Putting emotions to work: the role of affective disablism and ableism in the constitution of the dis/abled subject

Abstract

By conceptually framing disability under the lens of the Foucauldian apparatus, this article applies dis/ability studies to examine the constitution of the disabled subject by exploring how ableism and other axes of oppression (such as ageism and heterosexism) intersect in everyday situations of affective disablism. The article illustrates these processes using four narrative productions with men and women who are disability rights activists or community rehabilitation service-users. A two-pronged analysis that combines structural and subjectification process analysis suggests that: participants who deviate from the able-bodied norm are constituted as ‘impaired’, ‘immoral’, ‘supercrip’, ‘unproductive’, ‘(un)reproductive’ subjects or as ‘objects of care’ within disablist situations; ableism intertwines with different axes of oppression; and becoming an activist contributes to one’s constitution as the ‘subject of rights’, although such a process is fraught with tensions.

Keywords:

• Disability
• psycho-emotional disablism
• ableism
• intersectionality
• apparatus

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all of the participants for their commitment and enthusiasm regarding this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Accordingly, we use the terms ‘dis/ability’ and ‘dis/ablism’ when referring to both categories or systems, respectively. Conversely, we use ‘ability’, ‘disability’, ‘ableism’, and ‘disablism’ to refer to a specific side of these dualisms.

2 Regarding capitalism as the disability apparatus’ strategic imperative, Preciado (2013) argues that the process by which the impaired and disabled body was produced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has to do with industrialisation, for the ‘disabled body’ is precisely disabled because of its inability to enter the Taylorist production chain. In the same vein, Goodley advances the notion of ‘neoliberal ableism’ to refer to the fact that ‘The functioning neoliberal self is an able-bodied and minded one’ (2014, 28).

3 Wong (2000) and Liddiard (2014) have given different uses to the notion of ‘emotional work’. Wong (2000) argues that ‘work’ includes both the barriers that the subject experiences and the actions undertaken to manage them, and distinguishes ‘emotion work’ from, inter alia, ‘identity management’. We suggest that ‘emotional work’ also includes dealing with the emotions associated with both normative and subversive identity management strategies. In turn, Liddiard (2014) states that emotional work encompasses ‘private’ phenomena (i.e. those that happen within the family or home). However, in line with feminist problematisations of the private/public divide (Pateman 1989), we contend that emotional work happens both within and beyond domestic settings.

4 The Forum for Independent Living and ‘Diverty’ (a neologism which results from combining ‘diversity’ and ‘liberty’) is a virtual activist space founded in Madrid in 2001. Since its inception, it has been the main disseminator of the independent living philosophy in Spain. One of their most notorious contributions is advancing the notion of ‘functionally diverse people’ to refer to those people who are discriminated against because they carry out daily activities in a non-standard way.

5 An asterisk after the participant’s name indicates that they chose to use a pseudonym, and no asterisk indicates that the participant chose to use their real name.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades [grant number FPU17/01545].