Disability studies in the classroom:a literary approach. (original) (raw)
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In this paper, we seek to develop an understanding of the human driven by a commitment to the politics of disability, especially those of people with intellectual disabilities. Our position as family members and allies to people associated with this phenomenon of intellectual disability influences our philosophical conceptions and political responses. This has led us recently to develop a theory of dis/human studies which, we contend, simultaneously acknowledges the possibilities offered by disability to trouble, reshape and re-fashion the human (crip ambitions) while at the same time asserting disabled people’s humanity (normative desires). We sketch out four dis/human considerations: (1) dis/autonomy, voice and evacuating the human individual; (2) dis/independence, assemblage and collective humanness; (3) dis/ability politics, self-advocacy and repositioning the human; and (4) dis/family: desiring the normal, embracing the non-normative. We argue that this feeds into the wider project of dis/ability studies, and we conclude that we desire a time when we view life through the prism of the dishuman (note, without the slash).
Introduction: Disability Studies in Education-Critical Conversations
Canadian Journal of Disability Studies , 2020
This special issue of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies brings together 19 articles by scholars and activists across broad academic disciplines and activist communitiesfrom disability studies to inclusive education, early childhood education, decolonial studies, feminist anti-violence organizing, community health and more-as well as geopolitical locations.
Disability: The Concept, Research and Struggle for Change
The history of Disability takes us as back as to the early civilizations, where Ancient Greeks had antipathy towards those with bodies that were ‘atypical’ according to their community. Towards the middle ages, there was the growth of faith based religious institutions with a charity approach to individuals who were ‘atypical’. Then in the era of Enlightment, disability was understood through scientific knowledge. Disability and the Disability studies in 21st century gained the attention of the academicians, activists and other social scientists. Disability is no more confined to the domains of rehabilitation professionals, therapeutic institutions functioning under the bureaucratic regime; rather it has shifted to the change among the differently abled people’s identity, their increased participation and the institutional sensitivity towards the barrier of exclusion of the disabled. But ‘Disability’ as a concept and the life of the impaired is always subject to vary from place to place depending upon the socio-cultural aspects. The present paper reviews some eminent theorist’s view of disability and presents how ‘disability’ was constructed, understood and interpreted throughout the journey from traditional sociological study to the emergence of disability studies as a distinct field of study. It also analyses disability in Indian context. Thus, the paper brings out some necessary dimensions that would help the disability researcher for the revaluation of the existing curriculum.
Disability Studies in Education and Inclusive Education
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education, 2020
Disability studies (DS) is a transdisciplinary eld of scholarly inquiry whose members seek to understand disability and disablement as cultural phenomena. Scholars who adopt disability studies in education (DSE) perspectives aim to understand how disability is conceptually con gured in the research and practice that shape learning, education, and schooling. The DSE eld strives to discern and theorize medical and social models of disability in order to promote critical examination of the cultural conditions in which educational practices are performed. The commitments and understandings that arise within DSE lead proponents to conceptualize inclusive education reform as a radical project, and call for the development of policy, teaching, and teacher education practices that acknowledge and resist ableism. Disability studies in education (DSE) is rooted in the broader eld of disability studies (DS), which is a transdisciplinary eld of scholarly inquiry whose members seek to understand disability and disablement as cultural phenomena (Gabel, 2005). The manner and extent to which di erence of an individual's body, mind, or a ect shapes his or her experience in society is dependent upon the culture and norms of the historical, political, economic, and geographic context (Campbell, 2009; Davis, 1997; Linton, 1998). Whether and how individuals' characteristics lead them to self-identify or be identi ed by others as a disabled person is dependent upon these factors. Scholars using DS perspectives aim to understand, in past and present, how disability becomes conceptually con gured in culture and the impact of culture on disabled people (Brown, 2002). A key contribution of DS and DSE is discerning and theorizing medical and social models of disability from which various critical perspectives useful for inquiry, production of knowledge and culture, and directions for elds of applied practice have emerged (Gabel, 2005). Working with DSE perspectives yields critical understandings that shape inquiry and action related to policy, pedagogy, and research in education (Gabel & Danforth, 2008; Ware, 2011). These understandings suggest the need for radical reform toward inclusive education, development of new practices in teaching and teacher education, and continued resistance of views about learners that limit life chances and opportunity in school and society (
Disability’s Discontents - Vinay Suhalka and Tannistha Samanta
Doing Sociology, 2024
We revisit the term divyang, and ask – what (social-moral) function does such an invocation entail? We have argued that living with disability is neither heroic nor divine, nor an aesthetic subject of “representation” in social justice terms. We instead, draw attention to disability as an embodied, quotidian experience that can contest the (benevolent) state-citizen relation. Hence the conceptual and popular vocabulary of disability needs to jettison itself from the burdened language of morality (social) and individual-failing (medical) to one that is both political and non-exceptional. We find literary theorist and bioethicist, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s (2017) trenchant plea to understand disability “as a cultural interpretation of physical transformation” and a “comparison of bodies that structures social relations and institutions”, particularly potent in troubling these established hierarchies. Without losing focus on the body as a political project, we join this plea to (re)examine disability as a multivalent analytic that reveals possibilities for signification that go beyond monologic invocations to divinity, morality and heroism.
Disability Studies: A Path breaking Approach in Literature
2021
is unique, though he is impaired". The uniqueness had been challenged in ancient time and considered disabled as sinners and cursed people. During middle-ages the uniqueness of disabled persons has been challenged and used them for entertainment purposes. Later they have been considered as wild and brutal and also gave much importance to the caretakers rather than disabled. Modern age especially later half of twentieth century the disabled got good position in literature due to the impact of civil rights movement and the writings of literary personalities. The life writings of disabled people made them to fly up to the heights of their life and also it inspire both able bodied and disabled to achieve their goals. At present disability studies is one of the growing branches of literature.
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023
Discourses on Disability bridges academic and personal voices from India to address the diverse and fluid conversations on disability. It seeks to critically engage with the concept of being dis/abled, attempting to deconstruct ableism while advocating for inclusive politics. Narratives from people with bipolar disorder, autism, and locomotor disabilities serve to examine how it feels to exist in a world conditioned by deep-seated cultural taboos about disability. The chapters in this book show how India still has a systemic silence about people with disabilities.
Firdaus Kanga's novel, Trying to Grow, tells the story of Brit Kotwal, a young Parsi boy with osteogenesis imperfecta, negotiating his life in the Bombay of the 1970s. From the beginning, this semi-autobiographical work draws our attention to the common religious and medical perceptions of disability in Indian society. This paper proposes to study how the novel focuses on several aspects of the lived reality of a person with " brittle bones " who does not grow more than four feet tall. The paper also explores how the novel focuses on and confounds the commonly perceived notion of the asexuality of disabled individuals. Brit's voice is extremely aware and articulates positions of difference within disability and sexuality discourses. He is able to occupy what can be called a truly modern disability subjectivity. But, this paper shall show that Brit presents the reader with this modern, emancipatory rhetoric of disability because of the privileges of his gender and class status in the Indian context. Within the same text, Brit's disabled female cousin is literally and figuratively mute and meets with a very different fate. The paper shall thus investigate and try to complicate the representation of disability, sexuality and the " modern " disability subjectivity in Kanga's novel.