Print Media Representations of the ‘Uncooperative’ Disabled Patient: The Case of Clint Hallam

Abstract

‘The hegemonic location of biomedicalism among institutional formations has meant our present capacity to experience the body directly, or theorize it indirectly, [has become] extricably medicalized’ (Frank, 1990, p. 136). Freidson (1970) points out that this state of hegemonic biomedicalism has meant that doctors have had a sanctioned monopoly to be able to define the continuum of health and illness and approaches to the treatment of illness. As one commentator put it, biomedicalism has resulted in the patientisation of the population (Taylor, 1979). In the case of disablement, biomedical epistemologies and the assumption that so-called ‘abnormal’ conditions are the principle obstacle to disabled people’s integration into society have shaped social and technological practices as well as the formation of disabled subjectivities.