Toward a Feminist Theory of Disability

Hypatia ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Wendell

We need a feminist theory of disability, both because 16 percent of women are disabled, and because the oppression of disabled people is closely linked to the cultural oppression of the body. Disability is not a biological given; like gender, it is socially constructed from biological reality. Our culture idealizes the body and demands that we control it. Thus, although most people will be disabled at some time in their lives, the disabled are made “the other,” who symbolize failure of control and the threat of pain, limitation, dependency, and death. If disabled people and their knowledge were fully integrated into society, everyone's relation to her/his real body would be liberated.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanweer Alam ◽  
Abdirahman Ahmed Hadi ◽  
Rayyan Qari Shahabuddin Najam ◽  
Shamimul Qamar

Child Tracking System is a mobile application where the parent can monitor their children location in crowded environments. In addition to children, there is also the elderly people, and the disabled people, so the guidance or the person responsible of them can use this application to track their location. The parent or guidance side will have the application in which they can track, and on the other side, the child or the old person or the disabled person will have device that includes the GPS chip. The main goal of this research is to design an application with system that will help parents to keep track of their children, eventually reducing the cases in which the children or the other mentioned categories of people could be lost. The current used solution to this problem is that the children first have a wearable hand wrist in which they print their parent phone number, so when the child is lost there is a center in which the child is being taken and dealt with care till they contact the parent to come and pick the child up. The problem with the current way that it takes time, and there is a risk that child get totally lost or kidnapped before even reaching to any help, so the new way is better to even prevent them to go far away or to be lost for hours, thus the recovery here will be fast unlike the regular used way nowadays. That goal will be achieved throw systematically objectives starting from studying the existed systems, to planning and analysing, going to designing and implementing, and lastly, testing our own system.


Hypatia ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Ferguson

This is a review essay that also serves as an introduction to the other essays in the issue. It discusses feminist theory's relation to Freud, feminist ethical questions on motherhood and sexuality, the historical question of how systems of socially constructed sexual desire connect to male dominance, the question of the role of the body in feminst theory, and disputes within feminism on self, gender, agency and power.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanweer Alam ◽  
Abdirahman Ahmed Hadi ◽  
Rayyan Qari Shahabuddin Najam ◽  
Shamimul Qamar

Child Tracking System is a mobile application where the parent can monitor their children location in crowded environments. In addition to children, there is also the elderly people, and the disabled people, so the guidance or the person responsible of them can use this application to track their location. The parent or guidance side will have the application in which they can track, and on the other side, the child or the old person or the disabled person will have device that includes the GPS chip. The main goal of this research is to design an application with system that will help parents to keep track of their children, eventually reducing the cases in which the children or the other mentioned categories of people could be lost. The current used solution to this problem is that the children first have a wearable hand wrist in which they print their parent phone number, so when the child is lost there is a center in which the child is being taken and dealt with care till they contact the parent to come and pick the child up. The problem with the current way that it takes time, and there is a risk that child get totally lost or kidnapped before even reaching to any help, so the new way is better to even prevent them to go far away or to be lost for hours, thus the recovery here will be fast unlike the regular used way nowadays. That goal will be achieved throw systematically objectives starting from studying the existed systems, to planning and analysing, going to designing and implementing, and lastly, testing our own system.


Organization ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Kenny ◽  
Marianna Fotaki

In this article, we propose a new way of approaching the topic of ethics for management and organization theory. We build on recent developments within critical organization studies that focus on the question of what kind of ethics is possible in organizational contexts that are inevitably beset by difference. Addressing this ‘ethics of difference’, we propose a turn to feminist theory, in which the topic has long been debated but which has been underutilized in organization theory until very recently. Specifically, we draw on the work of Bracha Ettinger to re-think and extend existing understandings. Inspired by gender studies, psychoanalysis, philosophy and art, Ettinger’s work has been celebrated for its revolutionary re-theorization of subjectivity. Drawing on a feminist ethics of the body inspired by psychoanalysis, she presents a concept of ‘trans-subjectivity’. In this, subjectivity is defined by connectedness, co-existence and compassion towards the other, and is grounded in what Ettinger terms the ‘matrixial borderspace’. An ethics of organization derived from the concept of the matrixial suggests that a different kind of ethical relation with the Other is possible. In this article, we demonstrate this through examining the issue of gender in the workplace. We conclude by outlining the implications of this perspective for rethinking ethics, embodiment and gender, and in particular for the development of a corporeal ethics for organization studies.


2012 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Morrison ◽  
Monica J. Casper

<p>In this essay, we explore possible affinities between disability studies and trauma studies. We suggest that a fruitful engagement between these fields should start with the meanings of trauma and disability in their embodiment. We offer theoretical provocations alongside a comparative cultural analysis of traumatic brain injury and obstetric fistula. Ironically, while many disability studies scholars have worked to dislodge definitions of "abnormal" from the body, a conceptual focus on stigma still keeps the disabled body partially in view. Yet wounds, impairment, and pain are erased, and in many framings, the object of analysis is an individual being, whose now-disabled body is socially constructed, and whose agency is posited as being in struggle and resistance against the normative culture. We suggest that the body itself provides a link between disability studies and critical trauma studies, arguing both for the significance of representations as well a materialist understanding of breach, for a notion of the organic, fleshy body as it is damaged, sometimes profoundly, in its operations of life.</p><p>Keywords: Disability studies; Trauma studies; Traumatic Brain Injury; Obstetric Fistula; Theory</p>


Author(s):  
Radhika Sharma ◽  
◽  
Nagendra Kumar ◽  

Amidst society’s segregation of the people among minorities on the basis of gender, race, caste and creed, it is difficult to locate the position of another extreme social minority, i.e. persons with disabilities. But the turn of the century has validated some art and activism performed by persons with disabilities due to which the disabled have marked their position in literature, film and media to some extent, yet they have not secured a position of dignity in the mainstream. To make disabled people visible, Syed Sallauddin Pasha (the father of Indian dance therapy for persons with disabilities) initiates his own Natya Shastra i.e. Classical Wheelchair Dances for differently-abled artists. Drawing upon Syed Sallauddin Pasha’s therapeutic dance choreography, the present paper studies performance arts in the context of differently-abled people, and for this, the paper explores the intersection of Performance Studies and Disability Studies. In performing arts (or dance in particular), the body is the medium of representation, likewise, the body defines the identity in the context of disabled people. Therefore, the paper by studying the intersection of Disability Studies and Performance Studies, explores the stereotypes related to the body by scrutinising the disabled dance bodies on the stage. The paper further attempts to explore the idea of accessibility for persons with disabilities by taking into account the assistive devices and accessible architecture. The study then goes into an analysis of spectators’ response, stare and gaze towards disability dance performances. In a broader context, the paper offers to scrutinise the negative stereotypes attached to disability and disabled dancing bodies on stage by exploring the nuances in Syed Sallauddin Pasha’s choreography.


Comunicar ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (25) ◽  
Author(s):  
María-Mercedes López-González ◽  
Mercedes López-González

In this paper one presents the development and some results of a practical activity that forms a part of the formative program of students of Teaching, in relation to the subject «Psycho-pedagogic Bases of the Special Education». The activity supposes the utilization of the television as curricular resource and we it come leading to end for years, which experience allows us to recount some methodological considerations and think about its results. The activity includes a double slope. On one hand, to study the images of the disabled people projected in the television, as important mass media that determines the mental representation and social attitudes in relation with this group. On the other hand, to use the formative content of diverse programs that presents, from different perspectives or approaches, the reality of the persons with disability or people with educational special needs. Es una realidad indiscutible que la televisión constituye una valiosa herramienta cultural, no sólo para comunicar, informar y entretener al público televidente, sino también, y especialmente, para formar a los espectadores y espectadoras como sujetos activos, críticos y solidarios en una sociedad plural. En la Cumbre 2000 de Comunicación y Educación, celebrada en Toronto, y en otros encuentros posteriores sobre el tema, diversos representantes institucionales y dirigentes de medios de comunicación enfatizaron la necesidad, y su consiguiente compromiso práctico, de desarrollar la vertiente formativa de la televisión, como importante vehículo para la formación permanente de las sociedades contemporáneas y futuras. Formar no significa únicamente transmitir la cultura como un conjunto de conocimientos que el sujeto debe asimilar. Significa, además, y especialmente según la propuesta freiriana de pedagogía de la liberación, formar conciencia y pensamiento crítico, algo fundamental en la tarea que nos ocupa de preparación de los futuros y futuras profesionales de la educación. En esta Comunicación presentamos el desarrollo y algunos resultados de una actividad práctica que forma parte del programa formativo del alumnado de magisterio, en relación con una materia de carácter troncal en los planes de estudios de todas las especialidades de esta carrera universitaria: Bases Psicopedagógicas de la Educación Especial. Actividad que supone el aprovechamiento de la televisión como recurso curricular y que venimos llevando a cabo desde hace años, cuya experiencia nos permite referir algunas consideraciones metodológicas y reflexiones sobre sus resultados. La ejecución práctica de la actividad comprende una doble vertiente. Por una parte, estudiar las imágenes de las personas con discapacidad proyectadas en la televisión, como importante medio de comunicación que condiciona la representación mental y las actitudes sociales en relación con este colectivo. Por otra parte, supone utilizar el contenido formativo de diversos programas de interesante valor formativo y cultural, que se centran en distintas dimensiones vitales y refieren, desde diferentes perspectivas o enfoques, la realidad de las personas con discapacidad o personas con necesidades educativas especiales. La televisión se convierte así en un medio idóneo para facilitar la comprensión de las dificultades, necesidades y demandas de un importante sector de la sociedad que en el futuro será objeto de atención profesional, educativa en nuestro caso, por parte de los actuales estudiantes universitarios.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wojciech Otto

Disability in Polish films is not a marginal issue. As a film topic, it has been explored in many different ways and contexts due to a nexus of diverse relations, trends and social phenomena. All of which have revealed the degree of intensity of the phenomenon as well as its historic changeability. On the one hand, such images have been a reflection of the filmmakers’ interests and, on the other, a source of knowledge on disability and a kind of catalyst for socio-moral transformation shaping the attitudes and behaviour of society towards the disabled. The problem is presented by,, images of disabled film characters, which are widely used in Polish cinematography and often built on socialstereotypes, as well as by the communicative strategies used by filmmakers in their works on disability. In this context, films about disability have played an opinion-forming role, contributing greatly to an enhanced image of disabled people in society and widening their area of activity. The sexuality of people with disabilities is portrayed as asexuality and hypersexuality, and in Polish cinema it mainly concerns the emotional sphere, and less so the physical.


2018 ◽  
Vol 120 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Sheppard

This paper presents the early findings of research into the experiences of pain for those who live with chronic pain and engage in BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, sadism and masochism), explored using a critical crip approach rooted in crip theory and feminist disability studies. The research took the form of a series of interviews with eight disabled people living with chronic pain who experience pain in their BDSM practices, developing a narrative of experiences. The majority of those living with chronic pain, or who have diagnoses of chronic illnesses causing chronic pain, are women. Chronic pain is frequently assumed to be similar to acute pain; however, thinking through pain in terms of normativity and able-bodymindedness reveals the ableist structures that underpin normative attitudes towards pain and those who are in pain. Pain is understood as dehumanising—and thus the person living with chronic pain is understood as not human, abnormal, and disabled. The disabled body, the body in pain, is a horrifying object of abjection, and the non-disabled observer assumes that to be in pain is to suffer; therefore, living with chronic pain is understood as an ontological impossibility and must be stopped. BDSM is a series of practices forming a space in which the people living with chronic pain in this study are able to engage with their somatic experience in ways that do not expect normalcy, while being disabled and living with chronic pain gives them space to explore non-normative sexual practices.


2014 ◽  
pp. 121-129
Author(s):  
Joanna Trzebińska ◽  
Jakub Bartoszewicz

Multi-level annotation of the specialized Corpus of Dialogs of Disabled Polish SpeakersWhile Polish language is relatively well represented in general purpose corpora such as National Polish Language Corpus still there are groups of speakers that are underrepresented in reference corpora. One of such sub-groups is the disabled people community. On the other hand there is a growing need for understanding how disability influences social and cognitive abilities, language in particular. In this paper, we present a specialized Corpus of Dialogs of Disabled Speakers. The process of compiling, transcription and annotation of pragmatic, semantic and morphosyntactic features will be described, as well as Corpus applications will be discussed.


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