Unravelling Mr President’s nomad lands: travelling to interdisciplinary frontiers of knowledge in disability studies

Abstract

In this article the aim is to challenge essentialist ontological assumptions surrounding the impairment category of ‘learning difficulties’ as it was previously conceptualized in social theory and practice. I ground my knowledge production in self‐advocates connected to the self‐advocacy movement in Flanders (Belgium) and in critical feminist disability studies. Drawing upon the post‐structuralist feminist Rosi Braidotti, who introduced nomadology as a new figuration of layered, embedded and embodied subjectivity, I bring the illustrative nomadic subjectivity of the president of the self‐advocacy network to the public eye. In order to allow disability scholars and activists re‐inscribe new scenarios in our contemporary discourse and shared culture, I appeal for an interpretation of the impaired body and mind as a socio‐political field.

Keywords:

• critical disability studies
• self‐advocacy
• post‐structuralist feminism
• nomadology
• Braidotti

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Rosi Braidotti for being a lively source of inspiration and Rudi Roose for the wicked analytical criticisms from which this life story has benefited.

Notes

1. Internationally, people with ‘learning difficulties’ continue to be referred to in different ways, for example: people with learning disabilities, people with intellectual disabilities, people with developmental disabilities, people with ‘learning difficulties’, people with cognitive impairments, the mentally retarded, and so on. It is a tricky question which terminology to choose out of the epistemological wilderness. Leading Flemish self‐advocates, who critically observed the state of the art, reveal a similar tower of Babel: ‘they call us, amongst others: mensen met een verstandelijke beperking [people with mental impairments], mensen met een mentale handicap [people with mental retardation], mentaal gehandicapten [the mentally retarded]. … And more labels exist about us. In Dutch, we feel it sounds like we are “metaal” (metal). We just want to open eyes and say that they can name us in different ways, we are people first’ (Onze Nieuwe Toekomst VZW 2002, 45). In this paper we adopt the term people with (the label) ‘learning difficulties’. The British self‐advocacy movement currently makes use of the relative term people with ‘learning difficulties’; as one British self‐advocate stated: ‘If you put people with “learning difficulties” then they know that people want to learn and to be taught how to do things’ (quoted in Goodley and Rapley 2001, 229).

2. One example is the 10th edition of the manual of the definition, classification and terminology of ‘mental retardation’ (American Association of Mental Retardation [AAMR] 2002) which reveals: ‘Although far from perfect, intellectual functioning is still best represented by IQ scores when obtained from appropriate assessment instruments. The criterion for diagnosis is approximately two standard deviations below the mean of a corresponding group of people considering the standard error of measurement for the specific assessment instruments used and the instruments’ strengths and weaknesses’ (AAMR 2002, 17, emphasis added). The AAMR stressed that the seeming simplicity and clarity of the concept ‘mental retardation’ [sic] are deceptive and that it should be possible to contribute improvements in both form and function to emerging definitions (AAMR 2002, 19). Another example of a worldwide accepted but problematic classification system is the International Classification of Impairment, Disability and Handicap (ICIDH), originally developed by the World Health Organisation in 1980, which needed a revision in an ICIDH‐2 version in 2001 to use a more positive terminology and to place impairment alongside social and relational factors like participation. The overall aim of the ICIDH‐2 classification – to provide a unified and standard language to serve as a frame of reference for phenomena like ‘learning difficulties’ – is still problematic; this is reflected in a new worldwide revision process to test the reliability of the classification system soon after its first revision (Tate and Nieuwenhuijsen 2000).