Disability rights and wrongs revisited

The first edition of Tom Shakespeare’s controversial Disability Rights and Wrongs (Shakespeare 2006) cast shockwaves through British disability studies. Disability studies godfathers branded the book an act of treason that gave up on the political ambitions of the materialist social model, replacing them with a conservative turn to the realities of the medical model. A Review Symposium of the book, no less, was published in the pages of this very journal (Disability & Society 2007, 22, no. 2: 209–34) and reviews were mostly disparaging. Personally, I really welcomed the publication of Disability Rights and Wrongs. I felt it administered a necessary shot to the arm of British disability studies; demanding researchers, theorists, activists (and those that combine these roles) to clarify theoretical orientations, map our empirical landscapes and illuminate our political priorities. Loathe or love Shakespeare’s ideas, he has always been provocative and entertaining. In reading his book I sought to embrace Watermeyer’s (2012, 9) generosity of engagement: to read the text for connection rather than division. So in this second edition will Shakespeare’s work create as many ripples through the disability studies world as the first? My sense is that Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited will not be deemed as controversial this time around for two main reasons, neither of which should be read as a failing of Shakespeare.

The first reason is that this revised text reads more like a scholarly piece of work than the first. The new text benefits from a close reading of the literature that engages with the complexities of theory. This contrasts with the showboating of the first edition that sought, I felt, to agitate rather than illuminate. Part I of the revised text – ‘Foundations’ – has been totally rewritten to explore theoretical approaches to disability and the politics of a disability identity. Part II of the book – ‘Applications’ – has chapters on prenatal diagnosis, cure and autonomy at the end of life (in keeping with the first edition), and revised chapters build on earlier discussions of support, sex and love and friendship. There is a new chapter on violence and, throughout, there is a welcome inclusion of people with the label of learning disabilities. While I disagree with Shakespeare’s conception of learning disabilities, I was heartened to find his foregrounding of the advocacy of people so-labelled. Chapters 1–5 are really useful, as Shakespeare carefully unpacks materialist social model perspectives, cultural disability studies perspectives and critical realist perspectives. I appreciated, especially, the detail he gives to an account of cultural approaches – where crip theory, studies of ableism and dismodernism all get a mention – theoretical ideas that have often been dismissed without any adequate theoretical justification (for example, Barnes 2012). At times, I felt Shakespeare was too simplistic in his criticism; accusing materialist social modellists of holding a Stalinist line while arguing that cultural disability studies are interested only in discourse rather than the real stuff of everyday life. His critique of the utopian bases of the materialist social model (‘a good idea that became ossified and exaggerated into a set of crude dichotomies’[17] reveals his own pragmatic rather than revolutionary disposition. This is no bad thing, one might think, as he is keen to make his work applicable across disability politics, theory and professional practice. His pragmatism does, however, often appeal to compromise. Come on, he argues in Chapter 2, there can never be universal architectural design that will include all disabled people, get real! But many of us in disability studies and politics are drawn to the field because of our utopian ideals and political ambitions. I am not being unrealistic here (or perhaps I happily am). I simply want research and theory to push the boundaries; just like disability activism has done for the past 40 years. While Shakespeare is at times in danger of depoliticising theory and research through a compromised appeal to the real, he does nevertheless present us with a text that captures the political spectrum of disability studies.

The second reason that this book will have less impact than the first is that since 2006 disability studies has matured. Shakespeare can rest happily here knowing that his own work has majorly contributed to the development of the field. Various theoretical approaches have blossomed, including critical realism, phenomenology, post-structuralism, post-conventionalism, psychoanalytic and post-human, while disability studies has widened its brief to intersect with queer, post-colonial and feminist agendas. Shakespeare displays an oddly ambivalent relationship with disability theory and the act of theorising. On one hand he is keen to scope out the range of theories that populate the disability studies landscape. On the other, Shakespeare reveals his unease with theoretical language that might obscure, confuse, alienate or mystify. He writes that cultural disability studies ‘risk being ossified into a fascination with theory for its own sake’ (71). Such anti-intellectualism is disingenuous, especially when we read in Chapter 4 of his theoretical reasons for adopted a critical realist agenda. Here he brings in luminaries including Bhaskar, Honneth, Sen and Nussbaum and declares without any explanation that ‘I find the Aristotelian virtue ethics approach particularly useful’ (73). So Shakespeare does like (some) theory (and philosophy) after all. He is ‘unashamedly eclectic and pragmatic’ in his theoretical allegiances (72). There is a time and place for theory but clearly not from a theorist such as a Deleuze or a Foucault. This confused relationship with theory is unfortunate. At times I am unclear whether or not Shakespeare wants to be an activist, a practitioner, an empiricist or a public intellectual. He is, I would suggest, all of these things. He is also a theorist. To distance oneself from theory is a rather strange position to adopt, to say the least, especially when this text is so theoretically polemical (something that I read as a positive rather than a negative).

A further debate with the text that I enjoyed relates to Shakespeare’s unproblematic appeal to objective empirical evidence of the real external nature of the world. Time and time again, he argues that particular orientations (or more correctly, those that he does not agree with) are incapable of empirically testing their theories. So biased materialist social modellists fail to recognise the clear objective evidence that impairments are a predicament. And cultural disability studies fail to acknowledge the factual reality of, for example, intellectual disability. As a critical realist, he assumes that there is an object out there independent of the observer. Hence intellectual disability is a real thing that gets caught up in the social construction of ideas. But, when talk of discourse dies down, we are still left with the pre-discursive reality of the mind and body. Such positivistic leanings around the objective nature of reality and naïve appeals to empiricism failed to win me over. I did, however, welcome Shakespeare’s willingness to prompt a wider consideration of (the nature) of evidence.

Shakespeare has written a book that, like its younger sibling, will spark interest and debate amongst all students of disability studies, whether they be practitioner, activist or researcher. Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited comes out at a time when the theoretical maturity of disability theory is evident and something that we should celebrate rather than reject.

Dan Goodley
University of Sheffield, UK
[email protected]
© 2014, Dan Goodley
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2013.864874