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Disability, Connectivity and Transgressing the Autonomous Body

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Abstract

This paper explores the interconnectedness of persons with disabilities, technologies and the environment by problematizing Western notions of the independent, autonomous subject. Drawing from Deleuze and Guattari’s reconfiguration of the static subject as active becoming, prevailing discourses valorizing independence are critiqued as contributing to the marginalization of bodies marked as disabled. Three examples of disability “dependencies”—man-dog, man-machine, and woman-woman connectivities—are used to illustrate that subjectivity is partial and transitory. Disability connectivity thus serves a signpost for an expanded understanding of subjectivity and suggests a radically altered ethics that is no longer premised on individual rights.

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Notes

  1. See M. Oliver, “A Sociology of Disability or a Disablist Sociology?”

  2. See H. Hahn, “The Politics of Physical Differences” and A. Silvers, D. Wasserman, and M. Mahowald, Disability, Difference, and Discrimination, 74–76.

  3. See V. Finkelstein “The Commonality of Disability,” and C. J. Gill, “Four Types of Integration.”

  4. See M. Deal, “Disabled People’s Attitudes.”

  5. See R. McRuer, “Critical Investments: AIDS, Christopher Reeve, and Queer/Disability Studies,” and S. Wendell, “Unhealthy Disabled.”

  6. See M. Shildrick and J. Price, “Breaking the Boundaries of the Broken Body”; M. Shildrick, “Becoming Vulnerable”; and M Shildrick and J Price, “Bodies Together: Touch, Ethics and Disability.”

  7. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 25.

  8. Ibid, 26.

  9. B. Gleeson, Geographies of Disability.

  10. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 151.

  11. See B. Massumi, A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

  12. B. Vivian, “The Threshold of the Self,” 303–318.

  13. G. Deleuze, Negotiations.

  14. R. Michalko, The Two in One, 170–171.

  15. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 160.

  16. D. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women, 150.

  17. Ibid, 181.

  18. The Roeher Institute.

  19. S. Williams, “Bodily Dys-order,” 59–82.

  20. See L A Shane, A Blur on Two Wheels.

  21. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 151.

  22. M. Shildrick and J. Price, “Breaking the Boundaries of the Broken Body,” 93–113.

  23. See J Kristeva, “The Limits of Life.”

  24. R. F. Imrie and P. E. Wells, “Disablism, Planning and the Built Environment,” cited in B. Gleeson, Geographies of Disability, 142.

  25. J. I. Charlton, Nothing About Us Without Us, 162.

  26. See J. Price and M. Shildrick, “Uncertain Thoughts on the Dis/abled Body”; Shildrick and Price, “Bodies Together” and “Breaking the Boundaries of the Broken Body.”

  27. M. Shildrick, Leaky Bodies and Boundaries, 179.

  28. M. Shildrick, “Becoming Vulnerable,” 223.

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Acknowledgments

Thank you to the following colleagues for their comments on earlier drafts of this work: Margrit Shildrick, Sioban Nelson, Caroline Fusco, Dave Holmes, Hilde Zitzelsberger, Thecla Damianakis and Brian Pronger. This work was supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Fellowship and a CIHR Health Care, Technology and Place Strategic Training Program Fellowship.

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  1. Department of Physical Therapy, University of Toronto, 500 University Avenue, 8th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5G 1V7, Canada

    Barbara E. Gibson

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Gibson, B.E. Disability, Connectivity and Transgressing the Autonomous Body. J Med Humanit 27, 187–196 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-006-9017-6

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