The Rhetoric of Widening Participation in Higher Education: Ending the Barriers Against Disabled People offers a critical and analytical investigation into the institutional exclusion and oppression of disabled people within higher education, specifically focusing on individuals who have been medically labelled with learning difficulties. Using a postmodernist and social justice framework or ideology, the book, which is split into nine concise chapters, goes on to directly challenge and decode the hegemonic binaries surrounding ability and disability in order to construct a possible intervention strategy for promoting inclusion. As such, the book not only directly affirms the disability identity and true lived experiences of disabled people, but also advocates for a much-needed universal and egalitarian framework and with it the true celebration of difference and diversity.
Following and expanding on a doctoral study revolving around a case study of a theatre initiative, which attempted to develop an undergraduate degree programme for individuals medically labelled as having learning difficulties, the book both highlights and centralises a powerful political regime of surveillance and control in order to unfold normative (mis)understandings surrounding the juxtaposition and theorisation of disability and difference. Equally, drawing on the work of Weber, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, the book goes on to reveal habitual misunderstandings and attitudinal barriers which serve to reflect historic and ableist assumptions of disability. The book explains how these disabling assumptions not only ascribe a label of difference to disabled people but also how they serve to highlight a notion of educability and politics of resentment used to justify extreme forms of dehumanisation and segregation. As such, it is this application of a biophysical model or understanding of disability (73), reshaped and realigned to fit corporeal ideals, which underpins a neoliberalist disability discourse driven by notions of academic standards and excellence.
The book goes on to offer two contrasting agendas surrounding the ideology of widening participation within higher education. The first is a social justice agenda, revolving around an inclusive and egalitarian framework which advocates and supports universal acceptance and inclusion. The second, and arguably most prominent, is the ableist and capitalist agenda for education to meet the needs of the economy, to both provide an educated workforce and increase the supply of people with higher level knowledge and skills (4). It is this medicalised gaze of institutions and scientific disciplines (6) which not only shapes and reshapes disability, as a concept, for political, economic and social consumption (69), but also highlights the bidirectional (Bronfenbrenner Citation1979) and reciprocal nature or experience of segregation. These discursive materialistic practices and discourses of resistance and mistreatment are where disability is intentionally shaped to legitimise processes of exclusion (1), used as a scapegoat to serve normative interests and hegemonic discourses of power and control. Consequently, it is the latter which suggests that the higher education system still serves to under-support, under-represent, and marginalise (176) the voices of disabled people, and as such does well in unmasking the anomalous practice (Bolt Citation2014) that disabled people face.
Consequently, despite anti-discriminatory legislation such as the Disability Discrimination Act (1995), the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (2001) and the Equality Act (2010) promoting a progressive shift in ideology from a deficit understanding of disability to one that locates itself within a social justice and rights-based perspective of disability, discriminatory provisions based on misguided assumptions of ability and disability serve to offer a shallow demonstration of widening participation. It is this fabricated and tokenistic sense of inclusion (Mitchell, Snyder, and Ware Citation2014) which remains masked by apparent progressive legislations and policies that upholds a social drama and moral tragedy where institutions continue to focus on an individual’s medical label rather than the participation and contribution of disabled people. Equally, this disabling ethos and ableist professional practice not only (re)produces and further justifies segregated or isolated institutions, but also (re)enforces negative and stereotypical attitudes and beliefs towards disabled people, limiting their potential capability and choice.
Finally, the book offers a postmodernist critique shaped by cultural, historical, political and social factors in order to affirm the positive identity of disabled people. It is this struggle for systematic change, equality and participation (74) which requires society and culture to move beyond boundaries of discipling and regulation. As such, we as a society need to challenge the dualisms and hierarchical castles or habitual understandings (117) of disabling power relations in order to challenge the passive accepting and othering gaze of medical and institutional professionals. The book consequently requires society to break free from traditional cultural models and linear subjective thinking (215) in order to challenge normative misunderstandings and historical discourses which socially construct and mark disabled people as feebleminded and educationally subnormal. Moreover, with this recognition of disciplinary power and normative misunderstandings, the book does an effective job in uncovering the silenced voices and forgotten accounts of disabled people.
To conclude, with inclusion as an educational and social approach being a highly debated and topical matter within western society and contemporary research, it is not only social movement and disability studies advocates who can benefit from the ideologies and findings offered by The Rhetoric of Widening Participation in Higher Education. As such, the book not only offers invaluable contributions to modern research but also does an effective job in securing the multidisciplinary nature of disability studies within a wider social and economic context. I would highly recommend this book to anyone, whether an academic professional or not, who is interested in creating, or influencing, true and meaningful social change.
Disability Studies (Inclusive Practice)
University Centre at Blackburn College, Blackburn, UK
[email protected]
References
- Bolt, D. Ed. 2014. Changing Social Attitudes toward Disability: Perspectives from Historical, Cultural, and Educational Studies. Abingdon: Routledge.
- Bronfenbrenner, U. 1979. The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design. Cambridge, MA: Havard University Press.
- Mitchell, D., S. Snyder, and L. Ware. 2014. “[Every] Child Left Behind.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 8 (3): 295–313.