Abstract
A few of years ago I was invited to contribute a paper to David Mitchell’s panel at the Society for Disability Studies Conference, Minneapolis, 2014, entitled Non-Normative Positivisms: Towards a Methodology of Critical Embodiment, the SDS panel to which I refer throughout this chapter also included work by Stephanie Kerschbaum and the late Tobin Siebers. The premise was that the concept of non-normative positivisms would open up a space from which we could sketch out an alternative ethics about why and how disabled lives matter (Mitchell 2014). Though appreciative of the salient assertion that disabled people must be allowed to pursue our lives much as non-disabled people pursue their lives, the panel set out to argue that in practice this ethical trajectory is defined by limitations and serves to bolster the desirability of the normate subject position. At the time of this invitation I was completing a book that explored distinctions between ableism and disablism (Bolt 2014a), which I pondered with the theme of the panel in mind and came up with the idea of the tripartite model of disability.
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Notes
- 1.
I introduced the tripartite model of disability at the SDS Conference before exploring it in a couple of keynote presentations at the University of Liverpool in 2014 and Lancaster University in 2015, organised by Maryam Farhani and Alan Gregory, respectively. Since then, based on the model, I have had an article accepted for publication in Disability & Society; another is under consideration with the Journal of Further and Higher Education; and my partner Heidi Mapley and I have completed a chapter for the forthcoming InVisible Difference book that focuses on the intersection of dance, disability, and law.
- 2.
I have sensory and physical impairments as a result of retinitis pigmentosa and psoriatic arthritis, meaning I am generally and easily identified as a disabled person. This is my rationale for the way in which I employ the pronoun we when referring to disabled people throughout the chapter.
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Bolt, D. (2020). Complex and Critical: A Methodological Application of the Tripartite Model of Disability. In: Ware, L. (eds) Critical Readings in Interdisciplinary Disability Studies. Critical Studies of Education, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35309-4_6
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