Disabling practices

Abstract

Following Foucault’s theory of discourse this article aims at reformulating the established concept of disability. To this end, the author reconstructs ways in which disabling practices of subjectivation occur in and through public media discourses. The article focuses on the discoursive production of infantile identities in people with cognitive disabilities. The examples demonstrate that this discoursive production occurs in self-representational media formats and in outside media representations. Hence, the author develops a concept of disability as a discoursively produced ordering category, from which follows a reformulation of the disability concept. This reformulated concept, which grasps disability as discourse disability, allows in turn for a perspective on disability as practice and thus as independent from the subject. To conclude, the article discusses implications of such a perspective of disability for pedagogy and the social sciences, ultimately arguing for a broader definition of disability and for making respective benefits a matter of social pedagogy.

Keywords:

• discourse
• disability
• Foucault
• disability studies
• media
• SNE

Public Interest Statement

The paper at hand discusses the representation as well as the self-representation of people with cognitive disabilities in public media. The most important result of the studies referred to is, that almost every coverage und presentation of people with cognitive disabilities is in a way child-like. These so-called infantilisations lead to infantile identities of people with cognitive disabilities and the picture of cognitive disability as “eternal childhood” seems to be reproduced continuously. In consequence the paper offers a different understanding of disability, which focusses on “becoming disabled” instead of “being disabled”. This understanding is deduced from a Foucauldian understanding of “discourse”.

Notes

1. Some of the literature cited is available in German Language only. For a better understanding, the cited parts were translated into English. Nevertheless, the indication of source refers to the original version of the book in German.

2. Foucault reconstructs and develops the concept of discourse in at least five of his (main) works: “Madness and Civilization” (1965), “The Birth of the Clinic” (1975), “The Order of Things” (1971) as well as “The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language” (1972). (The dates stated refer to the first American edition respectively).

3. The following text will not engage with each of Foucault’s aforementioned works. For a respective treatment as well as a corresponding introduction into special needs pedagogy or as the case may be disability studies see Trescher (2015a, p. 261ff). Foucault’s concept of discourse is presented, due to the limited scope of this article, in a summary manner.

4. This can be illustrated using the example of middle age “Germany” where certain customary norms labelled as “Christian” predominated. Among these were a certain piety, clothes covering shoulders and knees, no premarital sex, no marriage among relatives and other confessions or religious groups, no same-sex romantic relations, and many more. Today these conducts are considered more or less acceptable forms of life. That is to say that participants in discourse, in this pithy case “members of society”, think differently about “premarital sex” than 200 years ago.

5. See in this regard § 13 of the German Election Law (Bundeswahlgesetz (BWahlG)).

6. This magazine was analysed in a research project at the Goethe University Frankfurt under the auspices of Hendrik Trescher.

The magazine itself can be found on http://www.toll-magazin.de/downloads/TOLL_Magazin_Nullnummer.pdf.

7. This was object of the research project “Representation of Cognitive Disability”, conducted under the auspices of Hendrik Trescher at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Print and online media were analysed regarding their portrayal of people with cognitive disabilities.

8. The objective meaning designates the actually present or as the case may be represented (Mead, 2000, p. 117), subsequently an action or an utterance is (interpretatively) “accorded” meaning (Weber, 1976, p. 8) which then constitutes subjective meaning.

9. The fact that people with cognitive disabilities are hardly present in German (print)mediascapes by way of this “discoursive non-presence” is part of a particular (in the sense of uncommon) production of cognitive disability; in short: discoursive presence of people with cognitive disabilities is not part of everyday life-practice.

10. The reference to powerful discourse practices approximates Foucault’s later concept of power (i.a. Foucault, 2003, Foucault, 2005).

11. There are other scholars that deduce a concept of disability from a discourse-theoretical point of view, but in many cases the focus is still (comparable to the medical model) on “disability” as an individual problem—caused by society (e.g. Bruner, 2005, p. 57).

12. See in this regard § 12 of the German Election Law (Bundeswahlgesetz (BWahlG)).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hendrik Trescher

Hendrik Trescher is appointed as Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education at Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His research focuses are: Disability Studies, Theories of Inclusion, Political Participation of People with Disabilities, and Education of People with Cognitive Disabilities.