Towards an assemblage approach to mobile disability politics

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses embodied geographies of power assisted devices (powered wheelchairs and motorised scooters) for disabled people in Australia to augment understandings of mobile disability politics. Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of ‘lines’ is used to reimagine spatial thinking about mobile disability politics. Disability in this paper is understood as an emplaced, emergent, relational and embodied process that arises in the interaction between ideas, materials and bodies. A focus on the shifting affective capacities of everyday journeys can deepen an understanding of mobile disability politics through attention to sensations. To illustrate the notion of lines we draw on three ‘portraits’ from a qualitative project on power assisted devices in Ballina Shire, New South Wales, Australia. Each portrait provides an illustration of how mobility experiences of power assisted devices may reinforce and/or challenge normative ideologies and identities, alongside deepening understandings of how ideas and materials come together to produce enabling and/or exclusionary arrangements.

KEYWORDS:

• Molecular line
• molar line
• assemblage thinking
• participatory data analysis
• Australia

Acknowledgments

The research received ethical approval from the Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC no. 2019/502, University of Wollongong. We thank our research partner Assistive Technology Suppliers Australia for their ongoing support. Thanks to our research liaison, care professionals and mobility equipment retailers who helped with recruitment. And to all our co-researchers who shared their powered assisted device experiences living in Ballina Shire, New South Wales, Australia. We convey our sincere appreciation to four anonymous referees for their constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council LInkage Project entitled Integrated Futures for the use of Motorised Mobility Devices, Grant number: LP180100913.