scholarly journals Writing intellectual disability: glimpses into precarious processes or re/making a cultural phenomenon

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chelsea T. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Disability ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Expressive Writing ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Subject Category ◽  
Structuralist Framework ◽  
Cultural Location

We make each other mean through precarious processes of engagement. This dissertation posits intellectual disability as a modernist subject category characterized by un-belonging and a presumed lack of normative expression. The author takes a hesitant, interpretive, and phenomenological approach to confronting the question of what it means to re/make intellectual disability as presence and process rather than as problem. The researcher engages with intellectual disability by introducing expressive writing as method under a feminist post structuralist framework of exploratory, relational ethics. In doing so, this project introduces the concepts of wonderment and triple-labelling to the fields of cultural studies and critical disability studies. This work advocates for a reorientation toward meaning-making and research-based engagement with intellectual disability as cultural, contextual, and relational phenomenon that remains unsettled as it situates researchers at a perceived limit of knowledge. This dissertation privileges process over resolution. The writing launches from an affect-laden epistemology of wonderment, and thus struggles to resolve its own ethical and methodological uncertainty as it attempts to center intellectual disability without (completely)privileging normative ways of un/knowing. This approach allows that the body is implicated in uncertain discursive processes that re-construct and circulate meanings about the body, the self,and the Other. Then, relying on Foucault’s conceptions of power and knowledge and Snyder and Mitchell's cultural location of disability framework, the study describes Western cultural memory: processes of mind/body splitting and subject-category building traceable through esoteric pre-modernity, eugenic modernity, and the post-identity politics of Davis’s dismodernity. A discussion of research ethics follows, which challenges rational methodological conceptions of intellectual disability that rely on preconceived notions of vulnerability. Before describing expressive writing as a primary research method, the author also makes a case for engaging with triple-labeled people (those labeled disabled, vulnerable, and incompetent) by writing in-relation-to, privileging silence and absence over “giving voice,” engaging in unfamiliarity and untranslatability, and attending to “the space between” the self and the Other.This writing uses reflexive vignettes and critical analysis to lead readers toward the researcher’s final phenomenological reflections on experiences with triple-labeled people writing in a Toronto day program.

scholarly journals Writing intellectual disability: glimpses into precarious processes or re/making a cultural phenomenon

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chelsea T. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Disability ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Expressive Writing ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Subject Category ◽  
Structuralist Framework ◽  
Cultural Location

We make each other mean through precarious processes of engagement. This dissertation posits intellectual disability as a modernist subject category characterized by un-belonging and a presumed lack of normative expression. The author takes a hesitant, interpretive, and phenomenological approach to confronting the question of what it means to re/make intellectual disability as presence and process rather than as problem. The researcher engages with intellectual disability by introducing expressive writing as method under a feminist post structuralist framework of exploratory, relational ethics. In doing so, this project introduces the concepts of wonderment and triple-labelling to the fields of cultural studies and critical disability studies. This work advocates for a reorientation toward meaning-making and research-based engagement with intellectual disability as cultural, contextual, and relational phenomenon that remains unsettled as it situates researchers at a perceived limit of knowledge. This dissertation privileges process over resolution. The writing launches from an affect-laden epistemology of wonderment, and thus struggles to resolve its own ethical and methodological uncertainty as it attempts to center intellectual disability without (completely)privileging normative ways of un/knowing. This approach allows that the body is implicated in uncertain discursive processes that re-construct and circulate meanings about the body, the self,and the Other. Then, relying on Foucault’s conceptions of power and knowledge and Snyder and Mitchell's cultural location of disability framework, the study describes Western cultural memory: processes of mind/body splitting and subject-category building traceable through esoteric pre-modernity, eugenic modernity, and the post-identity politics of Davis’s dismodernity. A discussion of research ethics follows, which challenges rational methodological conceptions of intellectual disability that rely on preconceived notions of vulnerability. Before describing expressive writing as a primary research method, the author also makes a case for engaging with triple-labeled people (those labeled disabled, vulnerable, and incompetent) by writing in-relation-to, privileging silence and absence over “giving voice,” engaging in unfamiliarity and untranslatability, and attending to “the space between” the self and the Other.This writing uses reflexive vignettes and critical analysis to lead readers toward the researcher’s final phenomenological reflections on experiences with triple-labeled people writing in a Toronto day program.

scholarly journals Performativity in art as reconstructions of the self in addressing conditions of depression

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Vicki Alexandra Ross Van Wyk
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenological Study ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Multiple Selves ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Social Constructs ◽  
Recovery Processes ◽  
Human Need

The motivation for this research results from the notion that art-making is a regenerative enriching process that can counteract the sense of dislocation that one suffers as a consequence of depression. The study has two objectives: to open a discourse around the transformative function of art for a person suffering depression; and challenge notions of dominant constructed ideals of normality by presenting alternative realities of the performative mind. From the earliest memories of my life, I knew I did not fit in, I was not part of the crowd. Depression has been my companion ever since I can remember. The intention for this self-study is to interrogate the ways in which art can become a self-actualising process in coping with depression. The content for this research deals with narratives of the mind, that is, my understanding of who I am. I have therefore, positioned myself as the pivot for this research, drawing on authentic personal experiential knowledge. This autobiographical phenomenological study is thus a self-reflexive exploration addressing concepts of difference and belonging in relation to social constructs of acceptability. The study looks at contemporary concepts of multiple selves, relationality and the application of therapeutic methodologies within art practice. Art-making becomes games of truth, mind games that offer alternative realities and possibilities for the construction of complex, multi-faceted narratives as dialogues between the self and the inner critic. Of importance is the concept that self is not a fixed conclusive notion but one that continues to unfold, shift and become a multi-layered construct. These new narratives examine how creativity enables or creates a sense of belonging or re-positioning of one’s states of mind. The overall intention of the art-making process is its potential for transformative self-recovery processes – the re-construction of who we are, rather than how we are perceived. This research thus examines the notion of belonging in this world through body/land enactments of ritualised behaviour. The body as metaphor investigates rites of passage as the re-tellings of one’s story within specific body/site/space relationships. The ideal of connection to site is central as a means of renewal and recovery – these performative relationships become the creative meaning-making processes of locating or positionality. In support of these ideas and concepts, the work of Ana Mendieta, Magdalena Abakanowicz and Suzanne Lacy are considered in relation to ideals of positionality and as reflecting each artist’s ethics or paradigms of equality. Artworks are examined against the notion of locating oneself within social contexts. The aim is to question the intention and outcomes of art-making as social function in dealing with issues of marginalisation and stigma. Performativity, personal writings/reflections and memory drawings are the quintessential tools of my art-making. The written psychological renderings and unravellings of my mind, questionings that are both reflexive and critical, are intentionally presented in dialogical, conversational and direct modes. This personal tone aims to allow a scope into my mind – it is my perspective from the inside, my voice, my personal understanding of the potential of art as a metaphorical process of transformation. Lacy asserts that the artist becomes a witness, reporter and analyst for socio-culturally biased concerns; a performance gives public articulation and permission to speak out loud, gives voice to internal dialogues, reveal information that requires questioning and that personal individual experience has profound social implications. Lacy believes that it is an innate human need to reflect on the meaning of one’s life and one’s work (2010:176-177). Central to the findings of this study, are both the transgressive and transformative functions of art.

Khatibi and Performativity, ‘From where to speak?’

2020 ◽  
pp. 125-146
Author(s):  
Alfonso de Toro
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Cultural Performance ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
Islam And Christianity ◽  
Cultural Location

Focusing on the work, that is located at the productive and innovative interfaces between of the Epistemai of Islam and Christianity, of Orient and Occident, this article will describe Khabiti’s ‘performative’ thinking and praxis in relation to the actual theory and praxis of ‘belonging’, ‘hospitality’, and ‘identity’ that are always dependent on language, on one’s own chosen language, and which are inserted into the body and steered or driven by emotion. The concept of “cultural performance” and the idea of a “performative identity” or of a “performative diaspora” are at the centre of Khatibi’s thinking and writing and generate the reinvention of the Self and a radical individual and democratic system. Khatibi represents one of the best examples of this phenomenon, but located in a “cosmopolitanism” and “cosmo-humanism.” Living in Rabat he became at the same time a cosmopolitan and a great cosmo-humanist at the very moment at which he began to deal as well with Western and Oriental cultural systems. He began to navigate in and to travel through many diverse systems of thinking, of literature, of culture and sciences – his erudition, his privileged sensibility and intelligence made him a cosmopolitan and cosmo-humanist. It developed his way of placing himself in the world, and of reading and writing about the world. His life was a “worlding-life,” his literature a “worlding-literature” within the interface of deconstruction, as well as of the Occidental and Oriental logoi. This article will describe his cultural location and find his voice through a triple act of “translatio” on the base of the axis of a “double critique” and of the “pensée autre”. He becomes an “écrivain-voyageur infatigable”, a “voyageur cosmopolite”, “voyageur ou migrant professionnel” of diverse worlds. The article will also describe Khatibi’s ‘accent’, his polyphony of voices, his thought, working, and writing in the fissure.

‘A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust’: The World and Self in Thomas Hardy's Poems

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Monika Szuba
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Recurrent Theme ◽  
Body Subject

The essay discusses selected poems from Thomas Hardy's vast body of poetry, focusing on representations of the self and the world. Employing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts such as the body-subject, wild being, flesh, and reversibility, the essay offers an analysis of Hardy's poems in the light of phenomenological philosophy. It argues that far from demonstrating ‘cosmic indifference’, Hardy's poetry offers a sympathetic vision of interrelations governing the universe. The attunement with voices of the Earth foregrounded in the poems enables the self's entanglement in the flesh of the world, a chiasmatic intertwining of beings inserted between the leaves of the world. The relation of the self with the world is established through the act of perception, mainly visual and aural, when the body becomes intertwined with the world, thus resulting in a powerful welding. Such moments of vision are brief and elusive, which enhances a sense of transitoriness, and, yet, they are also timeless as the self becomes immersed in the experience. As time is a recurrent theme in Hardy's poetry, this essay discusses it in the context of dwelling, the provisionality of which is demonstrated in the prevalent sense of temporality, marked by seasons and birdsong, which underline the rhythms of the world.

Physical fitness of people with moderate and considerable intellectual disabilities

Physiotherapy ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marzena Ślężyńska ◽  
Grzegorz Mięsok ◽  
Kamila Mięsok
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Intellectual Disability ◽  
Physical Fitness ◽  
Body Mass ◽  
Body Height ◽  
Abdominal Muscle ◽  
The Body ◽  
Intellectually Disabled ◽  
Fitness Tests ◽  
Abdominal Muscle Strength

AbstractIntroduction: The aim of the physical activity of the intellectually disabled is the strengthening of health, creating movement habits, promoting active recreation, and maintaining exercise capacity. Skillfully applied physical activity allows to mitigate the effects of pathology and create the compensations to enable the intellectually disabled people to live relatively independently. Physical activity and sport also increase their chances to integrate with their families, peers, and social environment.Materials and methods: The research targeted a group of 134 people with moderate or considerable intellectual disability (65 women and 69 men), aged 20-53 years, who participated in occupational therapy workshops in Jastrzębie Zdrój, Rybnik, and Żory. Physical fitness was assessed using the “Eurofit Special” test and balance tests. Measurements of body height and mass were also taken and then used to calculate the body mass index (BMI).Results: A salient somatic trait was the greater body mass relative to height among the persons with considerable disability, clearly illustrated by the BMI. This explained their greater heaviness in performing physical exercises. An even greater difference between participants with moderate and considerable intellectual disability was visible in physical fitness. Obviously, older persons did not achieve as good results in fitness tests as the younger ones, yet the participants were more differentiated by the level of disability than age. Most symptomatic differences to the disadvantage of the considerably disabled were observed in explosive strength, speed, abdominal muscle strength, and flexibility.Conclusions: Significant differences in fitness between the compared groups make it necessary to take into account the level of intellectual disability in the course of physical education and sport, at work, and in household duties.

Monkey on My Back. An Autoethnographic Narrative of a Therapeutic Experience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Wiesner
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
The Self ◽  
Symbolic Language ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Therapeutic Experience ◽  
Postmodern Philosophy ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Global Uncertainty

With a conscious attempt to contribute to contemporary discussions in mad/trans/queer/monster studies, the monograph approaches complex postmodern theories and contextualizes them from an autoethnographic methodological perspective. As the self-explanatory subtitle reads, the book introduces several topics as revelatory fields for the author’s self-exploration at the moment of an intense epistemological and ontological crisis. Reflexively written, it does not solely focus on a personal experience, as it also aims at bridging the gap between the individual and the collective in times of global uncertainty. There are no solid outcomes defined; nevertheless, the narrative points to a certain—more fluid—way out. Through introducing alternative ways of hermeneutics and meaning-making, the book offers a synthesis of postmodern philosophy and therapy, evolutionary astrology as a symbolic language, embodied inquiry, and Buddhist thought that together represent a critical attempt to challenge the pathologizing discursive practices of modern disciplines during the neoliberal capitalist era.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua S. Walden
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The book’s epilogue explores the place of musical portraiture in the context of posthumous depictions of the deceased, and in relation to the so-called posthuman condition, which describes contemporary changes in the relationship of the individual with such aspects of life as technology and the body. It first examines Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to view how Bernard Herrmann’s score relates to issues of portraiture and the depiction of the identity of the deceased. It then considers the work of cyborg composer-artist Neil Harbisson, who has aimed, through the use of new capabilities of hybridity between the body and technology, to convey something akin to visual likeness in his series of Sound Portraits. The epilogue shows how an examination of contemporary views of posthumous and posthuman identities helps to illuminate the ways music represents the self throughout the genre of musical portraiture.

Why Phenomenology?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Pattison
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Present Approach ◽  
The Self ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Pure Intuition ◽  
The Way

This chapter sets out the rationale for adopting a phenomenological approach to the devout life literature. Distinguishing the present approach from versions of the phenomenology of religion dominant in mid-twentieth-century approaches to religion, an alternative model is found in Heidegger’s early lectures on Paul. These illustrate that alongside its striving to achieve a maximally pure intuition of its subject matter, phenomenology will also be necessarily interpretative and existential. Although phenomenology is limited to what shows itself and therefore cannot pass judgement on the existence of God, it can deal with God insofar as God appears within the activity and passivity of human existence. From Hegel onward, it has also shown itself open to seeing the self as twofold and thus more than a simple subjective agent, opening the way to an understanding of the self as essentially spiritual.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document