Over the last quarter of the twentieth century, there has been an extraordinary politicisation of disabled people, with the growth of self‐help organisations, and campaigns for anti‐discrimination legislation and citizenship rights (not charity). There has been a parallel critique of the “personal tragedy” orthodoxy that has dominated attitudes and policies towards disabled people. Whereas the traditional approach settled on individual functional limitations in mind or body and stressed medical and allied treatments and rehabilitation, organisations of disabled people pioneered a “social model” perspective. This defines disability as a form of social oppression in so far as people with impairments are “disabled” or excluded from everyday life by social and environmental barriers, attitudes and practices. Hence, the remedy shifts to political action to change the “disabling society”.
Most recently, the social model of disability is being challenged by a number of “sympathetic” critics. The merit of this collection is that it offers an opportunity to examine the alternative positions developed in post‐modern theorising. In “mapping the terrain” the editors confront an immediate difficulty: “post‐modern” covers a considerable variety of approaches, particularly after its intermingling with post‐structuralism. They are united in their direct attack on key modernist ideas, such as the “grand narratives” of human progress and emancipation, and a denial of foundational theories or standards (whether of knowledge, morality or aesthetics). More specifically, post‐modern thinking emphasises the cultural construction of embodied experience and identity, and the significance of “difference” in disabled people's lives. Post‐structuralism, notably the ideas of Michel Foucault, highlights power/knowledge relations and the role of discourse in producing “normalcy” and the marginalisation of “abnormal” bodies and minds.
The editors accept that post‐modern theories are “often opaque”, but maintain that they can contribute enormously “to the development of inclusive societies” (original emphasis, p. 14). Their own preference is for a “strategic postmodernism” that downgrades claims of a new “post‐capitalist” age and avoids the retreat into relativism or nihilism regarding social and political struggles that they associate with “radical post‐modernism”. Instead, they advocate a “political project of resistance and change” (p. 6), and attention to the “situatedness” of knowledge claims.
The following 16 chapters illustrate some of the ways in which post‐modern analyses are intended to “trouble” modernist understandings of disability. Although Carol Thomas and Mairian Corker indicate in a discussion of materialist and post‐modern accounts their manifest differences, the existence of some common ground should not be overlooked. Most contributors, however, presume a polarised perspective. This is a feature of the several chapters influenced by Foucault's writings, where there is an embrace of genealogies or “histories of the present” (Shelley Tremain) and the discursive construction of disability, and specifically people with the label of “learning difficulties” (Dan Goodley and Mark Rapley). Other chapters also draw on the “later” Foucauldian accent on the “technologies of the self” in making identities, such as sexual subjectivities (Russell Shuttleworth), but also on its potential for resistance.
The post‐modern emphasis on “situated knowledges” and partial truths suggests relativism, but several contributors argue that these ideas can positively underpin studies of disability. For example, Anita Ghai, writing on India, locates her analysis within the “deconstructive capacity of post‐colonial theories”, while accepting that these necessarily require continuous re‐formulation. Jackie Leach Scully, and Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick explore the discursive turn in respect of a post‐modern ethics based on the acceptance of difference. Tanya Titchkosky elaborates post‐structuralist ideas that the body and impairment are “always‐already constituted from social and political discursive action” (p. 102). She traces from a micro‐interactionist perspective the “accomplishment” of blindness and sightedness. Rod Michalko similarly explores the post‐modern problematising of knowledge production, its legitimation, and the knowing subject. He indicates how disabled people learn that they must assimilate an outsider's view of blindness in order to be rehabilitated.
Petra Kuppers examines the relationship between the “real” and its representation, taking inspiration from Baudrillard and later post‐structuralist writings. These go beyond the search for “positive images” into a more fluid and uncertain post‐modern cultural ambivalence. Johnson Cheu dissects the continuing myths around medical cures and the “eradication” of impairment, looking at genetics and the representation of disability in futuristic film. In one of the most innovative chapters, Anita Silvers explores how standards of beauty are exploited to sustain dominant power/interests. Beauty becomes commodified and a justification for condemning and excluding some people. She then explores the apparent paradox that, “aestheticising disability elevates otherness to originality” (p. 241).
The post‐modern/post‐structuralist credentials are not always so strongly paraded, or as attributed in the editors’ introduction. For example, John Davis and Nick Watson impressively dismantle the representation of disabled children as “passive, vulnerable and dependent”. This rests on a “reflexive, ethnographic” analysis of how teachers and children construct and utilise notions of disability during everyday interaction. A primary interest surrounds the resistance strategies adopted by disabled children, but their study does not draw deeply on post‐modern theories. A similar comment applies to Anne Wilson and Peter Beresford's chapter on madness and distress and the expansion of the psy‐complex. Their criticism of the positioning of “normals” and the “mentally ill” as distinct and binary groups is important but not distinctively “post‐modern”.
This collection of post‐modern thinking offers valuable insights into the cultural representation and positioning of disabled subjects in everyday discourses and social interaction. A welcome feature is that several chapters are located in empirical research. However, this volume would benefit from more discussion of the contradictions generated by post‐modern theories, such as the social origins and limits of bodies/minds as discursive productions. Additionally, the readiness to merge post‐modern thinking with diverse traditional perspectives is both intriguing and a source of confusion. Finally, on the evidence provided, post‐modern theories have yet to realise their claimed potential in re‐framing campaigns for social inclusion.
