the police order of normalcy by giving voice to
disabled characters, and by conjuring up a society in which nonstandard conditions are the norm. Secondly, it will relate this to
Imogen Tyler’s recent exploration (2013) of the connection between
the mechanisms whereby minoritized populations are constructed
and perceived as revolting and the practices through which these
Abstract
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revolt against abjection, suggesting that Kelman is ultimately
concerned to reclaim the category of the human for/via his revolting
characters.
#normalcy2014 Arianna Introna, ‘James Kelman’s Dismodernist
Visions: Revolting Subjects Speak for the Human’
Arianna Introna completed an MLitt in Modern Scottish Writing at the
University of Stirling, where she is now researching for her PhD. Her
project focuses on the interaction between representations of
disability and narratives of belonging in 20th- and 21st-century
Scottish writing and culture.
Name
Sona Kazemi [Panel 8b]
Email
skazemi@yorku.ca
Title
“Abnormal” in Many Ways: Racialized/Queer/Working
Class/Middle-Eastern/Immigrant/Woman/Former Political
Prisoner
Abstract
This paper tries to challenge the disregard of most hegemonic
theories through a critical interrogation of current views of
homogenous Western institutions by indicating that our healthcare
system fails to accommodate multiple differences (mental/physical
disability, color, race, class, gender, ethnicity, and etc.) that people
have in institutions, which also affects their diagnosis, prognosis,
treatment, and even the length of stay. In the third chapter, I refuse
to deconstruct the ‘notion’ of patient as a homogenous category,
instead I argue that in order to have an inclusive, democratic, and
accessible mental health system, we should locate the access to
power more thoroughly. I suggest power cannot be understood as
solely contained within the public domain, instead we should
construct a new alternative for the notion of patient that does not only
encompass a White male in hospital gown but also a bisexual
immigrant poor woman in a hijab (i.e., a new notion that can embrace
multi-layered differences as well and refuses the deconstructive
concept of ‘norm’). I agree with Smith (2000) who suggests in order
to get rid of the personal and state violence that people (with multiple
differences or so called “abnormal” in many ways) face, some
strategies should be developed/taken without strengthening the
oppressive criminal justice or psy apparatus at the same time.
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#Normalcy2014 Sona Kazemi: “Abnormal” in Many Ways:
Racialized/Queer/Working Class/MiddleEastern/Immigrant/Woman/Former Political Prisoner
Bio
Sona Kazemi is a PhD student of Disability Studies at University of
Leeds, U.K. She is a queer woman, former political prisoner from
Middle East, and a person with mental disability. Mapping
institutional ethnography is her passion in research methodology.
Sona is the founder of two community-based projects about acquired
disability and marginalized populations’ empowerment in Toronto
since 2008.
Name
Eve Lacey [Panel 6a]
Email
el303@cam.ac.uk
Title
Child's Play: Illustrated Bodies and Traces of Disability
Abstract
This paper examines traces of disability in children’s literature. Using
Robert McRuer's analysis of children's literature about HIV/AIDS as a
starting point, I examine the ways in which texts can portray illness
as integral to the child reader, or as an othering force to be tolerated.
I develop this social reading to one of close literary analysis and
extend readings of disability beyond the human to draw the authority
of the text into question, and to examine how the body of a book can
be rendered unstable. I propose that an impaired text can form a
crutch for a child's readerly development and so foster
interdependency in an otherwise stridently individualist society.
The paper focuses on instances of writing on the body in the works
of David Almond and Jacqueline Wilson and interrogates the extent
to which the child is created through fiction, or as fiction, when their
bodies become textual surfaces to be inscribed with multiple
narratives. Finally, I use queer and critical disability theory to laud the
dependency of the partial or excessive text as a narrative prosthesis
which figures the child reader as implicated in, rather than immune
to, the stories of disabled characters
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#normalcy2014 Eve Lacey Child's Play: Illustrated Bodies and
Traces of Disability
Bio
Eve Lacey studied English at Cambridge University, where she will
be a Graduate Trainee Librarian next year. She was awarded the
David Almond Fellowship from Newcastle University and Seven
Stories Museum in 2012, and brought a keen interest in critical
disability studies to the funded research on children's literature.
Name
Ema Loja [Panel 11a]
Email
loja.ema@gmail.com
Title
Bodies, pride and politics
Abstract
Disability is deeply connected to systems of signification and
representation that produce devaluations of corporeal forms. Within a
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society that puts a high premium on conventional images of beauty
and the importance of bodily integrity (Hahn, 1985), ‘strangeness’
and ‘otherness’ are ‘natural’ responses to impaired bodies. Indeed,
impairment arouses both an aesthetic aversion and a subconscious
anxiety about bodily integrity (Hahn, 1985) and is mostly viewed on
the same feared continuum as illness and death (Michalko 2002). It
is, actually, a constantly reminder of a threat for non-disabled people
about the fragility and vulnerability of human bodies (Davis, 1997).
These are thus bodies that can be associated with an irreducible
negative (Scully, 2003). As a response, people are continually
negotiating acceptable range of human variation through the process
of ‘norming’ (Davis, 1995) with great consequences on disabled
people’s lives. In this context, how can disabled people be proud of
their bodies? And how can disabled and non-disabled people want to
resist, revise and shape notions of the human?
With the use of a qualitative research based on embodiment theory
with people with physical impairments, this presentation aims to
discuss the links between subjective experiences of impaired bodies
with embracing or rejecting the position of political non-normativity.
#Normalcy2014 Ema Loja: Bodies, pride, politics
Bio
Ema Loja holds a European PhD in Psychology by the University of
Porto (2012), with a thesis entitled ‘The impact of dis/abl(e)ism on
disabled people in Portugal: fado, citizenship and the embodied self’.
She’s now Research Fellow at the Centre for Disability Studies in the
University of Leeds. Her research interestes include socio-political
and cultural perspectives on disability, identity, embodiment and
body politics. She has three publications in ‘Disability and Society’
and is currently engaged in peer reviewing for some academic
journals such as ‘The Review of Disability Studies: an International
Journal’ and ‘Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research’.
Name
Anne McGuire [Panel 4c]
Email
anne.mcguire@utoronto.ca
Title
Leveling Autism: Neoliberal investments in the DSM-V spectrum
Abstract
Over the course of the past two decades, notions of ‘spectrum’ have
emerged as dominant ways of organizing and making sense of
myriad physical, intellectual and mental states. Within the fields of
biomedicine and psychiatry, diagnostic categories such as Autism,
Anxiety and Depression are no longer understood as singular or
static pathologies but are instead represented as graded ranges of
capacities and debilities, so-called ‘spectrum disorders’. Drawing on
Puar’s (2012) insights into the functional power and profitability of
notions of capacity and debility from within neoliberal regimes, this
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chapter interrogates the historical/cultural specificity of the
emergence of the ‘spectrum disorder’. In so doing, I read ‘the
spectrum’ as an ideological and material concept that is both
producing and regulating, creating and constraining conducts that
are beyond the norm. More specifically, this paper will focus on the
recent changes to the diagnostic category of autism published in the
5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Significantly, the
DSM-V eliminates categorical diagnosis (i.e., one either meets
autism diagnostic criteria or not), favouring instead a dimensional
diagnosis (i.e., to what degree does one meet the diagnostic criteria
of autism). I argue that the move to understand autism as a graded
category of pathology (a spectrum) is providing for an optimistic –
and highly lucrative – narrative of the possibility for the incremental
recovery of a normative (non-autistic) “good life”. I contend that such
a narrative functions dangerously to condition the emergence of the
popular understanding that ‘life with autism’ always can and ought to
be actively moving along the pathological gradations of autistic
difference toward the most vital pole of ‘life without it’. References:
Puar, Jasbir K. 2012. CODA: The cost of getting better. GLQ 18:1.
#Normalcy2014 Anne McGuire: Notions of spectrum are fuelling the
normative “good life”
Bio
I am an Assistant Professor in the Equity Studies Program at New
College, University of Toronto. My research and teaching draw on
interpretive perspectives in disability studies, cultural studies and
feminist, critical race and queer theory. My current book project
analyzes the cultural production of autism and the material effects of
contemporary forms of autism advocacy.
Name
Robert McRuer [Panel 8c]
Email
rmcruer@gwu.edu
Title
Cripistemology of the Crisis: Desiring Disability in an Age of Austerity
Abstract
In 1990, the same year that the Americans with Disabilities Act
(ADA) was signed into law in the United States, Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick wrote in Epistemology of the Closet that “many of the
major nodes of thought and knowledge in twentieth-century Western
culture as a whole are structured—indeed, fractured—by a chronic,
now endemic crisis of homo/heterosexual definition, indicatively
male, dating from the end of the nineteenth century.” Specters of
disability of course already attend Sedgwick’s famous opening lines,
given her metaphorical dependence on the fractured and the
chronic. Yet the book as a whole often connects the crisis Sedgwick
surveys to medical, scientific, and eugenic ways of knowing that
were, less metaphorically, the dominant ways of knowing not only
homosexuality but disability throughout the twentieth century. The
ADA, however, is only one document of many in the late twentieth
and early twenty-first centuries marking an interruption in the
dominant politics of knowledge production around disability. Statebased protections materializing disabled people as a minoritized and
rights-bearing group emerged globally, and at a proliferating rate, at
the turn of this century. Examples include not only the ADA in the
U.S. (1990), but also Ley de integración social de las personas con
discapacidad in Chile (1994), the Disability Discrimination Act in the
UK (1995) and Ley de igualdad de oportunidades, no discriminación
y accesibilidad universal [LIONDA] in Spain (2003). These and
numerous other state documents participate in what Roderick
Ferguson might term “the reorder of things” in relation to disability: a
neoliberal affirmation of disability-as-difference emerges (and is
codified as official policy) to supplement dominant understandings of
disability as lack, loss, or pathology. My presentation, however,
theorizes what happens to this reorder of things, to this production of
knowledge around disability, in and through the post-2008 “crisis”
and a global politics of austerity. “Cripistemology of the Crisis”
argues that the emergent nodes of thought and knowledge about
disability in twenty-first century Western culture as a whole are
structured—indeed, fractured—by an acute crisis of capacity and
debility, dating from the end of the twentieth century. And although
integrally connected to Sedgwick’s epistemology of the closet in
ways I will detail, this crisis is arguably, contra Sedgwick, indicatively
female. Using Jasbir K. Puar’s recent theorizations of “capacity” and
“debility,” I examine crip embodiments and ways of knowing
(cripistemologies) that have materialized in the face of austerity and
in excess of the neoliberal state’s management or containment of
“disability.” To fill out this embodied contestation over the state and
disability, or the state of disability, I briefly survey a few key sites—
including occupied squares or plazas in the US and Spain, student
mobilizations in Chile, and anti-cuts activism in the UK—where
dissident cripistemologies might be read.
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Bio
Robert McRuer. Professor of English and Chair of the Department of
English at The George Washington University. He received his
doctorate in English at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. He has published or edited three books: Sex and
Disability (Duke UP, 2012; co-edited with Anna Mollow); Crip Theory:
Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (New York UP, 2006);
and The Queer Renaissance: Contemporary American Literature and
the Reinvention of Lesbian and Gay Identities (New York UP,
1997).Crip Theory was awarded the Alan Bray Memorial Book Award
(2007) from the GL/Q Caucus of the Modern Language Association,
and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. His article
“Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence”
initially appeared in the anthology Disability Studies: Enabling the
Humanities (MLA, 2002), and has been widely reprinted. With Abby
L. Wilkerson in 2003, he co-edited a special double issue of GLQ: A
Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, “Desiring Disability: Queer
Theory Meets Disability Studies,” which was awarded the Best
Special Issue Award (2004) from the Council of Editors of Learned
Journals (CELJ). With Merri Lisa Johnson, he is co-editing a special
issue of the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies,
“Cripistemologies”; he is completing a monograph tentatively
titled Cripping Austerity. His articles have appeared in PMLA, Radical
History Review, theJournal of Medical Humanities, GLQ, and other
locations.
Name
Damian Milton [Panel 9d]
Email
DEM979@bham.ac.uk
Title
Entangled lines of flight: an exploration into ‘clumping’ theory.
Abstract
From Plato’s forms, through the Hobbesian view of the state of
nature, to functionalist sociological notions of value consensus,
Western Philosophy has contained what could be called a ‘strong
drive toward central coherence’.
Alongside this history, from
Heraclitus to Bauman there have been philosophies highlighting fluid
and transitional processes. This presentation looks to explore the
theory of ‘clumping’ that was introduced at the Theorising Normalcy
conference 2013. This theory seeks to represent what happens
when Deleuzian lines of flight become entangled into ‘humans’ and
wider social assemblages. When desire and assemblage become
clumped and reified, this can be characterised by conformity,
functionalism, normativity, masssification, and bureaucracy. Yet
‘clumping’ can also be used as a metaphor to describe neoliberal
notions of the individual human social agent. This presentation will
explore some key questions: who/what benefits from normative
culture? To what extent can the damage and stigma of ‘outsiders’ be
countered? Can creative lines of flight originate from ‘clumped’
social groups – i.e subcultural rebellion and solidarity? In conclusion,
it is argued that the ‘revolution’ may well be a process and not an
outcome, yet paradigm shifts are possible within the slow
movements of ‘clumps’...
#normalcy2013 milton_damian Entangled lines of flight: an
exploration into ‘clumping’ theory. Exploring Post-Deleuzian
philosophy.
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Bio
Damian is currently studying for a doctorate at the University of
Birmingham. He is a member of the programme board for the
Autism Education Trust, and the scientific and advisory committee for
Research Autism. Damian has also recently started work for the
National Autistic Society as a consultant.
Name
Nina Muehlemann [Panel 4a]
Email
nina.muehlemann@gmx.net
Title
London 2012 and the Disabled Superhero: Cyborgs,
Superhumans and Underwater Wheelchairs
During the summer of 2012, the imagery of the disabled
‘superhuman’ was omnipresent in the media due to the London 2012
Paralympics. The Cultural Olympiad, and especially the Unlimited
commissions, provided more nuanced perspectives on disability, and
allowed for disabled artists to reject, rework or extend the narrative of
the disabled superhuman.
One of the most prominent Unlimited commissions was Sue Austin’s
performance piece ‘Creating the Spectacle!’. This production,
consisting of videos and live performances, sees her floating under
water in a specially adapted electric wheelchair, conjuring up the
enchanting, otherworldly vision of a mermaid, a cyborg or a super
heroine. How does Austin’s underwater wheelchair figure in her
performance to reshape preconceptions about desire and the stigma
attached to mobility aids and the impaired body?
Austin’s picture served as the main marketing image for the
Unlimited Festival, which makes it possible to draw parallels between
‘Creating the Spectacle’ and the Channel 4 ‘Meet the Superhumans’
advert for the 2012 Paralympics. Discussing Austin’s production
alongside the ‘Superhumans’ advert, as well as other portrayals of
disabled superheroes in popular culture, this paper will explore how
Austin reflects on the problematic narrative of the superhuman.
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#normalcy2014 Nina Muehlemann ’London 2012 and the Disabled
Superhero: Cyborgs, Superhumans and Underwater Wheelchairs’
Nina Muehlemann is in the second year of her PhD at King’s College
London. She has published in the Contemporary Theatre Review,
presented at the London Theatre Seminar and at the FIRT (Disability
& Performance working group). In addition to her PhD, she is a writer
for Disability Arts Online.
Name
Jan Owens [Panel 9a]
Email
Jan.owens@sheffield.ac.uk
Title
Models of humanity
Abstract
The UK social model of disability has been a useful tool since the
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1970s, but it has numerous critics. With the advent of critical
disability studies the social model of disability has become more
problematic because its tenets cannot be applied globally and
pluralistic versions have formed. The unresolved issue of disability
and impairment remains. The division between disability and
impairment, places the onus on society for creating a disabling
environment. We could argue that this process created different
humans because it did not recognise that impairment may create
disability, and disability may simultaneously become impairment.
This leaves us with questions. Does the social model of disability in
advocating notions that society is responsible for creating inequality
reify notions of difference, and so create different humans? From the
moment we are born until our death our bodies change constantly,
does that mean we are the same humans across the lifecourse? At
what point does a human become a different human? I argue that in
separating us from our bodies and our embodied experiences the
social model of disability has created a precedent for what it means
to be human.
#Normalcy2014 Jan Owens explores models of humanity
Bio
Jan (Janine) Owens is a lecturer in the School of Clinical Dentistry at
the University of Sheffield. She has had a varied work history and
entered academia late, reading psychology as an undergraduate and
sociology for her PhD. Jan researches mainly with people with
learning difficulties but wishes to develop disability theory, especially
around the social model/s of disability.
Name
Ryan Parrey [Panel 10d]
Email
rparrey@gmail.com
Title
In and Through Disorientation: Living by Nancy’s “Law of
Intrusion”
Abstract
In order to return bodies back to difference – in-the-human”
KumariCampbell (2009) argues, “a re-conceptualisation of knowing
(episteme) is aramount. Only this knowledge is of a carnal kind,
where thinking, sensing and understanding mutually unfold.” (15) By
exploring disorienting encounters with disability in this paper, I
emphasize the meanings of “diabled human bodies” that emerge
from sensing it not when it makes sense but when, however briefly
and for a number of reasons, it does not. In these moments we get a
sense of the sense that “human” and “disability” can make and,
ultimately, an opportunity to grasp the possibility that some of those
senses can be unmade. To continue with Kumari Campbell’s point, I
argue that not only is a reconceptualization of knowing required but
also a reconceptualization of not knowing.
Through readings of Lobel’s (2008) Ball and Other Funny Stories
About Cancer” and Nancy’s (2008) “L’intrus”, this paper explores the
(sense of) strangeness and strange relations between notions and
experiences of bodies whose “human-ness” is persistently called into
question by the intrusion of medical procedures and techno-scientific
artifacts. Specifically, it presents an account of disabled embodiment
and crip bodyminds that begins with, rather than discounts or, worse
still, accounts for disorienting encounters within an ableist world.
By emphasizing touch and (points of) contact, I demonstrate a way to
appreciating impairment/disability beyond accommodation, tolerance,
and notions of “the human”. Through their non-sentimental writing of
bodies, these authors present alternative corporeal relations to
(human) bodies and, in turn, articulate “the human” as always
already an open question.
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#Normalcy2014 Ryan Parrey: In and Through Disorientation: Living
by Nancy’s “Law of Intrusion”
Bio
Name
Caroline Pearce [Panel 5b]
Email
caroline.pearce@open.ac.uk
Title
Recovery and getting over grief: Or ways of being human that
were never sovereign
Abstract
In this paper I will argue why grief is an instance that allows for the
recognition of the non-sovereignty of being human. Within a
contemporary western neo-liberal context, being human is often
presumed to involve having control over decision-making and
responsibility for our choices. This is reflected in the rhetoric of
mental health recovery where recovery is synonymous with being a
functional citizen. To fail to recover is to refuse the normative fantasy
of the ‘good life’ and to be read as problematic or as a troublemaker.
In grief, the failure to recover is commonly associated with the failure
to let go of an attachment to the deceased, described as
‘melancholia’ or in contemporary psychiatric diagnosis: ‘complicated
grief’. However, contrary to the rhetoric of recovery, the failure to ‘let
go’ of the deceased and the capacity for grief to make us come
undone might alternatively be understood as an occasion that
reveals how sovereignty is unsettled by affective experiences such
as grief. If grief has the potential to inject some incoherence and
ambiguity into our sense of self and sense of sovereignty by
highlighting the complexity of attachments and relationality, what
does this mean for how we think about the human?
#normalcy2014 [Caroline Pearce] How grief allows recognition of
non-sovereignty of being human
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Bio
Caroline Pearce is a PhD student at the Faculty of Health and Social
Care at The Open University. Her doctoral research is entitled:
‘Recovery following bereavement: Navigating the liminal space of
grief’ supervised by Dr Carol Komaromy and Dr Sam Murphy. Her
research is an ethnographic study of recovery following
bereavement, exploring how recovery is interpreted and defined in
mental health and bereavement care policy and practice in the UK,
with a special focus on the treatment of people with complicated,
complex and prolonged grief.
Name
Ana Be Pereira [Panel 11c]
Email
ana.be@outlook.com
Title
Constructing the human - Chronic illness, normalcy and
normative corporality
Abstract
Based on my research, this paper explores the category of the
human through the lived experiences of embodiment reported by
people living with a chronic illness in England and Portugal. I argue
that chronic illness is a good starting point to investigate how
normalcy and the category of "the human" is constructed because
people living with chronic and long term conditions do not always
show visible signs of impairment, although they might at times or
even frequently experience extremely disabling periods. Thus, they
inhabit a space that defies stable categories and is mostly fluid.
Based on my research, which employed narrative methods, I will
exemplify how participants describe learning new things and
developing new strategies about their bodies through their
experience of illness. I will explore how these knowledges and
strategies must constantly be negotiated with others around and their
expectations for how bodies should perform. I will argue that this
helps us to think about how normative rules about the body are
externally and internally imposed in order to have bodies conform to
idealized ableist notions of what I have termed normative corporality.
#Normalcy2014 @AnaBeOnline talks about how ableism and
normative rules about the body affect people living with chronic
illnesses
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Bio
Ana Bê is currently concluding her Ph.D. at Lancaster University. Her
research interests include disability studies, feminist theory and
cultural studies.
Name
Lucia Radcliffe [Panel 5c]
Email
luciacuk@hotmail.com
Title
Dehumanising experiences of creating a human. critical
analysis of being a disabled pregnant woman
Abstract
It is often taken as a given that there is nothing more natural, normal
and, perhaps, more human, than a woman getting pregnant and
giving birth. That is until disability enters the picture and skews what
it means to be (and not to be) ‘natural’, ‘normal’ and ‘human’.
“For the first time in my life I have recently come to feel “normal”. In
the last year I have graduated, just got married and become
pregnant. That’s what normal humans do, isn’t it?” (Mum to be-my
subject)
However, in the process of creating another human, this woman has
somehow become dehumanised by the system, labelled abnormal,
and treated ‘differently’. In this ‘paper in progress’ I intend to use the
experiences of a pregnant disabled woman to critically reflect on
concepts of what it means to be (and not be) human, in particular a
‘normal’ human. As a pregnant disabled women she finds herself
feeling judged, surviellied and ‘normalised’ in surprising ways. I
approach this project from a critical disability studies perspective,
using a multidisciplinary framework to interpret and make sense of
her experiences. The main themes emerging are professional
power(lessness) and control and the strategic engagement with both
ab/normal and dis/abled. In an important move, which I also seek to
discuss, this paper is intended to dehumanise the experiences of
dehumanisation in order to theorise them and detach the great
emotions that this paper holds which I fear would otherwise drown
me.
Lucia: #normalcy2014. Dehumanising experiences of creating a
human. critical analysis of being a disabled pregnant woman.
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Bio
I am Mrs Lucia Radcliffe. Last year (2013) I graduated with a first in
Education and Disability studies (BA hons). I’m taking life a little
slower this year and was focusing on other “stuff”. However I have
been drawn into academic life through this compelling story which I
feel needs sharing.
Name
Laurence Randall [Panel 7b]
Email
L.L.Randall@westminster.ac.uk
Title
La Sape Mouvement: gratuitous extravagance or does this
trend carry a message for Africa and the West?
Abstract
In the context of postcolonial studies, I would like to present a paper
on a Congolese movement called ‘la SAPE’ (la Société des
Ambianceurs et Personnes Elégantes = The Society of Mood Setters
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and Elegant People). This movement could be perceived as nothing
more than a simple trend of young Congolese who dress with
ostentatious luxury like modern dandies. However, according to the
Sapeurs, this movement is another way of looking at the world, of
exposing the contrast between the opulent Western way of life and
the legacy of colonialism which left many countries in Africa destitute.
By dressing ostentatiously, the Sapeur feels like he dominates the
world, that he has become a leader, standing out from the poverty in
Congo. To a certain degree, La SAPE is a social movement relayed
by youths in search of their identity. But in a context of economic
crisis, austerity and unrest in Congo, how does this movement relate
to ‘Theorising Normalcy and Mundane’. Beyond their gratuitous
extravagance, does this trend carry a message for Africa and the
West?
#normalcy2014 Laurence Randall. La Sape Mouvement: gratuitous
extravagance or does this trend carry a message for Africa and the
West?
Bio
I am Course Leader and Senior Lecturer in French in the Department
of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Westminster.
I hold a PhD in Philosophy. My research interest is focused on
the postcolonial cultural production and more specifically
representations of tradition and modernity in the Cameroonian
Cultural landscape (theatre, novel, cinema).
Name
John Carrington Rees [Panel 2d]
Email
Reesj52@gmail.com
Title
The dialectical human being
Abstract
5 claims: You can only begin to understand – ‘what is human’ –
through an analysis of our relationship to others, nature and
ourselves. On this basis you can begin to reveal that the analysis is
contained in our practices – it is not an external analysis or method
but one that grows out of and shapes the struggle to know who we
are, where we have come from and where were are going *(which
painter, what island?).
Humans come together in social groups and struggle in the social
arena over natural and human resources, this struggle ( a negation)
of our co-operation as human beings emerges from the struggle to
survive and can only be negated through the process of releasing a
sublated co – operation with the struggle to end all social class
based conflict, precisely through an engagement with conflict. This
conflict is historical, social and cultural in shape and direction, it
denies teleology precisely because the claim is that it is contained in
the practices of every day life, we live our history and with Marx claim
that we make that history but not in conditions of our own choosing.
The motor of this process is our social memory and this in the year of
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2014 is particularly potent given our revisiting of the epoch of wars
and revolution, the 20th century. The only intent must be that the
21st century eventually becomes the epoch of revolution to end the
revolution.
#normalcy2014 John Carrington Rees, The dialectical human being
Bio
Dr John Carrington Rees, alive well and living in Warsop!
Name
Donna Reeve: and Richard Sewell: [Panel 2b]
Email
donna.reeve@gmail.com
Title
The rise of the Maker Movement and open source prosthetics: An
example of Braidotti’s critical posthuman subject
Abstract
The rise of the Maker Movement and open source prosthetics: An
example of Braidotti’s critical posthuman subject
Theorists such as Braidotti and Haraway have written about the
emergence of the posthuman during the late 20th century,
highlighting the increasing significance of intimate relationships
between people and the non-human. Many disabled people have this
relationship with technology and animals – assistance dogs, implants
and prosthetics to name a few – but these theorists rarely engage
with the experiences of this group of people who could be considered
to be already posthuman.
Goodley, Lawthom and Runswick Cole (forthcoming) argue that
‘disability captures the productive possibilities of the posthuman
condition ... [and] brings something critical, politicised and rich to
posthuman theory’. This exploratory paper seeks to provide another
concrete example of the ‘critical posthuman subject’ (Braidotti, 2013)
by looking at the way in which the rise of the Maker Movement and
new forms of digital collaboration have enabled people to design and
manufacture prosthetic limbs and assistive technology that meet the
needs of disabled people in new ways. The rise of this ‘citizen
designer’ (Hamidi et al 2014) provides a direct challenge to the
conventional production of these assistive products and is made
possible because of global flows of information, technology and
materials.
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#Normalcy2014 Donna Reeve: Disabled people as examples of the
‘critical posthuman subject
Bio
Teaching Fellow, Lancaster University
Name
Liora Roffman [Panel 5a]
Email
liorarof@hotmail.com
Title
The Human Right to be Vulnerable and Dependent- Exposing
the Human Subject with Disabilities in the CRPD
Abstract
On December 13, 2006, the United Nations General Assembly
adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
(CRPD). The adoption marked a historical event which symbolized in
many ways the acceptance of people with disabilities into the family
of the "human being." In this paper I shall try to characterize the
human subject with disabilities, as s/he is constructed within the
CRPD, and attempt to understand to what extent is this construction
of the human subject in accordance with ableist norms.
Specifically I propose an analysis of the CRPD that exposes the
degree to which characteristics such as dependency and
vulnerability of people with disabilities are included with in the
convention . Underlying this approach is the assertion that basic
liberal human rights concepts such as autonomy and
independence, are ableist fallacies, that have defined the human
subject of human rights, and preserved the exclusion of people with
disabilities from society. Critical approaches towards the social
model from within disability studies, together with feminist critical
approaches and especially the concept of care ethics, as it is
constructed with in feminist theory, will serve as a central prism
through which the critical reading is presented.
#normalcy2014 Liora Roffman: The Human Right to be Vulnerable
and Dependent- Exposing the Human Subject with Disabilities in the
CRPD
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Bio
Liora Roffman is a Doctoral candidate, Presidents Award Scholarship
at the Department of Gender Studies, Bar Ilan University, Israel.
Former Director of the Unit for Social Inclusion at the Commission for
the Equal Rights of Persons with Disabilities at the Israeli Ministry of
Justice.
Name
Josh Sawiuk [Panel 7d]
Email
sawiuk@hotmail.com
Title
Assistive Technology at University: The Impostor In The
Classroom
Abstract
A paper inspired by Harriet Cooper at the 2013 Normalcy
Conference. A refection on the personal experience of assistive
technology and disability support, and the profound role it has played
in influencing a disabled student’s ability to study and succeed in
higher education. Alongside a critical investigation into feelings of
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‘passing’ and the internalised scrutiny of the disableist ablest gaze
when succeeding as a result of utilising external organ of technology.
#normalcy2014 Joshua Sawiuk, Assistive Technology at University:
The Impostor In The Classroom
Bio
Joshua Sawiuk: graduate of Sheffield Hallam University. Presented
at the 2013 Normalcy conference, a critical examination of access
and partial-participation for disabled students and their families in
primary education. Now studying, an MA in Social Research at the
University of Leeds.
Name
Emma Sheppard [Panel 11d]
Email
emma.sheppard@go.edgehill.ac.uk
Title
Crippling Pain: examining pain in discourses of normal human
experience
Abstract
In questioning understandings of pain through the twin lenses of a
Crip and Queer approach, I seek to explore how this understanding
informs the experiences of people with chronic pain as inhuman and
undesirable, asking whether we can question how we understand
pain in order to change how we experience it.
Pain is a part of being human – the normal human experience of life
includes both pleasure and pain. Pain is expected to be a negative
experience, with extreme pain – both emotional and physical –seen
as dehumanizing. The immediate understanding of pain is a
normative construction; able heterosexual bodies are free of pain.
Pain is either the side effect of effort – “no pain, no gain” – or it is a
test and a punishment; it is not to be sought, relished, or simply lived
with. It must have a cause, a reason for being experienced.
A future that contains pain, a disabled future, is thought to be both
unwanted and unbearable; living in pain is assumed to be so
overwhelmingly negative that a future with pain is unimaginable – but
how can this be changed?
#normalcy2014 Emma Sheppard - @_ESheppard – Cripping pain to
expose normalising discourses of impairment
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Bio
Emma Sheppard is a disabled PhD student at Edge Hill University,
where she is exploring discourses of pain in impairment and erotic
activities. She is interested in how critically crip approaches can be
used to examine narratives of embodied experiences
Name
Mikaela Starke, Hanna Bertilsdotter Rosqvist & Jari Kuosmanen
[Panel 7a]
Email
mikaela.starke@socwork.gu.se;
hanna.bertilsdotter.rosqvist@umu.se;
jari.kuosmanen@socwork.gu.se
Title
Producing an anti-couple – exploring tensions in a professional
discourse of couple hood, women with an intellectual disability
and sex trade in Sweden
The aim of this presentation is to discuss normative (romantic,
heterosexual) couple hood and ‘the couple’ in relation to a discourse
of ‘anti-couple hood’ and ‘the anti-couple’ through the lenses of
critical theories within the fields of disability and sexuality. The
empirical case is Swedish professionals’ representations of couple
hood among women with an intellectual disability (ID) who trade sex.
The discussion is based on a research project concerning
professionals´ experiences, views and descriptions of ID who have
been exposed to prostitution and crime. The data consists of
individual and focus groups interviews with professionals working in
different agencies in different parts of Sweden. Representations of
couple hood were a central theme in the interviews. The
professionals´ narratives of these women included an ideal of being
an individual that could share love and sexuality with others and
fulfilling expectations of couple normality or at least close to couple
normality (a ‘good enough’ couple hood). The discussion will be
illustrated by empirical examples from the study that will focus on
representation of normative couple hood and choices of the women.
#normalcy2014 Mikaela Starke et al. Producing an anti-couple:
exploring couplehood, women with intellectual disabilities & sex trade
Abstract
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Bio
Mikaela Starke is an Associate Professor in Social Work. She holds
a position as senior lecturer at the Department of Social Work,
University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her areas of research include
studies of families, children and parents with disability.
Hanna Bertilsdotter Rosqvist is an Associate Professor in
Sociology. She holds a position as senior lecturer at the Department
of Social Work, Umeå University, Sweden. Her research interests
include autism politics and identity constructions among adults with
autism. Other areas of interest are homonormativity, representations
of bisexuality, and intersecting notions of age, space, and sexuality.
Jari Kuosmanen is an Associate Professor in Social Work. He holds
a position as senior lecturer at the Department of Social Work,
University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His areas of research include
gender studies, men’s studies and studies of supply and demand
side in prostitution.
Name
Andrew Stevenson [12c]
Email
A.Stevenson@mmu.ac.uk
Title
Dog-Team walking
Abstract
As part of a broader sensory ethnographic exploration of place
perception amongst international students who have recently arrived
in Manchester (England), I conducted walking interviews with Alba,
who is from Barcelona and has a visual impairment. My work with
Alba and her dog-guide, Labrador Tori, offered me the opportunity to
explore the development of emplaced knowledge as embodied,
multi-sensory practice. As we walked as a three-in-one corporeal
entity we operated as an inter-subjective being, challenging
individualizing constructions of the self. During our interviews the
importance of inter-corporeal space, the spaces between us, in
facilitating our abilities to guide and follow each other, was realized.
For me as a researcher, this collaboration also afforded a reprioritization of sensory awareness that feeds into a critique of
ocular-centric approaches to research.
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#normalcy2014 Andrew Stevenson: Dog-team walking: inter
corporeal identities, blindness and reciprocal guiding
Bio
Andrew Stevenson is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at MMU. His
paper, Dog-team walking: inter corporeal identities, blindness and
reciprocal guiding, was published in 2013 in Disability and Society.
Name
Dianne Theakstone [Panel 11b]
Email
d.d.Theakstone2@stir.ac.uk
Title
‘Senses, Space and Self: an exploration of the interconnection
between post humanism and accessible housing’
Abstract
This paper draws upon a recent international comparative study to
explore the interplay between senses, self and space. The data
demonstrates that through adopting a mixed-methods and crossdisciplinary approach deeper analysis of a topic can be sought with a
broader awareness of the different perspectives at play. The author
argues that in an era of post-humanism that the boundaries between
assistive and mainstream design has blurred, creating opportunities
for disabled people to access participation within society. Design
particularly around accessible housing is starting to shift beyond a
wheel-chair usercentric outlook and embrace the importance of our
other senses. However the author examines implications for the
disabled-self especially in a climate of fragmented individual ideates.
Thus, by the conclusion the paper will have explored the interplay
between senses, self and space. It aims to stimulate debates around
the role of technology, the impact upon the dis/abled self and
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Bio
independent living movement as a whole.
#normalcy2014 Dianne Theakstone’s, “Senses, Space and Self”
explores relationships between housing designs, identities and the
ILM.
PhD researcher at the University of Stirling. My PhD “Building
Inclusion: to what extent do the governance structures in Scotland
and Norway facilitate or impede disabled peoples’ access to
independent living?” was inspired by person experiences of
disablement. I have a cross-disciplinary background and I adopt
mixed-methods throughout my work.
Name
Laurence Aspen Webb [Panel 8a]
Email
loz.b.webb@gmail.com
Title
Dysphoric Futures: Mental illness and the posthuman
possibilities of genderqueer crip embodiment
Abstract
Looking at Mamoru Oshii’s films Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Ghost
in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004), this paper explores the intersection
of mental illness and gender dysphoria to reveal the genderqueer
crip possibilities presented by the body technologies of cyberpunk
science fiction. These films depict the human world as a space of
loss and melancholia in which the boundaries between the human
and the posthuman have been irreparably blurred. The cyborg is an
ambivalent figure signifying both the queer and crip nightmare that
threatens humanity, and the possibilities of a posthuman future in
which multiple crip and queer embodiments are present. Drawing on
Carol Thomas’ development of a materialist feminist understanding
of disability, queer and feminist writings on posthumanism, and
Susan Stryker’s theory of transgender monstrousness, this paper
uses an intersectional feminist methodology to present a challenge to
the ableist notion of a singular humanist narrative.
#normalcy2014 Laurence Webb: Dysphoric Futures: Mental illness
and the posthuman possibilities of genderqueer crip embodiment
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Bio
Name
Alison Wilde [Panel 10b]
Email
alisonwilde1@yahoo.co.uk
Title
Masculinism, neoliberalism and mental distress: Exhibit A
Abstract
This paper examines an independent film, Exhibit A (directed by
Dom Rotheroe, 2007) to provide an example of how representations
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Bio
of mental illness can be used to problematise ableist fictions of the
normal man and heteronormative, neoliberalist ideals of masculinity.
In so doing, it will engage with the troubled association of violence
with mental health and challenge the avoidance of such portrayals. It
will also explore the enmeshment of 'post-human' identities with
technologies of self-surveillance focussing, in this case, on the use of
video cameras.
#normalcy2014 [Alison Wilde] [Masculinism, neoliberalism and
mental distress: Exhibit A
Alison Wilde is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education and
Childhood Education at Leeds Metropolitan University University. Her
primary research interests are related to the depiction and reception
of images of disability and gender, in a range of popular media,
including film, television and ‘children’s literature’.
Name
Richard Woodal [Panel 1a]
Email
rwoodall1@sheffield.ac.uk
Title
“Villainous Irregularities”: Sir Francis Galton and the Face of
Normalcy
Abstract
What do we mean by a “normal” face? Or, for that matter, an
“abnormal” one? Victorian eugenicist and statistician Francis Galton
(1822-1911) thought that he had discovered the answer with his
invention of “composite portraiture,” photographic amalgamations of
the images of individuals from a given sub-group (violent criminals,
soldiers, Jews). Each composite, he claimed, was a “real
generalisation”, a visual representation of the “average” member of
the group in question. By indexing social class and criminal deviance
to specific facial attributes, Galton was able to assert the biological
foundations of the Victorian social hierarchy, and thus further his
project to “improve” the English race by “discouraging” the
reproduction of undesirable elements.
In Galton’s system, only “average” or “typical” facial features are
meaningful – the peculiar and the idiosyncratic are systematically
erased from his pictures. Eugenics may now be almost universally
rejected by the political, scientific and cultural establishments, but we
still live with the definition of “normality” which Galton gave us, with
its explicit links to the statistically “average”. This paper seeks to
explore the construction of this normality through Galton’s
manipulation of photographic technology, as well as the persistence
of this definition in modern conceptions of beauty, deviance and
class.
#normalcy2014 Richard Woodal: “Villainous Irregularities”: Sir
Francis Galton and the Face of Normalcy
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Bio
Richard Woodall is a first year postgraduate research student in the
School of English at Sheffield University. His project, on the face,
technology and representation in Anglo-American culture, is part of
an interdisciplinary network on “The Construction of Human
Perfection”, being undertaken between the Schools of English, Law,
and Clinical Dentistry.