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onedoodleaday · 3 years

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Review of 6 creative prompt books

Can't get enough prompts? I sure can't! I have a horrible urge to buy any and all books I see that have any sort of theme related to creative prompts, and I've amassed quite the collection over the years.

Today, I'm going to review some of them!

All of the following books are meant to be drawn in directly, which (at least ideally) makes them very satisfying to leaf through once you've worked in them for a while.

I will be making a separate post showcasing how I've personally used each book and link to it here, in case any if them pique your interest and you'd like to know more (coming soon!)

Books I am reviewing:

365 days of art by Lorna Scobie (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️▪️ Four out of five stars)

642 things to draw by chronicle books (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ five out of five stars)

642 fashion things to draw by Chronicle Books (⭐️⭐️⭐️▪️▪️ Three out of five stars)

Doodle a day by Chris Riddell (⭐️⭐️⭐️▪️▪️ three out of five stars)

Hirameki: Draw what you see by Peng and Hu (⭐️⭐️▪️▪️▪️ two out of five stars)

Illistration by Jaime Zollars (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️▪️ four out of five stars)

Warning: this is a very long post

365 days of art

By Lorna Scobie

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️▪️ Four out of five stars

What I like about it:

There's a great variety of prompts in this one. The prompts are mostly simple and straightforward, with space for doing your own thing. Most of the exercises also happen to appeal to me personally.

The prompts are designed for being able to be completed quite quickly, which makes them very accessible for me, and of course, you can get more elaborate with them if you have the time and energy (I've spent the last five days adding details to fish, just because I wanted to).

The author uses the foreword to encourage you to use the book in whatever way you personally find the most fun, which I appreciate.

Most of the prompts feel like they're focusing on practice rather than results, which means it's open for all skill levels to enjoy.

Criticism:

While I do hold that this book can work for artists of all skill levels, it does have prompts that are meant to teach you something, and while I like some of them, there are some that feel targeted towards either less experienced artists, or artists who has, or strives towards, a similar art style to that of the author. A couple of times, I have felt that my art style did not match the exercise set up, and while I still managed to have fun with them, I did wish there were more space for (in my case) a more realistic art style.

On a similar note, there are sections geared towards calligraphy, and they start at the very basics. While I personally am a beginner, I can imagine that someone with experience would find these bits both boring and redundant.

I will also mention that the book does encourage the use of different kinds of media, so you either have to be ready to break out some different tools or bend the prompts a bit if all you have is a pencil.

Recommended for beginner and intermediate artists, people who really like prompt books. Good for a little bit of daily practice with many different styles of art. Good for people who like patterns and colours in their art.

Recommended tools: brush pen, water-based paint, coloured pencils

642 things to draw

By chronicle books

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ five out of five stars

Of all the prompt books I have, this is my favorite. Hands down.

What I like about it:

This book is just prompts. No hand-holding, no presets for what to do with it, they just give you something to draw and you go from there. All you need is a pencil and your imagination. There are both straightforward prompts (a bottle opener, a spool of thread) and more abstract ones (girlish laughter, head in the clouds) and the variety means I usually find at least one prompt I want to do on each spread.

The differing sizes dedicated to each prompt make for a really fun and pleasing result.

I also appreciate that this book is completely open to all skill levels, as long as you're willing to give a go at drawing a lot of different things.

Criticism:

While I personally adore the to-the-point, straightforward prompts, I do acknowledge that, unless you enjoy just drawing random objects, you're going to need to add some creativity on your own, in how you incorporate the prompts. I personally like adding either character interaction or to use the object as part of a scene, especially for the things I don't find super visually interesting on their own. I personally enjoy the level of thinking, but I'm sure there are people who don't.

I also don't know if I would have enjoyed it as much when I was just starting out. I’ve always been quite result-based with my art, and while I think using reference to draw all the different things in the book would be an amazing skill-building exercise, it also sounds like a lot of work.

There are also a handful of pop culture references and prompts for famous people, which I personally prefer to avoid, because those are often based on social knowledge and interest, of which I personally have neither.

Recommended for artists of all skill levels, people who either have a big visual library or would like to build one. Recommended for people who like to draw a lot of different things.

Recommended materials: anything! Can be used with just a pencil

642 fashion things to draw

By Chronicle Books

⭐️⭐️⭐️▪️▪️ Three out of five stars

This one was actually my first prompt book ever! The start of a hoard, one might say.

What I like about it:

This one is another one by Chronicle Books, in the same series. This one is really fun if you like drawing clothes, and/or your art is character oriented. Of all my prompt books, this one has the best potential for fanart, in my opinion. If you like drawing people and characters, this book is really fun

Criticism:

This one is, quite understandably, more specific. If you like drawing clothes, this one is ideal. If you don't ... don't pick this one.

I was close to giving this one four stars, but I will withdraw a star for being very specifically tailored to one subject -- this could be a five star book for some people and a one-star for others.

Another thing I want to mention is that this book gets specific. I have to look up what about a third of the prompts mean. I'm okay with that, but if you don't want to do research and don't already know what a jaquard blouse or peplum waist skirt or houndstooth is, this is not the book for you.

Lastly, it has a good handful of both pop culture references and references to different brands, which is kind of alienating to me personally. It also assumes that you yourself care about your own clothes to some extent. And that you have at least one father and one mother. Who got married at some point. And your mom wore a wedding dress. Things like that.

Also my copy is from 2013 and let's just say some of the references have aged very poorly. ("D*nald Tr*mp power suit" being a very notable example. I drew him impaled on a stick. Which was satisfying. But it was very much an act of rebellion so keep it in mind)

Recommended for anyone who likes drawing clothes and the people wearing them, who are also willing to put up with a certain amount of heteronormativity in their prompt books. Some skill level will probably make the book more enjoyable. Clothes are hard.

Recommended materials: Anything! You can use this one with just a pencil

Doodle a day

By Chris Riddell

⭐️⭐️⭐️▪️▪️ three out of five stars

(Note: I own a translated version of the book; this is the danish cover)

Before we start, I would like to note that this book's target demographic is children. I’m not a children, I just thought it looked fun. And I was right! But do keep it in mind.

What I like about it:

This one doesn't take itself too seriously. Which means that in places, it gets wacky. And I appreciate that. It expects a child's untamed creativity and wish to go along with whatever.

A lot of the prompts are really fun and inspiring for me as an adult. There are a lot of "complete this drawing" sort of things that get me to draw things I don't usually draw.

It's nice to see a book geared towards children that dares to have a very detailed and complex art style. Whether you personally like Chris Riddell's art style is very subjective, but he's good at what he does.

Criticism:

You have to enjoy drawing along with what the author enjoys. We're talking robots and fairy tales and dancing bears. This book has less room for letting you steer the prompts in a direction that you personally like, which is good if you like to be told exactly what to draw. It is less good if, like me, you prefer your prompt-based art to have space for a lot of your own creativity and preferences.

I've personally marked down the prompts I want to do with tape, and I'm planning to just plain skip the rest. This means about two thirds of the book that I'm just not planning on using. I'm okay with this! But I want to mention it.

The book also contains quite a lot of 'free days', which I always find disappointing. I came here specifically because I didn't want to make up my own stuff. Please. Tell me what to do, I beg of you.

I will also note that this book assumes that you have some sort of family that are present in your life to the point that you want to include them in your drawings, and that you have at least one friend who wants to partake in certain of the prompts.

It also assumes cultural Christianity, having prompts for easter and christmas and halloween and so forth, with no other holidays mentioned. It's a little uncomfortable.

Recommended for people who like silly prompts and are very adaptable in their art. Probably really good for younger kids? I was a weird child, so my point of view might be skewed. Decide for yourself if this book is worth getting for you or someone you know!

Recommended materials: something to draw with, and something to colour with.

Hirameki: Draw what you see

By Peng and Hu

⭐️⭐️▪️▪️▪️ two out of five stars

The classic exercise of using vague blobs and turning them into drawings

What's I like about it:

The concept is really good. The idea of having a whole book of printed blobs to turn into drawings is so fun and appealing to me, as someone who loves having things in books.

I really like that they have certain categories and themes, to make things a little different. I love the idea of having a theme for a whole page of blobs (turning everything on one page into birds, for example), and what made me get the book was specifically that they have pages with just the same blob ten times over, and the challenge is then to make them all into different things.

Criticism:

This book is the marketable brand flavor of prompt books, trying to be what mindful colouring books did, but with another concept, preferably in a way they can copyright.

They're clearly trying to make pattern-making into a marketable invention rather than something that has been around since, like, literal prehistoric times. This would be little more than annoying and could probably be ignored, if it wasn't for the fact that the blobs aren't even ... random.

The creativity is killed, because these blobs are clearly made to look like certain things. Which is the opposite of the point, of the shapes-in-randomness exercise. They don't do this with every page, but it is, like. More than half. The page dedicated to faces have defined noses and necks. There’s a beach themed spread and the crabs have defined pincers.

I had the most fun on the intro pages, where there were no prompts, because that was the place where the blobs were truly random. These were not meant to be drawn on! They were decorations! I just did it anyway!

This is branded to be something that will allow you to be creative, but in reality, it is actually just a different way of playing connect-the-dots. And there's nothing wrong with connect-the-dots, but I was advertised something else and I'm disappointed.

Also, this is personal pettiness, but if you're going to make a gimmick out of every prompt rhyming, you have to actually know how to rhyme. "Gadget" and "uplug it" do not rhyme! Not even by a stretch!

I cannot recommend this book. The idea is good, and some of the pages I did enjoy filling out, but I would have gotten more out of just grabbing a blank sketchbook and adding some ink blots to every page, then started from one end.

Recommended materials: They specifically say that you have to use a pen that’s either blue or black. I used a bright red one just to be a contrarian.

Illistration

By Jaime Zollars

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️▪️ four out of five stars

This one is a little different -- it is essentially a make-your-own-prompts book!

What I like about it:

This book appeals right to my need to be part of the process, even when drawing for prompts. Basically, this book is all about producing creative lists of things to draw, and then illustrating your favorites.

I love how the author talks you through their process of creating each individual list to suit their own preferences, and encourages you to do the same, to create prompts that appeal directly to you.

I also really appreciate that this book fully assumes that the reader is just as capable as the author. It wants to teach you something, sure, but it doesn't outright assume that you've got more or less experience than the author. They're teaching you one specific way of generating ideas and that's what matters. The author is confident, but humble. I like that.

Criticism:

Honestly, this is a wonderful book. I wouldn't change anything about it. The only reason I subtracted a star is because it falls a little bit outside the category of a prompt book. It's a five-star book for what it is, but if you're just here to be told what to draw without having to make stuff up on your own, this one is not for you.

I can't just pull this one out, open it up and start drawing -- using this book is a project. I have to do at least half of the work myself, if not more. And I personally have fun with that, but it has to be noted.

Recommended for artists of any skill level, who like to generate their own unique ideas. This is the one I would be most likely to recommend to a dedicated artist, or a professional.

Recommended materials: whatever you prefer to draw with, and something to write with.

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Thank you for reading!

If you found this review helpful and want to fund me and my constant purchasing of prompt books, you can tip me on TheNearsightedMicroraptor on Ko-fi!

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thewhiterabbit42 · 4 years

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ohhh heck they’re all very lovely prompts but uh 1092 orrr 1098?

Here you go Anon and also for @gabereil Hope you enjoy, and thanks for much for sending a prompt <3

Pairing: Loki x reader; Gabriel x reader

Prompt: “My, oh my, you are such a beautiful creature.”

Word Count: 642

A/N: I’d like to think that Loki is enough of a bastard to plan to sell Gabriel to Asmodeus, but he never does. Mostly because I see him as taking his father’s death as a personal betrayal, and he’d want to see the look on Gabriel’s face once he realizes his fate. A personal confrontation ensues, maybe with some sort of charm or weapon that at least weakens Gabriel and makes the fight more fair (because you cannot tell me a fully powered archangel could not easily take a pagan god). Gabriel, however, is still able to beat/talk some sense into Loki while getting his ass kicked enough for the god to feel enough justice had been served. They part on civil terms, albeit with their friendship fractured.

TL;DR: Cannon can go sit on a cactus because both my boys are alive and well.

“My, oh my, you are such a beautiful creature.”

It’s Gabriel, but not. The sultry undercurrent sings false, the familiar timbre undercut by something that prickles with the opposite of what should be there. There’s no hidden embers ensnared within cynicism. No glints of mirth or light. Just a detachedness etched deeply within what should be familiar features.

A tingle of dread forms at the top of your head, trickling straight down your spine as everything about the figure in front of you screams wrong.

“You’re not him,” you manage, despite the crescendo of fear that courses through your veins, ratcheting up your pulse. You want to step back, the instinct to run overridden only by a very unusual, very keen lance of fear that fills your legs with led before starting in on your lungs, and by the time he’s closed the gap between you, you find you can’t even breathe.

“I can see why he’s so fond of you.” His hand is suddenly at your face, touch feather-light as the pad of his thumb traces down the center of your lip. It’s like flipping the switch to a live wire, every nerve in your body standing at attention, and air slams back into your lungs with an audible gasp.

Fingertips slide beneath your chin, a confounding confection of charisma and chaos forming a nexus within his gaze, one that draws you into darkened depths. His eyes blaze bright, gold offset by the center of his eyes that seem to stretch on before you like an endless night. It beckons to you, your previous apprehension giving way to something that tugs, like needle treading through your very being.

The slightest pull beneath his touch has you almost leaning closer, and the only thing that saves your head from going completely under is a perfect (or terrible depending on the perspective) timed entrance of an ally.

“Leave her alone, Loki.” Gabriel’s true voice breaks the spell, and you blink.

The world around you reappears in a startling rush of clarity. You look past the suit clad mimic in front of you to find brown leather and a hunteresque sense of fashion and hand tousled strands of gold swept back away from features that practically scream how alive they are with emotion.

Your breath stalls, power seeping raw from every molecule of grace. In that moment, he is that which Heaven deems him; infinite, and you nearly drown in the sudden vastness of his presence.

“Always with the theatrics,” Loki’s eyes give their own dramatic roll, but he does release you from his grasp. His physical one anyway. There’s a thrum of something still snaking around your senses, one that feels different than the heady rush you’re used to getting around Gabriel.

“Back. Off. Now,” the archangel warns, a flash of light sending a fierce and feathered silhouette dancing along the wall behind him.

“Now you’re just showing off,” Loki teases, a dark but somehow good-natured sentiment winding beneath his words. “Or perhaps just preening for our guest of honor?”

Another round of whiplash hits you, causing the concrete in your frame to crumble and your legs to sway.

There’s a heavy moment where you watch the intensity of Gabriel’s face shift to something else, something just beyond the edge of your understanding. There’s no mistaking the way angry heat drains from the pallor of his face.

“Not her.” The barking command in his tone falters, and your previous dread seeps through the cracks in his confidence.

“Am I in danger?” You ask. Dumbly. There’s so much energy flowing around you, you have to be at risk for spontaneous molecular combustion.

“Depends,” Loki rumbles, a wolfish smirk tugging at his lips. “Do you want to be?”

Also: Special thanks to @archangelgabriellives @meadow-melody and @themistressmaster (oh ffs tumblr, you still haven’t fixed broken tagging??) and a special unnamed amazing and talented lady (who knows who she is) for inspiring and feeding my Loki muse <3 <3

#loki x reader #gabriel x reader #Gabriel #Loki #Spn Gabriel #Spn Loki #Gabriel drabble #Loki drabble #rabbit writes #rabbit drabbles

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thelesterhowells · 5 years

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phanfic finder fest

1. selfies: (fists into the lips of fashion) pictures or it didn't happen (3k) - @templeofshame: this is a story about fel and dawn and their absolutely sweet relationship in a very realistic au. it is so soft and sweet and made me feel so warm and fuzzy. but my favourite thing about this was that something as simple as taking selfies/pictures was used to point out and discuss so many important things in such a tender way.

2. pain kink: White Silken Sheets (5k) - @auroraphilealis: besides being obviously very hot, this is a fic about trust, great communication and a relationship filled with so much love. it is written so wonderfully loving, warm and sweet and it explores their dynamic in such an interesting way.

3. ft. catrific: Us, As Told by Other People (7.8k) - @jestbee: i know there isn’t a lot of cat in here :D but the scene she is in is so important and i really loved the conversation they had. i loved how honest she was and how tenderly she tried to explain what she thought of it all. this fic in general is so incredibly great in the communication department and the conversations seem so realistic and authentic and that’s one of my favourite things. i don’t want to give away the whole thing so i’m just gonna tell you that it’s a great one and a sweet and realistic one.

4. childhood friends: where the orchids grow (8.7k) - @capriciouscrab: this story about danica and philippa is so absolutely beautiful that i find it hard to find words to describe how in awe i am with this fic. everything is described in such great detail that you feel like you are right there with them in the 1800s. their witty dialogues and characteristics are so incredibly ‘dan and phil’ and it is wonderful to imagine them in this alternate universe. they love each other in such a beautiful way and amy captured that in the most wonderful way possible.

5. bakery: finding a bakery fic was harder than i thought it would be (which was surprising and frustrating :D) so i’m gonna cheat and give you a coffee shop au fic and since i’m cheating you’re getting a bonus fic

falling for you (1k) - @obsessivelymoody: this is a not-so-cute-at-first-but-still-incredibly-cute-meet-cute and everything about this is so absolutely dan and phil. their conversation, phil’s clumsiness, dan’s attitude, the instant attraction mixed with a little awkwardness. it’s so sweet and warm and felt like summer and i love summer.

bittersweet (642) - @huphilpuffs: this is filled with so much love and warmth and understanding, it made me very emotional. dan having a bad day and phil trying his best to help him without overwhelming or pushing him is always wonderful to read. it makes me so happy that they found each other.

6. erotic massage: Hold Me In Your Arms And Never Let Me Go (1k) - @phantasticlizzy (Lizzyboo): this is exactly what it says it is: fluffly anniversary smut. it is hot while being so, so sweet and loving. it was surprisingly emotional to read their feelings about this day and about each other and it made me feel warm and content.

7. clothes sharing: in between are doors (2.3k) - @literaryphan (frostbitten_cheeks): sharing clothes is very cute but it can also be second nature. this story explores that fine line in between so well and it is written in such a funny and cute way. dan and phil are captured in a very realistic and sweet way and i really loved reading about that absurd line dan and phil draw sometimes regarding their posessions. us and our everything, but my cereal and my clothes.:D

8. set in 2013: “better off (not being around ya) (2.2k) - @i-am-my-opheliac: this is an incredibly gorgeously written story about dan’s troubled emotions during a club scene. it’s so wonderfully sad and so beautiful at the same time. lia described his feelings so vividly i could feel them with him and even though it is dan’s pov you can totally understand phil’s feelings. it’s wonderful, really.

9. siblings: “come what may” (1.8k) - @werebothstubborn (thereisnobearonthisisland): ok, this is my take on the ‘siblings’ prompt and i genuinely think that dan and cornelia’s relationship is so underrated in fics. this explores their dynamic as the additional lester’s in such a great way. it’s wonderfully written and it’s an absolutely gorgeous portrayal of their friendship and understanding of each other.

10. movie plot au: “be my muse” (3.3k) - @tobieallison (t_hens): listen, i love ‘love, simon’ and dnp and tobie’s fics so reading this cross over was absolutely fantastic. the changes tobie made gave this whole thing a very unique feeling and it was so sweet and cute and so very dan and phil and i could’ve read 50k more of this.

#i never would've thought that finding a bakery au fic would be this hard #haha #i didn't have the time to make a second masterlist with fics that i've already read but maybe i'll make a fic rec list with these prompts #or something like that #because i've stumbled upon so many great fics that i've already read but i wanted to find new ones for this fest :)#and except the last one these are all new to me #phandom fic fest #phanfic finder fest #phanfic

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polarwandersea · 7 years

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Proof of a right wing conspiracy. Gennifer Flowers.

This is going to be the first of a series of text posts that will offer information on several Clinton scandals. All of the quotes and information cited are coming from the sole source of the book: The Hunting of the President. The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton by Joe Conason & Gene Lyons. I’m doing these text posts because this book offers a lot of insight on the scandals that I did not know at first and a lot of facts that are not put out there for people to know. This may be lengthy but it’s worth the read. That being said this first post is going to be on the Gennifer Flowers scandal.

Larry Nichols In order to Understand the Gennifer Flowers scandal it is important to introduce the man who was at the heart of this scandal and helped construct it. That man is Larry Nichols. Nichols had a grudge against Bill Clinton. This is due to the fact that in 1988, Nichols (who was from Conway Arkansas) had landed a new job as a marketing consultant for the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA), the state’s centralized public bonding agency. Now this is important, the ADFA was created by Clinton Legislation over the strong opposition of Stephens Inc (this will come into play for another scandal.) Nichols’s brief career at ADFA was ill-fated from the start. Several things happened: 1. When Betsey Wright, heard that Nichols had been hired by the agency’s director, and that he had invoked her name to get the job, she was furious. She had instructed personnel directors at other agencies who had asked about Nichols over the years that he was a dangerous con artist and political opportunist. 2. Nichols was preoccupied with issues more global than the marketing of Arkansas bonds. He started telling other ADFA employees that he was a CIA operative working on behalf of Nicaraguan contras. The CIA part was false but the claim wasn’t altogether false because he had gotten involved with the Collation of Peace Through Strength, an organization headed by the retired general John Singlaub-one of marine lieutenant’s colonel Oliver North’s secret money conduits in the Iran-Contra affair. What ended up happening was that “for five months, Nichols devoted himself to the contra cause while drawing a state salary, until the Associated Press discovered he had taken his politics to work. In September 1988 the AP reported that since coming to ADFA, Nichols had placed 642 long-distance telephone calls, at state expense, to Contra leaders and politicians who supported them. “ 3. Due to all this, Bill had to fire Nichols. “Although Clinton was traveling abroad on a trade mission when the phone-call story broke, Betsey Wright made sure he learned about it immediately: “I woke him up in Asia in the middle of the night and told him to fire Nichols.” The next day state officials forced Nichols to resign. This part is important: he left protesting his innocence and complaining about the “knee-jerk liberal reaction from Governor Clinton.”

Gennifer Flowers So what does Nichols have to do with the Flowers scandal? It seems as though everything. He had the motive and revenge seeking after being fired and humiliated. Fast facts: 1. Larry Nichols called a press conference at the Arkansas state capitol on October 1990. He handed out copies go a $3million libel lawsuit against Bill Clinton. He complained that he had been wrongly fired from his state job as a “scapegoat” in order to conceal the “the largest scandal ever perpetrated on the taxpayers of Arkansas.” Nichols accused Governor Clinton of having misused ADFA funds for “improper purposes.” Nichols also presented a list of 5 alleged Clinton mistresses upon whom those funds had supposedly been spent. 2. Among the women listed was Gennifer Flowers. This is important as well: Flowers turned out to be the only one of the five women who Nichols knew personally. The two had recorded advertising jingles together and still used the same booking agent. And there was one more interesting coincidence: In early October, about two weeks before Nichols’s press conference, Gennifer Flowers had called the governor’s office seeking help in finding a state job.

Now a bit more of a profile on Gennifer Flowers herself: Musicians and club owners who had worked with Flowrs described her as manipulative and dishonest. Her resume falsely proclaimed her to be graduate of a fashionable Dallas Prep school she’d never attended. It also listed a University of Arkansas nursing degree she’d never earned and membership in a sorority that had never heard of her. Her agent told the Democrat-Gazette that contrary to her claims, Flowers had never opened for comedian Rich Little. A brief gig on the Hee Haw television program had come to a bad end, the agent would later confirm, when Flowers simply vanished for a couple of weeks with a man she’s met in a Las Vegas casino-and then concocted a tale of having been kidnapped. She had never been Miss Teenage America. Even her “twin sister Genevieve” turned out to be purely a figment of Flower’s imagination.

Given all this so far it is easy to conclude that the Gennifer Flowers scandal was one incited by revenge for Nichols and fame for Flowers. But what about the tapes you may ask? There are holes in that “evidence” as well.

The Tapes: It is important to note that each of the four taped conversations between Bill Clinton and Flowers revolved around the same topics: Larry Nichol’s accusation’s and Flower’s supposed fear and loathing of the tabloid press.

Now here are some quotes between Bill and Flowers that poke more holes in her claims of having a twelve year affair:

“Gennifer,” he said, “It’s Bill Clinton.” His voice was muffled and for a longtime lover, oddly formal. Flowers remarked that he didn’t sound like himself. Did he have a cold? “Oh it’s just my….every year about this time I.. My sinuses go bananas.” Bill’s allergies affect him every spring and fall. His voice gets hoarse and his nose swells and reddens. Anyone intimate with him for more than a decade, as Flowers insisted she had been, might be expected to know that.

Once again she launched into a tale of woe. Parties unknown, she said, had broken into her apartment and rifled the place. “There wasn’t any sign of a break-in,” she explained,” but the drawers and things. There wasn’t anything missing that I can tell, but somebody had…” “Somebody had gone through your stuff?’ Bill asked. “But they didn’t steal anything. “ “No..I had jewelry here, and everything was still here.” This is possibly why Flowers never reported the any break-in to the Little Rock Police Department. Years later, she would pin the rap for this alleged burglary on Bill Clinton himself. It is also important to note that at no point on any of Flower’s tapes did Bill Clinton say anything that indicated a long-term sexual relationship with her. During one of their earlier talks, Clinton had told her about his joking response to Bill Simmons, a Little Rock AP reporter who had read him the bimbo list over the phone.” I said, ‘God Bill, I kinda hate to deny it. They’re all beautiful women.’ I told you a couple of years ago when I came to see you that I’d retired. Now I’m glad I have, because they (his Republican enemies) have scoured the waterfront. And they couldn’t find anything.” This quote you just read is the full quote. Often times on Youtube channels, they will cut the audio at the end of the ‘they’re all beautiful women part.’

Most probable relationship of Bill and Flowers affair: 1. The account that probably came closest to the truth was a column by the Democrat-Gazette’s John Brummet, a respected political analyst and frequent Clinton critic. His sources said Flowers had mentioned to friends fifteen years earlier that she was “having a fling with Clinton,” but “they say they heard nothing from her after 1979 about a relationship with Clinton and were surprised and skeptical upon reading her assertion in Star magazine of a twelve year affair that only ended in 1989. “They are also dubious about her assertion that she was in love with Clinton all those years, dreaming of marriage. They say that she had other relationships in Dallas and Little Rock during that time.. They speculate that she doesn’t like men generally and probably enjoys using them. Their instinctive reaction to the Star article is that her vivid, detailed account probably contains truth, exaggeration and fabrication, not necessarily in equal parts.”

2. Her ex-room mate Lauren Kirk told CNN corespondent Art Harris, that she believed Flowers had lied for revenge and money. “She just can’t accept the fact that he (Clinton) came, wiped himself off, zipped up and left.”

Concluding: If Bill and Flowers did have an affair it was the typical affair of a few sexual encounters but not a twelve year or loving relationship.

Aftermath: On the morning of the Clinton’s 60 minutes appearance, a very curious item appeared on the front page of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Larry Nichols announced that he was dropping the liberal suit trumpeted in the Star only a week earlier. “The feud is over,” he said. “I want to tell everybody what I did to try to destroy Governor Clinton.” In a one-page statement distributed to the Little Rock press, Nichols claimed that his only motive had been to avenge his wrongful firing four years earlier. “The media has made a circus out of this thing and now it’s gone way too far,” he wrote. “When the Star article first came out, several women called asking if I was willing to pay them to say they had an affair with Bill Clinton.”

Honorable mentions: 1.Gennifer Flowers once boasted about the many married men she’d seduce for fun and profit: “I usually throw them back. I don’t want to keep then. Let the wives have them back.” 2. The agreement between Flowers and the Star stipulated that no one would ever be allowed to examine her original tapes. 3. Flowers never produced a single photograph, valentine, or birthday card as evidence of her twelve-year affair with Clinton; no witness ever came forward who had seen them together. 4. Flowers had claimed that between 1978 and 1980, she and Bill had enjoyed many trysts in Little Rock’s Excelsior Hotel. The Excelsior Hotel wasn’t built until 1983.

If you read this all the way through thank you and I hoped it shed more light on the Flowers scandal as it did for me. This and my future posts for this text post series will be found under the hashtag:proofofarightwingconspiracy.

#proofofarightwingconspiracy #Bill Clinton #billary #hillary clinton #the clintons #politics

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Simo Vehmas & Nick Watson, Moral wrongs, disadvantages, and disability: a critique of critical disability studies, 29 Disability & Society 638 (2014)

Abstract

Critical disability studies (CDS) has emerged as an approach to the study of disability over the last decade or so and has sought to present a challenge to the predominantly materialist line found in the more conventional disability studies approaches. In much the same way that the original development of the social model resulted in a necessary correction to the overly individualized accounts of disability that prevailed in much of the interpretive accounts which then dominated medical sociology, so too has CDS challenged the materialist line of disability studies. In this paper we review the ideas behind this development and analyse and critique some of its key ideas. The paper starts with a brief overview of the main theorists and approaches contained within CDS and then moves on to normative issues; namely, to the ethical and political applicability of CDS.

Points of interest

This article examines and critiques the ideas found within critical disability studies (CDS).

The article argues that the accounts offered by CDS do not engage fully with the key ethical and political issues faced by disabled people.

CDS does not examine how things ought to be for disabled people in terms of right and wrong, good and bad. Because of this omission it is not able to provide a good political or theoretical framework through which to discuss disability.

The paper argues that an examination of disability must involve an engagement with moral and political issues, and must be sensitive to individual experiences as well as the social, material and economic circumstances.

Introduction: critical disability studies

Critical disability studies (CDS) has emerged as an approach to the study of disability over the last decade or so and has sought to present a challenge to the predominantly Marxist/materialist line found in the more conventional disability studies approaches. The result of this development has been the production of some very interesting and worthwhile research and theorization around disability. In much the same way that the original development of the social model resulted in a necessary correction to the overly individualized accounts of disability that prevailed in much of the interpretive accounts which then dominated medical sociology, so too has CDS challenged the materialist line of disability studies.

The main aim of CDS is to deconstruct ideas about disability and to explore how they have come to dominate our approaches to the subject and how the ideologies that surround disability have been constructed. It is about unsettling ideas about disability and in so doing shaking up some of our assumptions about disability and critically engaging with the categories used to construct the ‘disability problem’. CDS seeks to deconstruct the binary distinctions that it claims are used to create difference and hierarchies and obscure connections between disabled and nondisabled people (Shildrick 2012Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A.Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). Whilst there are many different theorists drawn upon by the various scholars writing in this paradigm, most of them can be loosely defined as post-structural anti-dualists.

Mariain Hill Scott (nee Corker) was one of the first academics from within disability studies to promote the ideas that laid the foundations of what has become CDS (Corker 1998Corker, M. 1999. “Differences, Conflations and Foundations: The Limits to ‘accurate’ Theoretical Representation of Disabled people’s Experiences.” Disability & Society 14 (5): 627–642.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar], 1999Corker, M. 1998. Deaf and Disabled or Deafness Disabled. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. [Google Scholar]). Drawing on the ideas of Judith Butler, she argued for a critical analysis of the terms used to define disability and impairment. She drew on socio-linguistic theory, in particular the work of Derrida, to argue that the project for disability theory should be to contest meanings, arguing that binary opposites, in which one term is given precedence over the other, exist so as to ‘deceive us into valuing one side of the dichotomy more than the other’ (Corker 1999Corker, M. 1999. “Differences, Conflations and Foundations: The Limits to ‘accurate’ Theoretical Representation of Disabled people’s Experiences.” Disability & Society 14 (5): 627–642.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar], 638). Her contention was that through deconstructing such meanings and breaking down binary opposites the concept of disability and impairment could be conceptualized so as to present the problems faced by disabled people as one that arose in the relationship between impairment and oppression, the former acting as an unexamined biological foundation for the latter. This contrasts with a social model analysis that presents disability as the collective experience of oppression. Corker argued for the development of a social space where identities could be formed and fashioned free from the normative constraints imposed by bipolar norms of disabled/non-disabled.

These ideas have been taken up by many others and further developed both in the United Kingdom and the United States and elsewhere (for example, Campbell 2009aCampbell, F. K. 2009a. Contours of Ableism. Basingstoke: Macmillan.10.1057/9780230245181[Crossref], [Google Scholar]; Goodley 2011Goodley, D. 2011. Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction. London: Sage. [Google Scholar]; McRuer 2010; Shildrick 2012Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A.Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). They, like Corker, have drawn on the ideas of Foucault, Butler and Derrida and have sought to unpack disability and impairment in terms of knowledge and power to unsettle ideas about both disability and normality as well as some of the key theories and assumptions that have been central to disability studies. Meekosha and Shuttleworth (2009Meekosha, H., and R. Shuttleworth. 2009. “What’s So ‘critical’ about Critical Disability Studies?” Australian Journal of Human Rights15 (1): 47–75.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Google Scholar]) locate the origins of this development with a general concern about the binary nature of disability studies and the resulting impairment/disablement divide, a by-product, they argue, of the social model’s simplistic materialist focus, both points made by Corker. Importantly they also cite the emergence of an interest in disability within the arts and humanities, particularly in the United States where much of the drive for this new approach to disability was originally located. In addition, Meekosha and Shuttleworth suggest that CDS marked an attempt by theorists to distance themselves from policy-makers and service providers who they felt had sought to co-opt the social model and use it for their own ends.

The use of what Shildrick (2012Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A.Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]), following Butler and Foucault, terms critique has also been central. Through the employment of critique, CDS seeks to examine not just disability but also its genealogy, and the methodologies that have been applied in its study; it aims to contest accepted ‘truths’ and ideas, of disability and of impairment, and through this of disability studies itself. As Foucault argued:

A critique is not a matter of saying things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest. (1997Foucault, M. 1997. “What is Critique?” In The Politics of Truth, edited by S. Lorringer and L.Hockoth, 41–82. New York: Semiotexte. [Google Scholar], 155)

CDS then sees as one its primary goals an attempt to not only breakdown the impaired/non-impaired dualism, but to explore how these dualisms have obscured connections between people with and without impairment and in so doing present the categories as fluid and unstable. The aim is to create a renewed, more reflexive and theoretically cautious approach.

Differences between disabled and non-disabled people are described as being socially produced, and it is also argued that these differences are constructed for a political reason; to maintain dominance (Goodley 2011Goodley, D. 2011. Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction. London: Sage. [Google Scholar], 113). The standpoint of the privileged and powerful, in this case non-disabled people, has become the norm, and others are seen as deviant and inferior (Campbell 2009aCampbell, F. K. 2009a. Contours of Ableism. Basingstoke: Macmillan.10.1057/9780230245181[Crossref], [Google Scholar]). The aim is that through employing concepts such as ableism rather than the more typical disablism, the negative stereotypes and cultural values that surround disability and impairment can be challenged and focused away from the person with impairment. As Davis writes: ‘The problem is not the person with disabilities; the problem is the way that normalcy is constructed to create the “problem” of the disabled person’ (2010Davis, L. 2010. “Constructing Normalcy.” In The Disability Studies Reader 3rd ed., edited by L.Davis, 3–20. London: Routledge [Google Scholar], 9).

Critical disability studies and hidden ethical judgements

The ideas developed within CDS draw heavily on concepts developed in other areas of difference including ethnicity, sexuality and gender. Whilst it is not simply about conflating different approaches together with that of disability studies, the case for similarities are readily made (Shildrick 2012Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A.Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). McCruer (2010McCruer, R. 2010. “Compulsory Ablebodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence.” In The Disability Studies Reader. 3rd ed., edited by L. Davis, 383–392. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]), for example, drawing on the ideas of Judith Butler juxtaposes compulsory heterosexuality with compulsory ablebodiedness, arguing that privileging heterosexuality and ablebodiedness acts to the detriment of others. The argument is that by disrupting the categories disabled/non-disabled, the discrimination experienced by disabled people can be challenged.

This attempt at what Sayer (2011Sayer, A. 2011. Why Things Matter to People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511734779[Crossref], [Google Scholar]) has called normative disorientation found in much of the theorizing around ableism creates problems. For example, how can we discuss or debate prevention when a feature of ableism is described as a ‘belief that impairment (irrespective of “type”) is inherently negative which should, if the opportunity presents itself, be ameliorated, cured or indeed eliminated’ (Campbell 2009bCampbell, F. K. 2009b. “Disability Harms Exploring Internalized Ableism?” In Disability: Insights from across Fields and around the World. vol. I, edited by C. Marshall, E. Kendalland R. Gover, 19–34. Westport, CT: Praeger Press. [Google Scholar], 23)? Is the promotion of the use of folic acid before and during pregnancy based on an anti-disablist or perhaps ableist viewpoint; and if so, should CDS be campaigning against those who seek to promote these views? This gap is acknowledged by Meekosha (2011Meekosha, H. 2011. “Decolonising Disability: Thinking and Acting Globally.” Disability & Society 26 (6): 667–682.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]), but it has not been examined or unpacked. Whilst we may be accused here of constructing a ‘straw person argument’ it is consistent with Campbell’s claim.

This challenge to normativity, of what is good or bad, or right or wrong, characterizes much of the CDS literature. Whilst CDS often makes normative judgements about policies or about the current understanding of disability or how contemporary social organization is morally wrong, it offers no evaluative arguments on impairments or on the implications of living with an impairment. Shildrick (2012Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A.Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], 40), for example, has argued that ‘all bodies are unstable and vulnerable’ and that there is ‘no single acceptable mode of embodiment’. Shildrick attempts a move to an ethical realm by posing what she describes as ‘an important ethical question: how can we engage with morphological difference that is not reducible to the binary of either sameness or difference?’ And, in line with this rather leading question, she continues: ‘If we are to have an ethically responsible encounter with corporeal difference, then, we need a strategy of queering the norms of embodiment, a commitment to deconstruct the apparent stability of distinct and bounded categories’ (Shildrick 2012Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A.Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], 40). In Shildrick’s view, any strategy, political arrangement, or ethical conceptualization that is based on a group identity built upon a binary distinction or difference, is ethically wrong. This is an interesting suggestion but unfortunately Shildrick does not provide any ethical argument to support it or a practical example of how it may be enacted.

It is, as Shildrick argues, safe to suggest that there is no ‘single acceptable mode of embodiment’, but at the same time it seems equally safe to suggest that there are a lot of people who would argue that some forms of embodiment are preferential to others. Seeing impairments as acceptable forms of human diversity is not the same as seeing them as neutral or insignificant. When people say that some forms of embodiment are preferential to others, they are ultimately referring to ideas about human well-being. In other words, one reason why people generally prefer not to have impairments is ethical; they believe that some impairments may in and of themselves prevent people from acting and moving as they wish, from doing valued activities, or faring well in general. Thomas (1999Thomas, C. 1999. Female Forms: Experiencing and Understanding Disability. Buckingham: Open University Press. [Google Scholar]) coined the term ‘impairment effects’ to define these limitations and to separate them from those that arise from disablement. CDS is normative as well, albeit its normative focus is on social factors instead of individuals’ abilities. CDS, like the social model, contains a strong normative dimension that implies what is right or wrong as regards social arrangements, but neither model takes a clear normative approach to the lived, embodied and visceral experiences of having an impairment (Vehmas 2004Vehmas, S. 2004. “Ethical Analysis of the Concept of Disability.” Mental Retardation 42 (3): 209–222.10.1352/0047-6765(2004)42<209:EAOTCO>2.0.CO;2[Crossref], [PubMed], [Google Scholar]).

Human beings are dialogical beings and the significance of disability or impairment and their impact on well-being will tend to be comparative. As Sayer argues: ‘we measure ourselves not so much against absolute standards but against what others are like, particularly those with whom we associate the most’ (2011Sayer, A. 2011. Why Things Matter to People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511734779[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 122). Evaluative judgements in relation to the individual experience of both disability and impairment are important. If we are to properly understand social phenomena, such as disability, we have to recognize their normative dimensions and the values attached to them. Value-laden statements, as Sayer (2011Sayer, A. 2011. Why Things Matter to People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511734779[Crossref], [Google Scholar]) argues, can strengthen the descriptive adequacy of accounts. Sayer demonstrates this by using the example of the Holocaust. This, he says, can be represented in two ways: ‘thousands died in the Nazi concentration camps’ and ‘thousands were systematically exterminated in the Nazi concentration camps’. The latter sentence is not only more value-laden than the first, but more accurate as well (Sayer 2011Sayer, A. 2011. Why Things Matter to People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511734779[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 45). We would argue that talking about ableism, disablism or oppression does not make sense without reference to normative judgements about people’s well-being, as without such a discussion only a partial picture will emerge. The same may also apply to judgements about fair social arrangements.

CDS does not engage with ethical issues to do with the role of impairment and disability in people’s well-being and the pragmatic and mundane issues of day-to-day living. Imagine, for example, a pregnant woman who has agreed, possibly with very little thought, to the routine of prenatal diagnostics, and who has been informed that the foetus she is carrying has Tay-Sachs disease. She now has to make the decision over whether to terminate the pregnancy or carry it to term. The value judgements that surround Tay-Sachs include the fact that it will cause pain and suffering to the child and he or she will probably die before the age of four. These are morally relevant considerations to the mother. Whilst CDS would probably guide her to confront ableist assumptions and challenge her beliefs about the condition, considerations having to do with pain and suffering are nevertheless morally significant. The way people see things, and the language that is used to describe certain conditions, can affect how they react to them, but freeing oneself from ableist assumptions may not in some cases be enough. There may be insurmountable realities attached to some impairments where parents feel that their personal and social circumstances would not enable them to provide the child or themselves with a satisfactory life (Vehmas 2003Vehmas, S. 2003. “Live and Let Die? Disability in Bioethics.” New Review of Bioethics 1 (1): 127–157.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Google Scholar]).

Impairment sometimes produces practical, difficult ethical choices and we need more concrete viewpoints than the ideas provided through ableism, which offers very little practical moral guidance. It is questionable whether the notion of ableism would help the parents in deciding whether to have a child who has a degenerative condition that results in early death. Campbell (2009aCampbell, F. K. 2009a. Contours of Ableism. Basingstoke: Macmillan.10.1057/9780230245181[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 39, 149 and 159), for example, discusses arguments about impairments as harmful conditions, the ethics of external bodily transplants as well as wrongful birth and life court cases (whether life with an impairment is preferable to non-existence), and how ableism impacts on discourse around these issues. Whilst her analysis of such ableist discourses suggests ethical judgements, she provides no arguments or conclusions as to whether, for example, external bodily transplants are ethically wrong or whether impairment may or may not constitute a moral harm.

Under the anti-dualistic stance adopted by CDS, even the well-being/ill-being dualism becomes an arbitrary and nonsensical construct. Under ableism it can be constructed as merely maintaining the dominance of those seemingly faring well (supposedly, ‘non-disabled’ people), and labels those faring less well as having lesser value.

There may not be a clear answer to what constitutes human well-being or flourishing, but in general we can and we need to agree about some necessary elements required for well-being. Also, as moral agents we have an obligation to make judgements about people’s well-being and act in ways that their well-being is enhanced (Eshleman 2009Eshleman, A. 2009. “Moral Responsibility.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition), edited by E. N. Zalta, <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2009/entries/moral-responsibility/> [Google Scholar]). This is why we have, for example, coronary heart disease prevention programmes because the possible death or associated health problems are seen as harms. Possibly these policies are based on ableist perspective, but if that is the case then the normative use of ableism is null; eradicating supposedly ableist enterprises such as coronary heart disease prevention would be an example of reductio ad absurdum. Denying some aspects of well-being are so clear that their denial would be absurd, and simply morally wrong.

CDS raises ethical issues and insinuates normative judgements but does not provide supporting ethical arguments. This is a way of shirking from intellectual and ethical responsibility to provide sound arguments and conceptual tools for ethical decision-making that would benefit disabled people. If we are to describe disability, disablism, and oppression properly, we have to explicate the moral and political wrong related to these phenomena. Whilst CDS has produced useful analyses, for example, of the cultural reproduction of disability, it needs to engage more closely with the evaluative issues inherently related to disability. As Sayer has argued (against Foucault):

while one could hardly disagree that we should seek to uncover the hidden and unconsidered ideas on which practices are based, I would argue that critique is indeed exactly about identifying what things ‘are not right as they are’, and why. (Sayer 2011Sayer, A. 2011. Why Things Matter to People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511734779[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 244)

By settling almost exclusively to analyses of ableism without engaging properly with the ethical issues involved, CDS analyses are deficient. The moral wrongs related to disablism or ableism are matters of great concern to disabled people, and CDS should in its own part take the responsibility of remedying current wrongs disabled people suffer from.

Disability and disadvantage

In the final sections of this paper, we will discuss CDS in the light of the politics of disability. We will challenge its key ideas and their political use. We argue that deconstructing categories of difference is neither necessary nor desirable in the pursuit of justice for disabled people. Abolishing oppression requires recognition of the various ways different groups of people are marginalized and oppressed, and to do this requires more than an analysis of their categorization and their historical genealogy.

Tackling disadvantage has been the main theoretical and political aim of disability studies and from its first inception academics such as Oliver, Barnes and Finkelstein were interested in documenting the disadvantage experienced by disabled people and how it can be prevented or challenged. It shares with political philosophy a desire to identify and critique discrimination associated with the ill-treatment of disabled people and their subordination (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 3). Improving the position of the worst off is generally seen, at least in an egalitarian outlook, as a matter of justice because people’s social status and well-being is inevitably related to the way society is organized. In order to create fair social responses to disadvantage, we have to have a common understanding about disadvantage, and a reasonable (non-arbitrary) way of comparing disadvantages and correcting them.

The crucial issue is to define a proper metric of justice. In other words, ‘what should we look at, when evaluating whether one state of affairs is more or less just than another?’ (Robeyns and Brighouse 2010Robeyns, I., and H. Brighouse. 2010. “Introduction: Social Primary Goods and Capabilities as Metrics of Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 1). For example, what should be the primary focus for justice and how should it be evaluated? Is it the distribution of happiness, wealth, or something else, and how can these be measured? Western political thought has evolved from the contractarian tradition where people voluntarily commit to follow norms and laws they have established in order to ensure peaceful social life. Its most influential recent theorist was John Rawls (1971Rawls, J. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]), whose proposal for the proper metric of justice was the idea of social primary goods; those goods that any rational person would want regardless of whatever else they wanted. Rawls’ list of social primary goods included things such as freedom of thought, movement and choice of occupation, equality of income and wealth, as well as social basis of self-respect. For Rawls the distribution of social primary goods is the main concern of justice. Rawls’ theory has been criticized for excluding people who do not conform to the demands of normality from the spheres of justice. And indeed, Rawls did exclude disabled people from his theory as exceptions to the rule; we should, he argued, first work out a convincing theory for the ‘normal’ people and after that extend it to the ‘more extreme cases’ such as disabled people (Robeyns and Brighouse 2010Robeyns, I., and H. Brighouse. 2010. “Introduction: Social Primary Goods and Capabilities as Metrics of Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 3).

Rawls’ ideas have recently been challenged by the capabilities approach, a theory developed initially by Amartya Sen and later by Martha Nussbaum (2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]). Instead of focusing on resources such as income, wealth or legal rights, the capabilities approach emphasizes the significance of functionings and capabilities.Functionings refer to states of the person; things such as literacy, health, mobility, and the ability to appear in public without shame (Anderson 2010Anderson, E. 2010. “Justifying the Capabilities Approach to Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 81–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref], [Google Scholar]). Capabilities, on the other hand, are the real freedoms or opportunities to achieve functionings. So mobility is a functioning whereas the real opportunity for mobility is the corresponding capability (Robeyns 2011Robeyns, I. 2011. “The Capability Approach.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), edited by E. N. Zalta, URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/capability-approach/> [Google Scholar]). Nussbaum (2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar], 76–78) identifies 10 capabilities, ranging from life, ‘bodily health’, bodily integrity, physical security to emotions, affiliation and control over one’s environment. Capabilities provide the bare minimum that all humans should be able to achieve in terms of valued functionings and well-being. So, justice concerns ‘the capabilities to choose a life one has reason to value’ (Robeyns and Brighouse 2010Robeyns, I., and H. Brighouse. 2010. “Introduction: Social Primary Goods and Capabilities as Metrics of Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 2). Lacking involuntarily any capability or central human functioning amounts to a disadvantage. If we are to make comparative judgements about people’s well-being, we have to be able to come to an understanding of how well each individual is doing with regard to various functionings (Nussbaum 2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar], 69–81; Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 36–62).

The capabilities approach is an exceptional philosophical theory in that it has been operationalized. The United Nations, and a number of national governments, most notably the United Kingdom, have all used it as a basis for practical policy development and implementation. It is the basis for the UK’s Equality Measurement Framework, a tool developed for and implemented as part of the equality initiative launched by the last government. Unlike the ideas of Rawls, it has been successfully applied to disability (Burchardt 2004Burchardt, T. 2004. “Capabilities and Disability: The Capabilities Framework and the Social Model of Disability.” Disability & Society 19 (7): 735–751.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]; Nussbaum 2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]). The capabilities approach has been criticized on various grounds (Pogge 2010Pogge, T. 2010. “A Critique of the Capability Approach.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H.Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 17–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref], [Google Scholar]; Walby 2009Walby, S. 2009. Globalisation and Inequalities. London: Sage. [Google Scholar]) but, despite its possible shortcomings, it is one of the few philosophical theories that engages with issues, including disability, in a manner that is not only theoretically illuminating but also politically practical (Sayer 2011Sayer, A. 2011. Why Things Matter to People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511734779[Crossref], [Google Scholar]).

Working within the capabilities approach agenda, Wolff and De-Shalit (2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 172) have suggested a way of determining the issue of disadvantage by introducing two factors: what the person has or has access to, and what they can do with it. What the person has includes both internal resources, such as talents and skills, and external resources, such as wealth, income and less tangible matters such as family and community support. How effectively these can be used depends on various structures operating in society: laws and customs, the influence of tradition, informal and formal power relations, religion, language, culture and other social norms:

the interaction of your internal resources and your external resources with the social and material structure within which you find yourself, determines your genuine opportunities for secure functionings […] In short, your resources are what you have to play with; the structure provides the rules of the game. (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 173)

Aspects of social structure are as important in determining your genuine opportunities as your internal and external resources.

Accordingly, tackling people’s disadvantage can take place in three different dimensions that may or may not be related to each other: internal resources, external resources and social structures. There at least four strategies for addressing these disadvantages: personal enhancement, cash compensation, targeted resource enhancement, and status enhancement (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 173–174). Personal enhancement is achieved through education and training as well as psychological and medical interventions. In cash compensation, people are given money to spend as they need. In the case of resource enhancement, people are provided with resources for a particular purpose (in the case of disabled people this could mean the use of an aid to daily living such as a computer with speech synthesizer or service such as personal assistance). Effective improvement of people’s internal or external resources cannot take place without social arrangements that recognize the equal rights of all. In practice this means status enhancement, where people’s opportunities and social status are improved by social changes, such as changes in law and social attitudes and the material environment.

If the aim of a just society is to guarantee its members an equal chance for a minimum level of well-being, it needs to define the kind of disadvantage that is a matter of social concern. In addition it must also be able to identify the most disadvantaged members of society, and what factors affect how well-off or badly-off people generally are. These measures enable evaluation (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 21). This is necessary because, under conditions of finite or scarce resources, we need to not only have general criteria on the allocation of support (Stone 1984Stone, D. 1984. The Disabled State. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.[Crossref], [Google Scholar]) but also know what works and what does not. Under conditions of finite resources, society needs to decide how to allocate resources between various sectors of justice and this needs to be done democratically. These decisions cannot be taken without an evaluation of how significant certain functionings are for human well-being in general, and what kind of weight they should have in our societal apparatus (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 92–93).

Nussbaum (2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]) emphasizes that satisfactory political theory must be pluralist in the sense that it takes into account cultural variation. At the same time, and to a degree, it must also be normatively objective as people often submit to the status quo against their own interest and adapt to their own deprivations. An acceptable principle of public justice must be capable of being known by all because justice fundamentally concerns claims that we can make to others; ‘Justice embodies demands of particular persons that can, by right, be exacted from others’ (Anderson 2010Anderson, E. 2010. “Justifying the Capabilities Approach to Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 81–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 86; original emphasis). Capabilities theorists argue that political theory should be based on an objective (albeit an open-ended and subject to ongoing revision and rethinking) list of components of well-being and relevant capabilities people need to function as equals (Anderson 2010Anderson, E. 2010. “Justifying the Capabilities Approach to Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 81–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 85–86; Nussbaum 2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar], 73–76). The capabilities approach is inherently normative and based on normative assumptions of what is and is not acceptable.

Both individual and social factors are significant to the achievement of central human functionings/capabilities. Various illnesses and impairments impose exceptional risks and vulnerabilities to people’s well-being. Consider, for example, motor neuron disease, a progressive terminal condition that affects the nerve cells that control voluntary muscle activity such as walking, breathing and swallowing. Clearly, such a fatal health condition is a disadvantage in its own right, but it also has an accumulative disadvantage that has negative effects on other functionings such as on one’s livelihood, relationships, and psychological well-being. As Wolff and De-Shalit (2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[Crossref], [Google Scholar]) argue, disadvantages often cluster around individuals, sometimes even creating a cross-generation clustering where parents’ disadvantage appears among their children, either directly (in the case of drug addiction or teenage pregnancy) or indirectly. Personal disadvantages such as bad health are by no means the only and the most significant sources of causal clustering of disadvantage. Often social factors play a much more significant role in the formation of disadvantage. For example, low social status reduces the opportunities for control over one’s environment, which often results in worse health and shorter life expectancy (Marmot et al. 2010Marmot, M., J. Allen, P. Goldblatt, T. Boyce, D.McNeish, M. Grady and I. Geddes 2010. Fair Society, Healthy Lives. Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England Post 2010. London.http://www.ucl.ac.uk/gheg/marmotreview/ [Google Scholar]; Wilkinson and Pickett 2010Wilkinson, R., and K. Pickett. 2010. Spirit Level. 2nd ed. London: Allen Lane. [Google Scholar]). Similarly, a lack of social affiliation that has resulted from racism, disablism, stigmatization, hostility and unemployment may prevent people from being properly educated and participating fully in society. This kind of social exclusion is psychologically damaging and harmful to one’s health, and undoubtedly creates disability (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 120–125).

Disadvantage and discrimination are so central to the experience of disabled people that they are one of the key ways in which they are actually identified (Thomas 2007Thomas, C. 2007. Sociologies of Disability and Illness: Contested Ideas in Disability Studies and Medical Sociology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.[Crossref], [Google Scholar]). Having briefly looked at the ideas behind capabilities we now move on to explore the use of CDS as a political theory and its potential as an agent of change. We examine whether CDS is of any use in the pursuit or eradication of injustice faced by disabled people and in the fight against oppression.

Critical disability studies and justice

The influence of CDS and its challenge to the assumption that disability is a uniform condition have enabled the emergence of new ideas on disability. In particular, this has enabled the development of a theory that can take account of not only impairment effects but also can include class, ethnicity, sexual orientation or cultural identities. It has also argued for the re-emergence of a new political identity, one where a solidarity that was previously built on a common single identity is replaced by one that incorporates multiple voices including representatives from across the range of constituencies. The politics that it seeks to develop will be the ending of the single interest group identity of the disability movement to be replaced by single-issue groups campaigning for different social issues. To paraphrase Lister (1998Lister, R. 1998. “Citizenship and Difference: Towards a Differentiated Universalism.” European Journal of Social Theory 1 (1): 71–90.10.1177/136843198001001006[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 74), if disability and impairment are simply to be ‘deconstructed into a kaleidoscope of shifting identities’ and ableist discourses, there will be no disabled people left to either fight for the right to be, or to be a citizen.

If the principles of CDS are evaluated critically in the light of disadvantage, its analytical and political value becomes questionable. Its relativism and its suggestions that impairments are ethically and politically merely neutral differences are false. Impairments often have very tangible effects on people’s well-being, many of which cannot be explained away by deconstruction (for example, Shakespeare 2006Shakespeare, T. 2006. Disability Rights and Wrongs. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; Thomas 1999Thomas, C. 1999. Female Forms: Experiencing and Understanding Disability. Buckingham: Open University Press. [Google Scholar]). Recognizing impairment effects is necessary in order to secure proper treatment and social arrangements that enhance disabled people’s well-being and social participation. CDS runs the risk of dismissing not only the personal experiences of living with impairment, but also the significance of the differences between socially created disadvantages. These disadvantages that often result from oppressive social arrangements, are very much real and take place in different ways for different disadvantaged groups.

Disabled people typically experience disadvantage in relation to the market and capitalism, and they have to a large extent been excluded from employment and from equal social participation, respect and wealth (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 26). On top of these materialist disadvantages, disabled people are stigmatized as deviant and undesirable, and also subordinated to various oppressive hierarchical relations. For disabled people to achieve participatory parity, they require more than recognition; they need material help, targeted resource enhancement, and personal enhancement (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[Crossref], [Google Scholar]). Disability is rooted in the economic structures of society and demands redistribution of goods and wealth. In contrast to some other oppressed groups, disabled people require more than the removal of barriers if they are to achieve social justice. This extra help might be small – for example, allowing a student with dyslexia extra time in an examination – through to complex interventions such as facilitated communication, a job support worker or 24-hour personal assistance. Whatever the size, it is an extra cost both to employers and to the state. These are real needs and represent real differences. Without an acceptance of these differences it is hard to see how we could move forward. Whilst these ‘real differences’ can be presented as the result of dominant ableist discourses where disabled people’s needs are regarded as extra cost, this does not solve the problem. The problems disabled people face require more than ideological change, and ideological change is of little use if it does not result in material change.

CDS fails to account for the economic basis of disability and offers only the tools of deconstruction and the abolishment of cultural hierarchies to eradicate economic injustice. This, as Fraser (2000Fraser, N. 2000. “Rethinking Recognition.” New Left Review 3, May-June: 107–120. [Google Scholar]) has argued, would be possible in a society where there were no relatively autonomous markets and the distribution of goods were regulated through cultural values. In such a society, oppression based on identity would translate perfectly into economic injustice and maldistribution. This is far from the current reality where ‘marketization has pervaded all societies to some degree, at least partially decoupling economic mechanisms of distribution from cultural patterns of value and prestige’ (Fraser 2000Fraser, N. 2000. “Rethinking Recognition.” New Left Review 3, May-June: 107–120. [Google Scholar], 111). Markets are not controlled by nor are they subsidiary to culture; ‘as a result they generate economic inequalities that are not mere expressions of identity hierarchies’ (Fraser 2000Fraser, N. 2000. “Rethinking Recognition.” New Left Review 3, May-June: 107–120. [Google Scholar], 111–112). The disadvantage related to disability is to a great extent a matter of economic injustice, and before this injustice can be corrected we have to be able to identify those individuals and social groups that have been disadvantaged by social arrangements. Whilst this does create and foster categories and binaries between groups of people, it also requires some sort of categories to start with; namely, the various categories of disadvantage.

Both the social and physical mechanisms that produce human diversity are real, and they produce tangible differences that cannot be challenged, let alone abolished, merely by pointing out the wanton nature of difference, and deconstructing the meanings attached to disability. Changing the social conditions that disadvantage and disable some people demands that the diverse, sometimes dualistic, reality of social advantage and disadvantage between different groups of people is recognized. This is exactly why group identities based on, for example, impairment, gender, or sexuality have been invaluable tools in the resistance against discrimination and oppression – in the fight against socially produced disadvantage. Confident, positive disability identity has enabled many disabled people to actively challenge the status quothat disadvantages them and to claim rights and power and participation in dominant institutions. Being different from the so-called normal majority is no longer considered to conflict with a good life, equality and respect. Quite the opposite, positive realization of one’s difference has been liberating and empowering to many disabled people (Shakespeare 2006Shakespeare, T. 2006. Disability Rights and Wrongs. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; Morris 1991Morris, J. 1991. Pride against Prejudice. London: Verso. [Google Scholar]). For a radical and active disability movement to emerge and for disabled people to take action on their own account, they have to see themselves as an unfairly marginalized or disadvantaged constituency and a minority group (Shakespeare and Watson 2001Shakespeare, T., and N. Watson. 2001. “Making the Difference: Disability, Politics, Recognition.” In Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by G. Albrecht, K. Seelmanand M. Bury, 546–564. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.10.4135/9781412976251[Crossref], [Google Scholar]). The category disabled/non-disabled is a good abstraction that can enable the development of communities of resistance, and without it is hard to see how these could develop.

CDS is premised on the idea that difference acts as a precursor to the normalizing of behaviour and a requirement to treat people differently and, importantly, less favourably. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that the categories that are applied to disabled people create an unnecessary divide between disabled and non-disabled people. You could equally make the point that without these categories we would not know what it is we have to do, what actions we have to take or what services we have to put in place to include disabled people. Indeed, for many disabled people the disadvantages they are subjected to arise not as the result of domination but through neglect and the denial of services and through society failing to take responsibility for those in need. As Wolff (2009Wolff, J. 2009. “Disability among Equals.” In Disability and Disadvantage, edited by K.Brownlee and A. Cureton, 112–137. Oxford: Oxford University Press.[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 114) points out: ‘anti-discrimination policy needs to identify a group to be protected.’ In other words, it is impossible to fight the oppression of a group of people that does not exist. Recognition of impairment is also crucial regarding legislation and policy that aim to protect disabled people against discrimination. The point of anti-discrimination legislation is to protect people from discrimination on the basis of their physical and mental properties, not on their opportunity to achieve equal participation and respect. Thus, ‘the parallel to race and gender is not disability but impairment’ (Wolff 2009Wolff, J. 2009. “Disability among Equals.” In Disability and Disadvantage, edited by K.Brownlee and A. Cureton, 112–137. Oxford: Oxford University Press.[Crossref], [Google Scholar], 135).

Conclusion

The disability movement, like other emancipatory movements, is based on a positive sense of a group difference, and whilst the CDS perspective does not deny the reality of social groups such as disabled people, it asserts that such social group differences are undesirable and potentially harmful. We argue that this normative thinking is not fruitful because a society without group differences is not a realistic possibility; CDS is neither able to articulate or to even theorize how such a society would exist. For CDS to be successful one has to accept the idea not only that the disabled/non-disabled binary does not exist but also that such a binary is neither desirable, ethically justifiable or useful.

Further, deconstructing differences will not in and of itself produce respect and equality between all people with various characteristics. Neither will it result in a social order free from a sense of difference. It is simply unrealistic to assume that a society could exist were people would not see some other people as different, and their lives or characteristics as representing a deviation from some norm considered important regarding good human life. This is because some of the individual characteristics that define disabled people are, sometimes with good reason, undesirable, even in a utopia where all differences would have been queered. Disability is not the same as many other group identities and we need to explore both morally and socially disability and difference rather than simply use difference as a concept through which to critique the disability identity. There are no rational reasons to consider homosexuality or gender undesirable characteristics whatever the social context, but there are many impairments that can reasonably be seen as undesirable (Shakespeare 2006Shakespeare, T. 2006. Disability Rights and Wrongs. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). Motor neuron disease, depression or spinal cord injury are the kinds of conditions that we would prefer not to have, and this is not merely because of the cultural representations attached to them but because these conditions are the kinds of predicaments that cause suffering irrespective of one’s cultural environment. In acknowledging that impairments can include an undesirable dimension does not imply devaluing people with impairments nor their positive group identity (Shakespeare and Watson 2010Shakespeare, T., and N. Watson. 2010. “Beyond Models: Understanding the Complexity of Disabled people’s Lives.” In New Directions in the Sociology of Chronic and Disabling Conditions, edited by G. Scamblerand S. Scambler, 57–77. London: Palgrave Macmillan.[Crossref], [Google Scholar]). As long as people are genuinely free to decide for themselves and feel about themselves however they wish to feel, we are pretty close to relational justice, free from hierarchical evils. Imposing on people ableist or disablist assumptions is certainly wrong, but so would be the denial of the personal experiences of fearing the loss of one’s physical and mental capacities, or the fear of dying (Carel 2008Carel, H. 2008. Illness. Durham: Acumen. [Google Scholar]). To explain the psychological anguish related to conditions such as motor neurone disease or depression merely in terms of internalized oppression and ableism would be insensitive, disrespectful and simply nonsensical.

We have argued that CDS and its principles of deconstructing differences are ethically and politically unhelpful. CDS fails to offer guidance on how to solve moral dilemmas and on how to distribute goods in society fairly. Matters of distribution and relations between people are inescapable in making a just society, and exactly the kinds of issues any truly critical theory of disability must seriously engage with, if it wants to make a real difference in the real world.

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#critical disability studies #critique #ethics #justice #disability #political philosophy #ableism #michel foucault #analysis #inequality

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autoirishlitdiscourses · 7 years

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Discourse of Wednesday, 12 July 2017

Overall, you can be found below. If you do. Being chivalrous in the third paragraph of the right to cut it off between 2: Last day to drop a photocopy from it.

I've attached a copy of Dialectic of Enlightenment that is causing you stress, then digging in to the larger purpose of the fourth qua in the course website as your main topic, and/or the student who didn't either take the discussion to this point estimate that maybe two of which is a wonderful book that will help you to write about in lecture if they cover ground which you are perfectly capable of doing, though your paper until you recite. Just let me know if you bring up in front of the texts, making sure to get past the I have the room. Another reason is that your general commitment to sensitive reading and thinking skills here, I think that you're essentially doing a good student this quarter, too, that it will result in further disciplinary action, just so that they only discussed a single goal. Some of these things not because I think that correcting this would be productive, and that you understand why I've marked everything that you should spend a substantial amount of reading the text quoting, including the last few days to make progress toward graduation that satisfies the requirements out from under you there. You might follow up with the dates that would be central to the overall point or points to which Heaney is referring. Here's a breakdown on your finals, and good choice. If you would like to take a more successful if you have a perceptive piece here that you have any questions, OK? There are some discussion questions, and you connected it effectively to larger-scale structure I'm tempted to make sure the room, but that you could make it hard to get back to people that I notice is that it's impossible to say, my suggestion at this point, and exploring additional related issues, I think that it naturally wants to make intermediate connections that you mention that suggest themselves to me. If you have a perfectly acceptable topic. An assessment that the more interesting ones, and I've just been so long to get people talking and that you inform people who decide the class as a natural A is still theoretically in range for you early next quarter, so I know much about midterm grades. On a related note, do you think it's very possible that you took.

And yes, that's quite likely enjoy Hannah Arendt's book On the Study of Celtic Literature/mentioned in this case. As it stands, I think is likely going to depend on most directly productive here would be, I suggest these things might be intimidated by Shakespeare's stature and then sit down and start writing. You have lots of good possibilities here, especially if vain or important, because I think, too, depending on how to deliver it. A smart move to demonstrate that you should be helpful to you after I broke my arm two years ago that discusses several critical approaches to Futurism; it's of more benefit to introduce the text, but only to recite and discuss this Wednesday at 1 would 12:30-12:30 and will automatically receive a passing grade but make sure that you're using the texts you choose to provide a useful tool for understanding political alignment … and then to question its own discussion a bit more carefully, because some people will have to pick it first. If you have any more questions, OK? All of these as a novel in 1994, called 20 May 1905, in part because of a great idea to have a perfectly acceptable topic think about their relationship and about his paper here in order to convey the weirdness and energy of Francie's mental state. 642; changed nearly to almost in I nearly said; changed Anthropopopometry to Apopometry; changed Anthropopopometry to Apopometry; changed nearly to almost in I nearly said; changed for to cause in for you, OK? One of the texts you select, I think that correcting this would be crucial to making your evidence into a more explicit stand on what specific question. You can ask the College of Letters & Science, at least 86% on the final please only do that Peets on Lower State and Coffee Cat are both pretty close to the messages that came in earlier than yours. If you have read episodes 1, because it's essentially a repetition of their material. If you happen to know. Not, you should be set next to each other, broader problem is the MLA format requires. Trying to memorize because of its stream-of-totalitarianism paper is often incompatible with trying to demonstrate mercy, I have some very good job of reciting Stare's Nest by My Window Yeats, The Young Covey, Rosie Redmond? ID #3 overlaps substantially with ID #9 from the assistance of Campus Learning Assistance Services. A paper as a sifting screen that lets you choose and owned it. Your plans were adequate but came in after 10 p. Great!

The Stolen Child Yeats, An Irish Airman even more front and center in your thesis what kind of strained family dynamics? All of these is that you should do, or other opinions: I think that there are other symbolic associations, as well on the particulars of your discussion plans are generally fairly small errors: picked for went picking; was hanged; and c get at least 46. After thinking about such things as you write and to be more specific about how you want to know how many people wanted to discuss with another person, then it makes it easier for me that I would guess that he elected to appropriate without attribution. In the same source. You picked an important part of the section, since we follow Bloom and other emotions related to each other and how they did on section website if you have the same as totalitarianism, though, not on me. As it is there a particular idea, you also missed the midterm as a study aid for other reasons. You handled your material you emphasize I think, and different societies mean very different things by it. This are comparatively minor textual hiccups here and there, but I'll let you know by Friday and I'll pass that on the most basic issues if you glance over at me occasionally, but is perhaps explicable by the assignment requirements next week. The same method applies to you. Your writing is quite graceful and lucid, and the Stars to Downton Abbey, too; and added and before the paper suggests fundamental problems with papers in the play. The Butcher Boy: In front of the things that you're likely to be on the text of the text, and you relate your ideas that are dangerous for the 17 October vocabulary quiz on John Synge's play, but this is to sit down and start writing as self-characterization at several points in the delivery itself that you'd be doing is writing an essay that is a/genuinely extraordinary circumstances. This XTHML file was last updated 27 October 2013 We also insist that politics demands complex thinking and that she's probably punching it in a timely fashion in order to be more specific both in specific phrasing terms what does that tell me by to accept the offer, if you're using based on it and whether it's kosher. Is it helpful to think about the average or normal reader of a comparable phenomenon, and you can, OK? Finally, I think your plan, either for comment or to be familiar with any passages talked about effective ways to make sure that your first question, actually, because I think that one way to figure out how to draw as much as they were sick. If you misplace your copy of the class, but none of that's absolutely necessary you can still go just make snap judgments that you have to accept the offer is made based on your paper, if you're going to be as productive as you write your way, nor 93% the high end of the scene come through more in future pieces of writing. Someone's already beat you to a question is to recognize and overcome it.

To take the paper manages to provide the largest overall benefit to introduce a large number of important goals well, it's easier for me to answer right now with the mainstream of academic spam, and to be answering a question or two days, and a bit in the structuralist sense famously suggested by Fredric Jameson? I think that it would have paid off quite a D for the historical situation. Falling short/—even by one person in each revolution being, is not just because it sometimes seems that trying to make it pay off for you on how well you support your assertion that you're covering. Let me give you. I think that you're trying to crash the course would require that you won't have time to edit and proofread effectively in your particular case, not Chicago-style citations for quotations and the amount of information with a GPA of 3.

There are multiple possibilities here several poems by Eavan Boland, White Hawthorn in the morning of 16 June, 2004 Interactive map of Stephen's and Bloom's speculations about whether you want to avoid that would be a bad idea. Answer: 4, I think you would delete the message without reading it. Note that failing to turn in a lot of other information, which I think that bringing one of the professor's miss three sections and have a set of readings here that was simply people getting more than five sections results in an assignment that you do so before I go to bed tonight. 5% of all of your paper is due or a good student this quarter. What does it include participation truthfully, participation except for the quarter by showing what makes the texts as a whole is questionable, and it may very well. All this really means is that you should be cognizant of what your priorities are if you do all three tasks I'm not aware of: you would have a very good paper. I'll give it back to you when I got hit by a student who's scheduled an appointment to discuss your paper. Hi! Truthfully, you're quite bright and can take this into account. Why this particular passage that's not necessarily mean that the Irish pound was subdivided, as well. I say that you have several options: 1. Yes-or higher on the final itself, you have several options: 1 I think that this question, people have expressed interest in responses to suffering.

I flipped through my copy but couldn't find it productive to just copy me on the final graded, but think explicitly about the horror experienced by the lake, the winter of perfect communion; To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic relationships, playing by the way to find ways to relate Ulysses to cubism as the candidate that Yeats is not a C and have a more explicit stand on why putting these texts tells you about the recitation performance itself, you can take the exam if you feel a bit over, and don't remember it myself, since I read it this quarter, but it would be helpful. This statement should be to say in here, and show why the IRA's treatment of his lecture pace rather than the requested number. I suspect that that helps! I think that specificity will pay off for you to increase your specificity would be to find an alternative way to acquaint yourself with them in your proposal that he should let me now what you want to do would be exhausting for someone who provides you with 94. All in all, are you going to be prompted twice, but it would have paid off with flair; and invented a few people getting more than five sections results in multiple absences and is entirely understandable, but of the poem, gave what was overall an excellent job!

Part One recall. Hi! A BLUE BOOK TO THE FINAL! All in all, are you talking about merely the preservation of instincts that contribute to the ER, and a load of dung at Michaelmas, the discrepancy, the condition that I want everyone to benefit from making strong assertions instead of waiting for the quarter. As it stands, I think you would hope yes/no-pass and letter-graded options on GOLD; d many other possibilities.

The Butcher Boy, mentioned in lecture. It is your job to do is to change between P/NP and letter-graded options. Or keep your argument is thoughtful and graceful, nuanced close readings by a group of talented readers and editors will not hesitate to contact me.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

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bluewatsons · 7 years

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Simo Vehmas & Nick Watson, Moral wrongs, disadvantages, and disability: a critique of critical disability studies, 29 Disability & Society 638 (2014)

Abstract

Points of interest

This article examines and critiques the ideas found within critical disability studies (CDS).

The article argues that the accounts offered by CDS do not engage fully with the key ethical and political issues faced by disabled people.

Introduction: critical disability studies

The main aim of CDS is to deconstruct ideas about disability and to explore how they have come to dominate our approaches to the subject and how the ideologies that surround disability have been constructed. It is about unsettling ideas about disability and in so doing shaking up some of our assumptions about disability and critically engaging with the categories used to construct the ‘disability problem’. CDS seeks to deconstruct the binary distinctions that it claims are used to create difference and hierarchies and obscure connections between disabled and nondisabled people (Shildrick 2012Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A. Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). Whilst there are many different theorists drawn upon by the various scholars writing in this paradigm, most of them can be loosely defined as post-structural anti-dualists.

These ideas have been taken up by many others and further developed both in the United Kingdom and the United States and elsewhere (for example, Campbell 2009aCampbell, F. K. 2009a. Contours of Ableism. Basingstoke: Macmillan.10.1057/9780230245181[CrossRef], [Google Scholar]; Goodley 2011Goodley, D. 2011. Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction. London: Sage. [Google Scholar]; McRuer 2010; Shildrick 2012Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A. Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). They, like Corker, have drawn on the ideas of Foucault, Butler and Derrida and have sought to unpack disability and impairment in terms of knowledge and power to unsettle ideas about both disability and normality as well as some of the key theories and assumptions that have been central to disability studies. Meekosha and Shuttleworth (2009Meekosha, H., and R. Shuttleworth. 2009. “What’s So ‘critical’ about Critical Disability Studies?” Australian Journal of Human Rights 15 (1): 47–75. [Google Scholar]) locate the origins of this development with a general concern about the binary nature of disability studies and the resulting impairment/disablement divide, a by-product, they argue, of the social model’s simplistic materialist focus, both points made by Corker. Importantly they also cite the emergence of an interest in disability within the arts and humanities, particularly in the United States where much of the drive for this new approach to disability was originally located. In addition, Meekosha and Shuttleworth suggest that CDS marked an attempt by theorists to distance themselves from policy-makers and service providers who they felt had sought to co-opt the social model and use it for their own ends.

The use of what Shildrick (2012Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A. Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]), following Butler and Foucault, terms critique has also been central. Through the employment of critique, CDS seeks to examine not just disability but also its genealogy, and the methodologies that have been applied in its study; it aims to contest accepted ‘truths’ and ideas, of disability and of impairment, and through this of disability studies itself. As Foucault argued:

A critique is not a matter of saying things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest. (1997Foucault, M. 1997. “What is Critique?” In The Politics of Truth, edited by S. Lorringer and L. Hockoth, 41–82. New York: Semiotexte. [Google Scholar], 155)

Differences between disabled and non-disabled people are described as being socially produced, and it is also argued that these differences are constructed for a political reason; to maintain dominance (Goodley 2011Goodley, D. 2011. Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction. London: Sage. [Google Scholar], 113). The standpoint of the privileged and powerful, in this case non-disabled people, has become the norm, and others are seen as deviant and inferior (Campbell 2009aCampbell, F. K. 2009a. Contours of Ableism. Basingstoke: Macmillan.10.1057/9780230245181[CrossRef], [Google Scholar]). The aim is that through employing concepts such as ableism rather than the more typical disablism, the negative stereotypes and cultural values that surround disability and impairment can be challenged and focused away from the person with impairment. As Davis writes: ‘The problem is not the person with disabilities; the problem is the way that normalcy is constructed to create the “problem” of the disabled person’ (2010Davis, L. 2010. “Constructing Normalcy.” In The Disability Studies Reader 3rd ed., edited by L. Davis, 3–20. London: Routledge [Google Scholar], 9).

Critical disability studies and hidden ethical judgements

The ideas developed within CDS draw heavily on concepts developed in other areas of difference including ethnicity, sexuality and gender. Whilst it is not simply about conflating different approaches together with that of disability studies, the case for similarities are readily made (Shildrick 2012Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A. Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). McCruer (2010McCruer, R. 2010. “Compulsory Ablebodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence.” In The Disability Studies Reader. 3rd ed., edited by L. Davis, 383–392. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]), for example, drawing on the ideas of Judith Butler juxtaposes compulsory heterosexuality with compulsory ablebodiedness, arguing that privileging heterosexuality and ablebodiedness acts to the detriment of others. The argument is that by disrupting the categories disabled/non-disabled, the discrimination experienced by disabled people can be challenged.

This attempt at what Sayer (2011Sayer, A. 2011. Why Things Matter to People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511734779[CrossRef], [Google Scholar]) has called normative disorientation found in much of the theorizing around ableism creates problems. For example, how can we discuss or debate prevention when a feature of ableism is described as a ‘belief that impairment (irrespective of “type”) is inherently negative which should, if the opportunity presents itself, be ameliorated, cured or indeed eliminated’ (Campbell 2009bCampbell, F. K. 2009b. “Disability Harms Exploring Internalized Ableism?” In Disability: Insights from across Fields and around the World. vol. I, edited by C. Marshall, E. Kendall and R. Gover, 19–34. Westport, CT: Praeger Press. [Google Scholar], 23)? Is the promotion of the use of folic acid before and during pregnancy based on an anti-disablist or perhaps ableist viewpoint; and if so, should CDS be campaigning against those who seek to promote these views? This gap is acknowledged by Meekosha (2011Meekosha, H. 2011. “Decolonising Disability: Thinking and Acting Globally.” Disability & Society 26 (6): 667–682.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]), but it has not been examined or unpacked. Whilst we may be accused here of constructing a ‘straw person argument’ it is consistent with Campbell’s claim.

This challenge to normativity, of what is good or bad, or right or wrong, characterizes much of the CDS literature. Whilst CDS often makes normative judgements about policies or about the current understanding of disability or how contemporary social organization is morally wrong, it offers no evaluative arguments on impairments or on the implications of living with an impairment. Shildrick (2012Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A. Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], 40), for example, has argued that ‘all bodies are unstable and vulnerable’ and that there is ‘no single acceptable mode of embodiment’. Shildrick attempts a move to an ethical realm by posing what she describes as ‘an important ethical question: how can we engage with morphological difference that is not reducible to the binary of either sameness or difference?’ And, in line with this rather leading question, she continues: ‘If we are to have an ethically responsible encounter with corporeal difference, then, we need a strategy of queering the norms of embodiment, a commitment to deconstruct the apparent stability of distinct and bounded categories’ (Shildrick 2012Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A. Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], 40). In Shildrick’s view, any strategy, political arrangement, or ethical conceptualization that is based on a group identity built upon a binary distinction or difference, is ethically wrong. This is an interesting suggestion but unfortunately Shildrick does not provide any ethical argument to support it or a practical example of how it may be enacted.

Human beings are dialogical beings and the significance of disability or impairment and their impact on well-being will tend to be comparative. As Sayer argues: ‘we measure ourselves not so much against absolute standards but against what others are like, particularly those with whom we associate the most’ (2011Sayer, A. 2011. Why Things Matter to People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511734779[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 122). Evaluative judgements in relation to the individual experience of both disability and impairment are important. If we are to properly understand social phenomena, such as disability, we have to recognize their normative dimensions and the values attached to them. Value-laden statements, as Sayer (2011Sayer, A. 2011. Why Things Matter to People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511734779[CrossRef], [Google Scholar]) argues, can strengthen the descriptive adequacy of accounts. Sayer demonstrates this by using the example of the Holocaust. This, he says, can be represented in two ways: ‘thousands died in the Nazi concentration camps’ and ‘thousands were systematically exterminated in the Nazi concentration camps’. The latter sentence is not only more value-laden than the first, but more accurate as well (Sayer 2011Sayer, A. 2011. Why Things Matter to People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511734779[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 45). We would argue that talking about ableism, disablism or oppression does not make sense without reference to normative judgements about people’s well-being, as without such a discussion only a partial picture will emerge. The same may also apply to judgements about fair social arrangements.

Impairment sometimes produces practical, difficult ethical choices and we need more concrete viewpoints than the ideas provided through ableism, which offers very little practical moral guidance. It is questionable whether the notion of ableism would help the parents in deciding whether to have a child who has a degenerative condition that results in early death. Campbell (2009aCampbell, F. K. 2009a. Contours of Ableism. Basingstoke: Macmillan.10.1057/9780230245181[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 39, 149 and 159), for example, discusses arguments about impairments as harmful conditions, the ethics of external bodily transplants as well as wrongful birth and life court cases (whether life with an impairment is preferable to non-existence), and how ableism impacts on discourse around these issues. Whilst her analysis of such ableist discourses suggests ethical judgements, she provides no arguments or conclusions as to whether, for example, external bodily transplants are ethically wrong or whether impairment may or may not constitute a moral harm.

Disability and disadvantage

Tackling disadvantage has been the main theoretical and political aim of disability studies and from its first inception academics such as Oliver, Barnes and Finkelstein were interested in documenting the disadvantage experienced by disabled people and how it can be prevented or challenged. It shares with political philosophy a desire to identify and critique discrimination associated with the ill-treatment of disabled people and their subordination (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 3). Improving the position of the worst off is generally seen, at least in an egalitarian outlook, as a matter of justice because people’s social status and well-being is inevitably related to the way society is organized. In order to create fair social responses to disadvantage, we have to have a common understanding about disadvantage, and a reasonable (non-arbitrary) way of comparing disadvantages and correcting them.

The crucial issue is to define a proper metric of justice. In other words, ‘what should we look at, when evaluating whether one state of affairs is more or less just than another?’ (Robeyns and Brighouse 2010Robeyns, I., and H. Brighouse. 2010. “Introduction: Social Primary Goods and Capabilities as Metrics of Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 1). For example, what should be the primary focus for justice and how should it be evaluated? Is it the distribution of happiness, wealth, or something else, and how can these be measured? Western political thought has evolved from the contractarian tradition where people voluntarily commit to follow norms and laws they have established in order to ensure peaceful social life. Its most influential recent theorist was John Rawls (1971Rawls, J. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]), whose proposal for the proper metric of justice was the idea of social primary goods; those goods that any rational person would want regardless of whatever else they wanted. Rawls’ list of social primary goods included things such as freedom of thought, movement and choice of occupation, equality of income and wealth, as well as social basis of self-respect. For Rawls the distribution of social primary goods is the main concern of justice. Rawls’ theory has been criticized for excluding people who do not conform to the demands of normality from the spheres of justice. And indeed, Rawls did exclude disabled people from his theory as exceptions to the rule; we should, he argued, first work out a convincing theory for the ‘normal’ people and after that extend it to the ‘more extreme cases’ such as disabled people (Robeyns and Brighouse 2010Robeyns, I., and H. Brighouse. 2010. “Introduction: Social Primary Goods and Capabilities as Metrics of Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 3).

Rawls’ ideas have recently been challenged by the capabilities approach, a theory developed initially by Amartya Sen and later by Martha Nussbaum (2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]). Instead of focusing on resources such as income, wealth or legal rights, the capabilities approach emphasizes the significance of functionings and capabilities. Functionings refer to states of the person; things such as literacy, health, mobility, and the ability to appear in public without shame (Anderson 2010Anderson, E. 2010. “Justifying the Capabilities Approach to Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 81–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[CrossRef], [Google Scholar]). Capabilities, on the other hand, are the real freedoms or opportunities to achieve functionings. So mobility is a functioning whereas the real opportunity for mobility is the corresponding capability (Robeyns 2011Robeyns, I. 2011. “The Capability Approach.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), edited by E. N. Zalta, URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/capability-approach/> [Google Scholar]). Nussbaum (2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar], 76–78) identifies 10 capabilities, ranging from life, ‘bodily health’, bodily integrity, physical security to emotions, affiliation and control over one’s environment. Capabilities provide the bare minimum that all humans should be able to achieve in terms of valued functionings and well-being. So, justice concerns ‘the capabilities to choose a life one has reason to value’ (Robeyns and Brighouse 2010Robeyns, I., and H. Brighouse. 2010. “Introduction: Social Primary Goods and Capabilities as Metrics of Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 2). Lacking involuntarily any capability or central human functioning amounts to a disadvantage. If we are to make comparative judgements about people’s well-being, we have to be able to come to an understanding of how well each individual is doing with regard to various functionings (Nussbaum 2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar], 69–81; Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 36–62).

The capabilities approach is an exceptional philosophical theory in that it has been operationalized. The United Nations, and a number of national governments, most notably the United Kingdom, have all used it as a basis for practical policy development and implementation. It is the basis for the UK’s Equality Measurement Framework, a tool developed for and implemented as part of the equality initiative launched by the last government. Unlike the ideas of Rawls, it has been successfully applied to disability (Burchardt 2004Burchardt, T. 2004. “Capabilities and Disability: The Capabilities Framework and the Social Model of Disability.” Disability & Society 19 (7): 735–751.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]; Nussbaum 2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]). The capabilities approach has been criticized on various grounds (Pogge 2010Pogge, T. 2010. “A Critique of the Capability Approach.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 17–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[CrossRef], [Google Scholar]; Walby 2009Walby, S. 2009. Globalisation and Inequalities. London: Sage. [Google Scholar]) but, despite its possible shortcomings, it is one of the few philosophical theories that engages with issues, including disability, in a manner that is not only theoretically illuminating but also politically practical (Sayer 2011Sayer, A. 2011. Why Things Matter to People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511734779[CrossRef], [Google Scholar]).

Working within the capabilities approach agenda, Wolff and De-Shalit (2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 172) have suggested a way of determining the issue of disadvantage by introducing two factors: what the person has or has access to, and what they can do with it. What the person has includes both internal resources, such as talents and skills, and external resources, such as wealth, income and less tangible matters such as family and community support. How effectively these can be used depends on various structures operating in society: laws and customs, the influence of tradition, informal and formal power relations, religion, language, culture and other social norms:

the interaction of your internal resources and your external resources with the social and material structure within which you find yourself, determines your genuine opportunities for secure functionings […] In short, your resources are what you have to play with; the structure provides the rules of the game. (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001 [CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 173)

Aspects of social structure are as important in determining your genuine opportunities as your internal and external resources.

Accordingly, tackling people’s disadvantage can take place in three different dimensions that may or may not be related to each other: internal resources, external resources and social structures. There at least four strategies for addressing these disadvantages: personal enhancement, cash compensation, targeted resource enhancement, and status enhancement (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 173–174). Personal enhancement is achieved through education and training as well as psychological and medical interventions. In cash compensation, people are given money to spend as they need. In the case of resource enhancement, people are provided with resources for a particular purpose (in the case of disabled people this could mean the use of an aid to daily living such as a computer with speech synthesizer or service such as personal assistance). Effective improvement of people’s internal or external resources cannot take place without social arrangements that recognize the equal rights of all. In practice this means status enhancement, where people’s opportunities and social status are improved by social changes, such as changes in law and social attitudes and the material environment.

If the aim of a just society is to guarantee its members an equal chance for a minimum level of well-being, it needs to define the kind of disadvantage that is a matter of social concern. In addition it must also be able to identify the most disadvantaged members of society, and what factors affect how well-off or badly-off people generally are. These measures enable evaluation (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 21). This is necessary because, under conditions of finite or scarce resources, we need to not only have general criteria on the allocation of support (Stone 1984Stone, D. 1984. The Disabled State. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.[CrossRef], [Google Scholar]) but also know what works and what does not. Under conditions of finite resources, society needs to decide how to allocate resources between various sectors of justice and this needs to be done democratically. These decisions cannot be taken without an evaluation of how significant certain functionings are for human well-being in general, and what kind of weight they should have in our societal apparatus (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 92–93).

Nussbaum (2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]) emphasizes that satisfactory political theory must be pluralist in the sense that it takes into account cultural variation. At the same time, and to a degree, it must also be normatively objective as people often submit to the status quo against their own interest and adapt to their own deprivations. An acceptable principle of public justice must be capable of being known by all because justice fundamentally concerns claims that we can make to others; ‘Justice embodies demands of particular persons that can, by right, be exacted from others’ (Anderson 2010Anderson, E. 2010. “Justifying the Capabilities Approach to Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 81–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 86; original emphasis). Capabilities theorists argue that political theory should be based on an objective (albeit an open-ended and subject to ongoing revision and rethinking) list of components of well-being and relevant capabilities people need to function as equals (Anderson 2010Anderson, E. 2010. “Justifying the Capabilities Approach to Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 81–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 85–86; Nussbaum 2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar], 73–76). The capabilities approach is inherently normative and based on normative assumptions of what is and is not acceptable.

Both individual and social factors are significant to the achievement of central human functionings/capabilities. Various illnesses and impairments impose exceptional risks and vulnerabilities to people’s well-being. Consider, for example, motor neuron disease, a progressive terminal condition that affects the nerve cells that control voluntary muscle activity such as walking, breathing and swallowing. Clearly, such a fatal health condition is a disadvantage in its own right, but it also has an accumulative disadvantage that has negative effects on other functionings such as on one’s livelihood, relationships, and psychological well-being. As Wolff and De-Shalit (2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], [Google Scholar]) argue, disadvantages often cluster around individuals, sometimes even creating a cross-generation clustering where parents’ disadvantage appears among their children, either directly (in the case of drug addiction or teenage pregnancy) or indirectly. Personal disadvantages such as bad health are by no means the only and the most significant sources of causal clustering of disadvantage. Often social factors play a much more significant role in the formation of disadvantage. For example, low social status reduces the opportunities for control over one’s environment, which often results in worse health and shorter life expectancy (Marmot et al. 2010Marmot, M., J. Allen, P. Goldblatt, T. Boyce, D. McNeish, M. Grady and I. Geddes 2010. Fair Society, Healthy Lives. Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England Post 2010. London.http://www.ucl.ac.uk/gheg/marmotreview/ [Google Scholar]; Wilkinson and Pickett 2010Wilkinson, R., and K. Pickett. 2010. Spirit Level. 2nd ed. London: Allen Lane. [Google Scholar]). Similarly, a lack of social affiliation that has resulted from racism, disablism, stigmatization, hostility and unemployment may prevent people from being properly educated and participating fully in society. This kind of social exclusion is psychologically damaging and harmful to one’s health, and undoubtedly creates disability (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 120–125).

Disadvantage and discrimination are so central to the experience of disabled people that they are one of the key ways in which they are actually identified (Thomas 2007Thomas, C. 2007. Sociologies of Disability and Illness: Contested Ideas in Disability Studies and Medical Sociology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.[CrossRef], [Google Scholar]). Having briefly looked at the ideas behind capabilities we now move on to explore the use of CDS as a political theory and its potential as an agent of change. We examine whether CDS is of any use in the pursuit or eradication of injustice faced by disabled people and in the fight against oppression.

Critical disability studies and justice

The influence of CDS and its challenge to the assumption that disability is a uniform condition have enabled the emergence of new ideas on disability. In particular, this has enabled the development of a theory that can take account of not only impairment effects but also can include class, ethnicity, sexual orientation or cultural identities. It has also argued for the re-emergence of a new political identity, one where a solidarity that was previously built on a common single identity is replaced by one that incorporates multiple voices including representatives from across the range of constituencies. The politics that it seeks to develop will be the ending of the single interest group identity of the disability movement to be replaced by single-issue groups campaigning for different social issues. To paraphrase Lister (1998Lister, R. 1998. “Citizenship and Difference: Towards a Differentiated Universalism.” European Journal of Social Theory 1 (1): 71–90.10.1177/136843198001001006[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 74), if disability and impairment are simply to be ‘deconstructed into a kaleidoscope of shifting identities’ and ableist discourses, there will be no disabled people left to either fight for the right to be, or to be a citizen.

Disabled people typically experience disadvantage in relation to the market and capitalism, and they have to a large extent been excluded from employment and from equal social participation, respect and wealth (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 26). On top of these materialist disadvantages, disabled people are stigmatized as deviant and undesirable, and also subordinated to various oppressive hierarchical relations. For disabled people to achieve participatory parity, they require more than recognition; they need material help, targeted resource enhancement, and personal enhancement (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], [Google Scholar]). Disability is rooted in the economic structures of society and demands redistribution of goods and wealth. In contrast to some other oppressed groups, disabled people require more than the removal of barriers if they are to achieve social justice. This extra help might be small – for example, allowing a student with dyslexia extra time in an examination – through to complex interventions such as facilitated communication, a job support worker or 24-hour personal assistance. Whatever the size, it is an extra cost both to employers and to the state. These are real needs and represent real differences. Without an acceptance of these differences it is hard to see how we could move forward. Whilst these ‘real differences’ can be presented as the result of dominant ableist discourses where disabled people’s needs are regarded as extra cost, this does not solve the problem. The problems disabled people face require more than ideological change, and ideological change is of little use if it does not result in material change.

Both the social and physical mechanisms that produce human diversity are real, and they produce tangible differences that cannot be challenged, let alone abolished, merely by pointing out the wanton nature of difference, and deconstructing the meanings attached to disability. Changing the social conditions that disadvantage and disable some people demands that the diverse, sometimes dualistic, reality of social advantage and disadvantage between different groups of people is recognized. This is exactly why group identities based on, for example, impairment, gender, or sexuality have been invaluable tools in the resistance against discrimination and oppression – in the fight against socially produced disadvantage. Confident, positive disability identity has enabled many disabled people to actively challenge the status quo that disadvantages them and to claim rights and power and participation in dominant institutions. Being different from the so-called normal majority is no longer considered to conflict with a good life, equality and respect. Quite the opposite, positive realization of one’s difference has been liberating and empowering to many disabled people (Shakespeare 2006Shakespeare, T. 2006. Disability Rights and Wrongs. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; Morris 1991Morris, J. 1991. Pride against Prejudice. London: Verso. [Google Scholar]). For a radical and active disability movement to emerge and for disabled people to take action on their own account, they have to see themselves as an unfairly marginalized or disadvantaged constituency and a minority group (Shakespeare and Watson 2001Shakespeare, T., and N. Watson. 2001. “Making the Difference: Disability, Politics, Recognition.” In Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by G. Albrecht, K. Seelman and M. Bury, 546–564. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.10.4135/9781412976251[CrossRef], [Google Scholar]). The category disabled/non-disabled is a good abstraction that can enable the development of communities of resistance, and without it is hard to see how these could develop.

CDS is premised on the idea that difference acts as a precursor to the normalizing of behaviour and a requirement to treat people differently and, importantly, less favourably. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that the categories that are applied to disabled people create an unnecessary divide between disabled and non-disabled people. You could equally make the point that without these categories we would not know what it is we have to do, what actions we have to take or what services we have to put in place to include disabled people. Indeed, for many disabled people the disadvantages they are subjected to arise not as the result of domination but through neglect and the denial of services and through society failing to take responsibility for those in need. As Wolff (2009Wolff, J. 2009. “Disability among Equals.” In Disability and Disadvantage, edited by K. Brownlee and A. Cureton, 112–137. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar], 114) points out: ‘anti-discrimination policy needs to identify a group to be protected.’ In other words, it is impossible to fight the oppression of a group of people that does not exist. Recognition of impairment is also crucial regarding legislation and policy that aim to protect disabled people against discrimination. The point of anti-discrimination legislation is to protect people from discrimination on the basis of their physical and mental properties, not on their opportunity to achieve equal participation and respect. Thus, ‘the parallel to race and gender is not disability but impairment’ (Wolff 2009Wolff, J. 2009. “Disability among Equals.” In Disability and Disadvantage, edited by K. Brownlee and A. Cureton, 112–137. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar], 135).

Conclusion

Further, deconstructing differences will not in and of itself produce respect and equality between all people with various characteristics. Neither will it result in a social order free from a sense of difference. It is simply unrealistic to assume that a society could exist were people would not see some other people as different, and their lives or characteristics as representing a deviation from some norm considered important regarding good human life. This is because some of the individual characteristics that define disabled people are, sometimes with good reason, undesirable, even in a utopia where all differences would have been queered. Disability is not the same as many other group identities and we need to explore both morally and socially disability and difference rather than simply use difference as a concept through which to critique the disability identity. There are no rational reasons to consider homosexuality or gender undesirable characteristics whatever the social context, but there are many impairments that can reasonably be seen as undesirable (Shakespeare 2006Shakespeare, T. 2006. Disability Rights and Wrongs. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). Motor neuron disease, depression or spinal cord injury are the kinds of conditions that we would prefer not to have, and this is not merely because of the cultural representations attached to them but because these conditions are the kinds of predicaments that cause suffering irrespective of one’s cultural environment. In acknowledging that impairments can include an undesirable dimension does not imply devaluing people with impairments nor their positive group identity (Shakespeare and Watson 2010Shakespeare, T., and N. Watson. 2010. “Beyond Models: Understanding the Complexity of Disabled people’s Lives.” In New Directions in the Sociology of Chronic and Disabling Conditions, edited by G. Scambler and S. Scambler, 57–77. London: Palgrave Macmillan. [Google Scholar]). As long as people are genuinely free to decide for themselves and feel about themselves however they wish to feel, we are pretty close to relational justice, free from hierarchical evils. Imposing on people ableist or disablist assumptions is certainly wrong, but so would be the denial of the personal experiences of fearing the loss of one’s physical and mental capacities, or the fear of dying (Carel 2008Carel, H. 2008. Illness. Durham: Acumen. [Google Scholar]). To explain the psychological anguish related to conditions such as motor neurone disease or depression merely in terms of internalized oppression and ableism would be insensitive, disrespectful and simply nonsensical.

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#critical disability studies #critique #political philosophy #justice #ethics #morality #disadvantage

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Simo Vehmas & Nick Watson, Moral wrongs, disadvantages, and disability: a critique of critical disability studies, 29 Disability & Society 638 (2014)

Abstract

Points of interest

This article examines and critiques the ideas found within critical disability studies (CDS).

The article argues that the accounts offered by CDS do not engage fully with the key ethical and political issues faced by disabled people.

Introduction: critical disability studies

The main aim of CDS is to deconstruct ideas about disability and to explore how they have come to dominate our approaches to the subject and how the ideologies that surround disability have been constructed. It is about unsettling ideas about disability and in so doing shaking up some of our assumptions about disability and critically engaging with the categories used to construct the ‘disability problem’. CDS seeks to deconstruct the binary distinctions that it claims are used to create difference and hierarchies and obscure connections between disabled and nondisabled people (Shildrick 2012Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A. Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge.). Whilst there are many different theorists drawn upon by the various scholars writing in this paradigm, most of them can be loosely defined as post-structural anti-dualists.

Mariain Hill Scott (nee Corker) was one of the first academics from within disability studies to promote the ideas that laid the foundations of what has become CDS (Corker 1998Corker, M. 1999. “Differences, Conflations and Foundations: The Limits to ‘accurate’ Theoretical Representation of Disabled people’s Experiences.” Disability & Society 14 (5): 627–642.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [CSA], 1999Corker, M. 1998. Deaf and Disabled or Deafness Disabled. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.). Drawing on the ideas of Judith Butler, she argued for a critical analysis of the terms used to define disability and impairment. She drew on socio-linguistic theory, in particular the work of Derrida, to argue that the project for disability theory should be to contest meanings, arguing that binary opposites, in which one term is given precedence over the other, exist so as to ‘deceive us into valuing one side of the dichotomy more than the other’ (Corker 1999Corker, M. 1999. “Differences, Conflations and Foundations: The Limits to ‘accurate’ Theoretical Representation of Disabled people’s Experiences.” Disability & Society 14 (5): 627–642.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [CSA], 638). Her contention was that through deconstructing such meanings and breaking down binary opposites the concept of disability and impairment could be conceptualized so as to present the problems faced by disabled people as one that arose in the relationship between impairment and oppression, the former acting as an unexamined biological foundation for the latter. This contrasts with a social model analysis that presents disability as the collective experience of oppression. Corker argued for the development of a social space where identities could be formed and fashioned free from the normative constraints imposed by bipolar norms of disabled/non-disabled.

These ideas have been taken up by many others and further developed both in the United Kingdom and the United States and elsewhere (for example, Campbell 2009aCampbell, F. K. 2009a. Contours of Ableism. Basingstoke: Macmillan.10.1057/9780230245181[CrossRef]; Goodley 2011Goodley, D. 2011. Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction. London: Sage.; McRuer 2010; Shildrick 2012Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A. Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge.). They, like Corker, have drawn on the ideas of Foucault, Butler and Derrida and have sought to unpack disability and impairment in terms of knowledge and power to unsettle ideas about both disability and normality as well as some of the key theories and assumptions that have been central to disability studies. Meekosha and Shuttleworth (2009Meekosha, H., and R. Shuttleworth. 2009. “What’s So ‘critical’ about Critical Disability Studies?” Australian Journal of Human Rights 15 (1): 47–75.) locate the origins of this development with a general concern about the binary nature of disability studies and the resulting impairment/disablement divide, a by-product, they argue, of the social model’s simplistic materialist focus, both points made by Corker. Importantly they also cite the emergence of an interest in disability within the arts and humanities, particularly in the United States where much of the drive for this new approach to disability was originally located. In addition, Meekosha and Shuttleworth suggest that CDS marked an attempt by theorists to distance themselves from policy-makers and service providers who they felt had sought to co-opt the social model and use it for their own ends.

The use of what Shildrick (2012 Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A. Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge.), following Butler and Foucault, terms critique has also been central. Through the employment of critique, CDS seeks to examine not just disability but also its genealogy, and the methodologies that have been applied in its study; it aims to contest accepted ‘truths’ and ideas, of disability and of impairment, and through this of disability studies itself. As Foucault argued:

A critique is not a matter of saying things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest. (1997 Foucault, M. 1997. “What is Critique?” In The Politics of Truth, edited by S. Lorringer and L. Hockoth, 41–82. New York: Semiotexte., 155)

Differences between disabled and non-disabled people are described as being socially produced, and it is also argued that these differences are constructed for a political reason; to maintain dominance (Goodley 2011 Goodley, D. 2011. Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction. London: Sage., 113). The standpoint of the privileged and powerful, in this case non-disabled people, has become the norm, and others are seen as deviant and inferior (Campbell 2009a Campbell, F. K. 2009a. Contours of Ableism. Basingstoke: Macmillan.10.1057/9780230245181[CrossRef]). The aim is that through employing concepts such as ableism rather than the more typical disablism, the negative stereotypes and cultural values that surround disability and impairment can be challenged and focused away from the person with impairment. As Davis writes: ‘The problem is not the person with disabilities; the problem is the way that normalcy is constructed to create the “problem” of the disabled person’ (2010 Davis, L. 2010. “Constructing Normalcy.” In The Disability Studies Reader 3rd ed., edited by L. Davis, 3–20. London: Routledge, 9).

Critical disability studies and hidden ethical judgements

The ideas developed within CDS draw heavily on concepts developed in other areas of difference including ethnicity, sexuality and gender. Whilst it is not simply about conflating different approaches together with that of disability studies, the case for similarities are readily made (Shildrick 2012Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A. Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge.). McCruer (2010McCruer, R. 2010. “Compulsory Ablebodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence.” In The Disability Studies Reader. 3rd ed., edited by L. Davis, 383–392. London: Routledge.), for example, drawing on the ideas of Judith Butler juxtaposes compulsory heterosexuality with compulsory ablebodiedness, arguing that privileging heterosexuality and ablebodiedness acts to the detriment of others. The argument is that by disrupting the categories disabled/non-disabled, the discrimination experienced by disabled people can be challenged.

This attempt at what Sayer (2011Sayer, A. 2011. Why Things Matter to People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511734779[CrossRef]) has called normative disorientation found in much of the theorizing around ableism creates problems. For example, how can we discuss or debate prevention when a feature of ableism is described as a ‘belief that impairment (irrespective of “type”) is inherently negative which should, if the opportunity presents itself, be ameliorated, cured or indeed eliminated’ (Campbell 2009bCampbell, F. K. 2009b. “Disability Harms Exploring Internalized Ableism?” In Disability: Insights from across Fields and around the World. vol. I, edited by C. Marshall, E. Kendall and R. Gover, 19–34. Westport, CT: Praeger Press., 23)? Is the promotion of the use of folic acid before and during pregnancy based on an anti-disablist or perhaps ableist viewpoint; and if so, should CDS be campaigning against those who seek to promote these views? This gap is acknowledged by Meekosha (2011Meekosha, H. 2011. “Decolonising Disability: Thinking and Acting Globally.” Disability & Society26 (6): 667–682.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®]), but it has not been examined or unpacked. Whilst we may be accused here of constructing a ‘straw person argument’ it is consistent with Campbell’s claim.

This challenge to normativity, of what is good or bad, or right or wrong, characterizes much of the CDS literature. Whilst CDS often makes normative judgements about policies or about the current understanding of disability or how contemporary social organization is morally wrong, it offers no evaluative arguments on impairments or on the implications of living with an impairment. Shildrick (2012Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A. Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge., 40), for example, has argued that ‘all bodies are unstable and vulnerable’ and that there is ‘no single acceptable mode of embodiment’. Shildrick attempts a move to an ethical realm by posing what she describes as ‘an important ethical question: how can we engage with morphological difference that is not reducible to the binary of either sameness or difference?’ And, in line with this rather leading question, she continues: ‘If we are to have an ethically responsible encounter with corporeal difference, then, we need a strategy of queering the norms of embodiment, a commitment to deconstruct the apparent stability of distinct and bounded categories’ (Shildrick 2012Shildrick, M. 2012. “Critical Disability Studies: Rethinking the Conventions for the Age of Postmodernity.” In Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A. Roulstone and C. Thomas, 30–41. London: Routledge., 40). In Shildrick’s view, any strategy, political arrangement, or ethical conceptualization that is based on a group identity built upon a binary distinction or difference, is ethically wrong. This is an interesting suggestion but unfortunately Shildrick does not provide any ethical argument to support it or a practical example of how it may be enacted.

It is, as Shildrick argues, safe to suggest that there is no ‘single acceptable mode of embodiment’, but at the same time it seems equally safe to suggest that there are a lot of people who would argue that some forms of embodiment are preferential to others. Seeing impairments as acceptable forms of human diversity is not the same as seeing them as neutral or insignificant. When people say that some forms of embodiment are preferential to others, they are ultimately referring to ideas about human well-being. In other words, one reason why people generally prefer not to have impairments is ethical; they believe that some impairments may in and of themselves prevent people from acting and moving as they wish, from doing valued activities, or faring well in general. Thomas (1999Thomas, C. 1999. Female Forms: Experiencing and Understanding Disability. Buckingham: Open University Press.) coined the term ‘impairment effects’ to define these limitations and to separate them from those that arise from disablement. CDS is normative as well, albeit its normative focus is on social factors instead of individuals’ abilities. CDS, like the social model, contains a strong normative dimension that implies what is right or wrong as regards social arrangements, but neither model takes a clear normative approach to the lived, embodied and visceral experiences of having an impairment (Vehmas 2004Vehmas, S. 2004. “Ethical Analysis of the Concept of Disability.” Mental Retardation 42 (3): 209–222.10.1352/0047-6765(2004)42<209:EAOTCO>2.0.CO;2[CrossRef], [PubMed]).

Human beings are dialogical beings and the significance of disability or impairment and their impact on well-being will tend to be comparative. As Sayer argues: ‘we measure ourselves not so much against absolute standards but against what others are like, particularly those with whom we associate the most’ (2011Sayer, A. 2011. Why Things Matter to People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511734779[CrossRef], 122). Evaluative judgements in relation to the individual experience of both disability and impairment are important. If we are to properly understand social phenomena, such as disability, we have to recognize their normative dimensions and the values attached to them. Value-laden statements, as Sayer (2011Sayer, A. 2011. Why Things Matter to People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511734779[CrossRef]) argues, can strengthen the descriptive adequacy of accounts. Sayer demonstrates this by using the example of the Holocaust. This, he says, can be represented in two ways: ‘thousands died in the Nazi concentration camps’ and ‘thousands were systematically exterminated in the Nazi concentration camps’. The latter sentence is not only more value-laden than the first, but more accurate as well (Sayer 2011Sayer, A. 2011. Why Things Matter to People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511734779[CrossRef], 45). We would argue that talking about ableism, disablism or oppression does not make sense without reference to normative judgements about people’s well-being, as without such a discussion only a partial picture will emerge. The same may also apply to judgements about fair social arrangements.

Impairment sometimes produces practical, difficult ethical choices and we need more concrete viewpoints than the ideas provided through ableism, which offers very little practical moral guidance. It is questionable whether the notion of ableism would help the parents in deciding whether to have a child who has a degenerative condition that results in early death. Campbell (2009aCampbell, F. K. 2009a. Contours of Ableism. Basingstoke: Macmillan.10.1057/9780230245181[CrossRef], 39, 149 and 159), for example, discusses arguments about impairments as harmful conditions, the ethics of external bodily transplants as well as wrongful birth and life court cases (whether life with an impairment is preferable to non-existence), and how ableism impacts on discourse around these issues. Whilst her analysis of such ableist discourses suggests ethical judgements, she provides no arguments or conclusions as to whether, for example, external bodily transplants are ethically wrong or whether impairment may or may not constitute a moral harm.

There may not be a clear answer to what constitutes human well-being or flourishing, but in general we can and we need to agree about some necessary elements required for well-being. Also, as moral agents we have an obligation to make judgements about people’s well-being and act in ways that their well-being is enhanced (Eshleman 2009Eshleman, A. 2009. “Moral Responsibility.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition), edited by E. N. Zalta, <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2009/entries/moral-responsibility/>). This is why we have, for example, coronary heart disease prevention programmes because the possible death or associated health problems are seen as harms. Possibly these policies are based on ableist perspective, but if that is the case then the normative use of ableism is null; eradicating supposedly ableist enterprises such as coronary heart disease prevention would be an example of reductio ad absurdum. Denying some aspects of well-being are so clear that their denial would be absurd, and simply morally wrong.

Disability and disadvantage

Tackling disadvantage has been the main theoretical and political aim of disability studies and from its first inception academics such as Oliver, Barnes and Finkelstein were interested in documenting the disadvantage experienced by disabled people and how it can be prevented or challenged. It shares with political philosophy a desire to identify and critique discrimination associated with the ill-treatment of disabled people and their subordination (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], 3). Improving the position of the worst off is generally seen, at least in an egalitarian outlook, as a matter of justice because people’s social status and well-being is inevitably related to the way society is organized. In order to create fair social responses to disadvantage, we have to have a common understanding about disadvantage, and a reasonable (non-arbitrary) way of comparing disadvantages and correcting them.

The crucial issue is to define a proper metric of justice. In other words, ‘what should we look at, when evaluating whether one state of affairs is more or less just than another?’ (Robeyns and Brighouse 2010 Robeyns, I., and H. Brighouse. 2010. “Introduction: Social Primary Goods and Capabilities as Metrics of Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[CrossRef], 1). For example, what should be the primary focus for justice and how should it be evaluated? Is it the distribution of happiness, wealth, or something else, and how can these be measured? Western political thought has evolved from the contractarian tradition where people voluntarily commit to follow norms and laws they have established in order to ensure peaceful social life. Its most influential recent theorist was John Rawls (1971Rawls, J. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.), whose proposal for the proper metric of justice was the idea of social primary goods; those goods that any rational person would want regardless of whatever else they wanted. Rawls’ list of social primary goods included things such as freedom of thought, movement and choice of occupation, equality of income and wealth, as well as social basis of self-respect. For Rawls the distribution of social primary goods is the main concern of justice. Rawls’ theory has been criticized for excluding people who do not conform to the demands of normality from the spheres of justice. And indeed, Rawls did exclude disabled people from his theory as exceptions to the rule; we should, he argued, first work out a convincing theory for the ‘normal’ people and after that extend it to the ‘more extreme cases’ such as disabled people (Robeyns and Brighouse 2010Robeyns, I., and H. Brighouse. 2010. “Introduction: Social Primary Goods and Capabilities as Metrics of Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[CrossRef], 3).

Rawls’ ideas have recently been challenged by the capabilities approach, a theory developed initially by Amartya Sen and later by Martha Nussbaum (2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.). Instead of focusing on resources such as income, wealth or legal rights, the capabilities approach emphasizes the significance of functionings and capabilities. Functionings refer to states of the person; things such as literacy, health, mobility, and the ability to appear in public without shame (Anderson 2010Anderson, E. 2010. “Justifying the Capabilities Approach to Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 81–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[CrossRef]). Capabilities, on the other hand, are the real freedoms or opportunities to achieve functionings. So mobility is a functioning whereas the real opportunity for mobility is the corresponding capability (Robeyns 2011Robeyns, I. 2011. “The Capability Approach.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), edited by E. N. Zalta, URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/capability-approach/>). Nussbaum (2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press., 76–78) identifies 10 capabilities, ranging from life, ‘bodily health’, bodily integrity, physical security to emotions, affiliation and control over one’s environment. Capabilities provide the bare minimum that all humans should be able to achieve in terms of valued functionings and well-being. So, justice concerns ‘the capabilities to choose a life one has reason to value’ (Robeyns and Brighouse 2010Robeyns, I., and H. Brighouse. 2010. “Introduction: Social Primary Goods and Capabilities as Metrics of Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[CrossRef], 2). Lacking involuntarily any capability or central human functioning amounts to a disadvantage. If we are to make comparative judgements about people’s well-being, we have to be able to come to an understanding of how well each individual is doing with regard to various functionings (Nussbaum 2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press., 69–81; Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], 36–62).

The capabilities approach is an exceptional philosophical theory in that it has been operationalized. The United Nations, and a number of national governments, most notably the United Kingdom, have all used it as a basis for practical policy development and implementation. It is the basis for the UK’s Equality Measurement Framework, a tool developed for and implemented as part of the equality initiative launched by the last government. Unlike the ideas of Rawls, it has been successfully applied to disability (Burchardt 2004Burchardt, T. 2004. “Capabilities and Disability: The Capabilities Framework and the Social Model of Disability.” Disability & Society 19 (7): 735–751.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®]; Nussbaum 2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.). The capabilities approach has been criticized on various grounds (Pogge 2010Pogge, T. 2010. “A Critique of the Capability Approach.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 17–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[CrossRef]; Walby 2009Walby, S. 2009. Globalisation and Inequalities. London: Sage.) but, despite its possible shortcomings, it is one of the few philosophical theories that engages with issues, including disability, in a manner that is not only theoretically illuminating but also politically practical (Sayer 2011Sayer, A. 2011. Why Things Matter to People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511734779[CrossRef]).

Working within the capabilities approach agenda, Wolff and De-Shalit (2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], 172) have suggested a way of determining the issue of disadvantage by introducing two factors: what the person has or has access to, and what they can do with it. What the person has includes both internal resources, such as talents and skills, and external resources, such as wealth, income and less tangible matters such as family and community support. How effectively these can be used depends on various structures operating in society: laws and customs, the influence of tradition, informal and formal power relations, religion, language, culture and other social norms:

Aspects of social structure are as important in determining your genuine opportunities as your internal and external resources.

Accordingly, tackling people’s disadvantage can take place in three different dimensions that may or may not be related to each other: internal resources, external resources and social structures. There at least four strategies for addressing these disadvantages: personal enhancement, cash compensation, targeted resource enhancement, and status enhancement (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], 173–174). Personal enhancement is achieved through education and training as well as psychological and medical interventions. In cash compensation, people are given money to spend as they need. In the case of resource enhancement, people are provided with resources for a particular purpose (in the case of disabled people this could mean the use of an aid to daily living such as a computer with speech synthesizer or service such as personal assistance). Effective improvement of people’s internal or external resources cannot take place without social arrangements that recognize the equal rights of all. In practice this means status enhancement, where people’s opportunities and social status are improved by social changes, such as changes in law and social attitudes and the material environment.

If the aim of a just society is to guarantee its members an equal chance for a minimum level of well-being, it needs to define the kind of disadvantage that is a matter of social concern. In addition it must also be able to identify the most disadvantaged members of society, and what factors affect how well-off or badly-off people generally are. These measures enable evaluation (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], 21). This is necessary because, under conditions of finite or scarce resources, we need to not only have general criteria on the allocation of support (Stone 1984Stone, D. 1984. The Disabled State. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.[CrossRef]) but also know what works and what does not. Under conditions of finite resources, society needs to decide how to allocate resources between various sectors of justice and this needs to be done democratically. These decisions cannot be taken without an evaluation of how significant certain functionings are for human well-being in general, and what kind of weight they should have in our societal apparatus (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], 92–93).

Nussbaum (2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.) emphasizes that satisfactory political theory must be pluralist in the sense that it takes into account cultural variation. At the same time, and to a degree, it must also be normatively objective as people often submit to the status quo against their own interest and adapt to their own deprivations. An acceptable principle of public justice must be capable of being known by all because justice fundamentally concerns claims that we can make to others; ‘Justice embodies demands of particular persons that can, by right, be exactedfrom others’ (Anderson 2010Anderson, E. 2010. “Justifying the Capabilities Approach to Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 81–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[CrossRef], 86; original emphasis). Capabilities theorists argue that political theory should be based on an objective (albeit an open-ended and subject to ongoing revision and rethinking) list of components of well-being and relevant capabilities people need to function as equals (Anderson 2010Anderson, E. 2010. “Justifying the Capabilities Approach to Justice.” In Measuring Justice, edited by H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns, 81–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[CrossRef], 85–86; Nussbaum 2006Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press., 73–76). The capabilities approach is inherently normative and based on normative assumptions of what is and is not acceptable.

Both individual and social factors are significant to the achievement of central human functionings/capabilities. Various illnesses and impairments impose exceptional risks and vulnerabilities to people’s well-being. Consider, for example, motor neuron disease, a progressive terminal condition that affects the nerve cells that control voluntary muscle activity such as walking, breathing and swallowing. Clearly, such a fatal health condition is a disadvantage in its own right, but it also has an accumulative disadvantage that has negative effects on other functionings such as on one’s livelihood, relationships, and psychological well-being. As Wolff and De-Shalit (2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef]) argue, disadvantages often cluster around individuals, sometimes even creating a cross-generation clustering where parents’ disadvantage appears among their children, either directly (in the case of drug addiction or teenage pregnancy) or indirectly. Personal disadvantages such as bad health are by no means the only and the most significant sources of causal clustering of disadvantage. Often social factors play a much more significant role in the formation of disadvantage. For example, low social status reduces the opportunities for control over one’s environment, which often results in worse health and shorter life expectancy (Marmot et al. 2010Marmot, M., J. Allen, P. Goldblatt, T. Boyce, D. McNeish, M. Grady and I. Geddes 2010. Fair Society, Healthy Lives. Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England Post 2010. London.http://www.ucl.ac.uk/gheg/marmotreview/; Wilkinson and Pickett 2010Wilkinson, R., and K. Pickett. 2010. Spirit Level. 2nd ed. London: Allen Lane.). Similarly, a lack of social affiliation that has resulted from racism, disablism, stigmatization, hostility and unemployment may prevent people from being properly educated and participating fully in society. This kind of social exclusion is psychologically damaging and harmful to one’s health, and undoubtedly creates disability (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], 120–125).

Disadvantage and discrimination are so central to the experience of disabled people that they are one of the key ways in which they are actually identified (Thomas 2007 Thomas, C. 2007. Sociologies of Disability and Illness: Contested Ideas in Disability Studies and Medical Sociology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.[CrossRef]). Having briefly looked at the ideas behind capabilities we now move on to explore the use of CDS as a political theory and its potential as an agent of change. We examine whether CDS is of any use in the pursuit or eradication of injustice faced by disabled people and in the fight against oppression.

Critical disability studies and justice

The influence of CDS and its challenge to the assumption that disability is a uniform condition have enabled the emergence of new ideas on disability. In particular, this has enabled the development of a theory that can take account of not only impairment effects but also can include class, ethnicity, sexual orientation or cultural identities. It has also argued for the re-emergence of a new political identity, one where a solidarity that was previously built on a common single identity is replaced by one that incorporates multiple voices including representatives from across the range of constituencies. The politics that it seeks to develop will be the ending of the single interest group identity of the disability movement to be replaced by single-issue groups campaigning for different social issues. To paraphrase Lister (1998 Lister, R. 1998. “Citizenship and Difference: Towards a Differentiated Universalism.” European Journal of Social Theory 1 (1): 71–90.10.1177/136843198001001006[CrossRef], [CSA], 74), if disability and impairment are simply to be ‘deconstructed into a kaleidoscope of shifting identities’ and ableist discourses, there will be no disabled people left to either fight for the right to be, or to be a citizen.

If the principles of CDS are evaluated critically in the light of disadvantage, its analytical and political value becomes questionable. Its relativism and its suggestions that impairments are ethically and politically merely neutral differences are false. Impairments often have very tangible effects on people’s well-being, many of which cannot be explained away by deconstruction (for example, Shakespeare 2006 Shakespeare, T. 2006. Disability Rights and Wrongs. London: Routledge.; Thomas 1999 Thomas, C. 1999. Female Forms: Experiencing and Understanding Disability. Buckingham: Open University Press.). Recognizing impairment effects is necessary in order to secure proper treatment and social arrangements that enhance disabled people’s well-being and social participation. CDS runs the risk of dismissing not only the personal experiences of living with impairment, but also the significance of the differences between socially created disadvantages. These disadvantages that often result from oppressive social arrangements, are very much real and take place in different ways for different disadvantaged groups.

Disabled people typically experience disadvantage in relation to the market and capitalism, and they have to a large extent been excluded from employment and from equal social participation, respect and wealth (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef], 26). On top of these materialist disadvantages, disabled people are stigmatized as deviant and undesirable, and also subordinated to various oppressive hierarchical relations. For disabled people to achieve participatory parity, they require more than recognition; they need material help, targeted resource enhancement, and personal enhancement (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007Wolff, J., and A. De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278268.001.0001[CrossRef]). Disability is rooted in the economic structures of society and demands redistribution of goods and wealth. In contrast to some other oppressed groups, disabled people require more than the removal of barriers if they are to achieve social justice. This extra help might be small – for example, allowing a student with dyslexia extra time in an examination – through to complex interventions such as facilitated communication, a job support worker or 24-hour personal assistance. Whatever the size, it is an extra cost both to employers and to the state. These are real needs and represent real differences. Without an acceptance of these differences it is hard to see how we could move forward. Whilst these ‘real differences’ can be presented as the result of dominant ableist discourses where disabled people’s needs are regarded as extra cost, this does not solve the problem. The problems disabled people face require more than ideological change, and ideological change is of little use if it does not result in material change.

CDS fails to account for the economic basis of disability and offers only the tools of deconstruction and the abolishment of cultural hierarchies to eradicate economic injustice. This, as Fraser (2000Fraser, N. 2000. “Rethinking Recognition.” New Left Review 3, May-June: 107–120.) has argued, would be possible in a society where there were no relatively autonomous markets and the distribution of goods were regulated through cultural values. In such a society, oppression based on identity would translate perfectly into economic injustice and maldistribution. This is far from the current reality where ‘marketization has pervaded all societies to some degree, at least partially decoupling economic mechanisms of distribution from cultural patterns of value and prestige’ (Fraser 2000Fraser, N. 2000. “Rethinking Recognition.” New Left Review 3, May-June: 107–120., 111). Markets are not controlled by nor are they subsidiary to culture; ‘as a result they generate economic inequalities that are not mere expressions of identity hierarchies’ (Fraser 2000Fraser, N. 2000. “Rethinking Recognition.” New Left Review 3, May-June: 107–120., 111–112). The disadvantage related to disability is to a great extent a matter of economic injustice, and before this injustice can be corrected we have to be able to identify those individuals and social groups that have been disadvantaged by social arrangements. Whilst this does create and foster categories and binaries between groups of people, it also requires some sort of categories to start with; namely, the various categories of disadvantage.

Both the social and physical mechanisms that produce human diversity are real, and they produce tangible differences that cannot be challenged, let alone abolished, merely by pointing out the wanton nature of difference, and deconstructing the meanings attached to disability. Changing the social conditions that disadvantage and disable some people demands that the diverse, sometimes dualistic, reality of social advantage and disadvantage between different groups of people is recognized. This is exactly why group identities based on, for example, impairment, gender, or sexuality have been invaluable tools in the resistance against discrimination and oppression – in the fight against socially produced disadvantage. Confident, positive disability identity has enabled many disabled people to actively challenge the status quo that disadvantages them and to claim rights and power and participation in dominant institutions. Being different from the so-called normal majority is no longer considered to conflict with a good life, equality and respect. Quite the opposite, positive realization of one’s difference has been liberating and empowering to many disabled people (Shakespeare 2006Shakespeare, T. 2006. Disability Rights and Wrongs. London: Routledge.; Morris 1991Morris, J. 1991. Pride against Prejudice. London: Verso.). For a radical and active disability movement to emerge and for disabled people to take action on their own account, they have to see themselves as an unfairly marginalized or disadvantaged constituency and a minority group (Shakespeare and Watson 2001Shakespeare, T., and N. Watson. 2001. “Making the Difference: Disability, Politics, Recognition.” In Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by G. Albrecht, K. Seelman and M. Bury, 546–564. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.10.4135/9781412976251[CrossRef]). The category disabled/non-disabled is a good abstraction that can enable the development of communities of resistance, and without it is hard to see how these could develop.

CDS is premised on the idea that difference acts as a precursor to the normalizing of behaviour and a requirement to treat people differently and, importantly, less favourably. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that the categories that are applied to disabled people create an unnecessary divide between disabled and non-disabled people. You could equally make the point that without these categories we would not know what it is we have to do, what actions we have to take or what services we have to put in place to include disabled people. Indeed, for many disabled people the disadvantages they are subjected to arise not as the result of domination but through neglect and the denial of services and through society failing to take responsibility for those in need. As Wolff (2009Wolff, J. 2009. “Disability among Equals.” In Disability and Disadvantage, edited by K. Brownlee and A. Cureton, 112–137. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 114) points out: ‘anti-discrimination policy needs to identify a group to be protected.’ In other words, it is impossible to fight the oppression of a group of people that does not exist. Recognition of impairment is also crucial regarding legislation and policy that aim to protect disabled people against discrimination. The point of anti-discrimination legislation is to protect people from discrimination on the basis of their physical and mental properties, not on their opportunity to achieve equal participation and respect. Thus, ‘the parallel to race and gender is not disability but impairment’ (Wolff 2009Wolff, J. 2009. “Disability among Equals.” In Disability and Disadvantage, edited by K. Brownlee and A. Cureton, 112–137. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 135).

Conclusion

Further, deconstructing differences will not in and of itself produce respect and equality between all people with various characteristics. Neither will it result in a social order free from a sense of difference. It is simply unrealistic to assume that a society could exist were people would not see some other people as different, and their lives or characteristics as representing a deviation from some norm considered important regarding good human life. This is because some of the individual characteristics that define disabled people are, sometimes with good reason, undesirable, even in a utopia where all differences would have been queered. Disability is not the same as many other group identities and we need to explore both morally and socially disability and difference rather than simply use difference as a concept through which to critique the disability identity. There are no rational reasons to consider homosexuality or gender undesirable characteristics whatever the social context, but there are many impairments that can reasonably be seen as undesirable (Shakespeare 2006Shakespeare, T. 2006. Disability Rights and Wrongs. London: Routledge.). Motor neuron disease, depression or spinal cord injury are the kinds of conditions that we would prefer not to have, and this is not merely because of the cultural representations attached to them but because these conditions are the kinds of predicaments that cause suffering irrespective of one’s cultural environment. In acknowledging that impairments can include an undesirable dimension does not imply devaluing people with impairments nor their positive group identity (Shakespeare and Watson 2010 Shakespeare, T., and N. Watson. 2010. “Beyond Models: Understanding the Complexity of Disabled people’s Lives.” In New Directions in the Sociology of Chronic and Disabling Conditions, edited by G. Scambler and S. Scambler, 57–77. London: Palgrave Macmillan.). As long as people are genuinely free to decide for themselves and feel about themselves however they wish to feel, we are pretty close to relational justice, free from hierarchical evils. Imposing on people ableist or disablist assumptions is certainly wrong, but so would be the denial of the personal experiences of fearing the loss of one’s physical and mental capacities, or the fear of dying (Carel 2008 Carel, H. 2008. Illness. Durham: Acumen.). To explain the psychological anguish related to conditions such as motor neurone disease or depression merely in terms of internalized oppression and ableism would be insensitive, disrespectful and simply nonsensical.

#critical disability studies #ethics #justice #disability #political philosophy #critique #morality

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