Paralympic Cultures: Disability as Paradigm

Abstract

This is an article about the Paralympic Games of summer 2012 and the experience of watching them. It rehearses the use of disability as political and cultural identity in relation to theatre and performance studies. Disability identity is not an identity based on similitude, but is a complex and nuanced relationship between singularity of embodied social experience and glimmers of common ground. Taking the works of Rod Michalko and Petra Kuppers as a representative foundation of disability studies, the article offers disability as an epistemological standpoint, a way of thinking, and not an object of thought. The argument works through close readings of three examples to introduce the theatre and performance studies reader to the notion of disability as a paradigm for the consideration of ideas of difference, similitude and identity. The process of reading the Paralympics from the perspective of a disabled person, bike riding sports fan and disability performance scholar gestures to the scope and potential of disability performance studies. The article accumulates three examples of one disabled person navigating a complex set of positions, all of which are iterations of disability. Whilst this critical approach might imply solipsism, the article also considers disability as community.

Notes

1. I am grateful to the Performance Identity Community working group of the Theatre and Performance Research Association for engaging in conversation about these ideas during a study day on 27 April 2013.

2. Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), p. 48.

3. Rod Michalko, The Difference That Disability Makes (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002), p. 173–74.

4. Ibid., p. 175.

5. Petra Kuppers, Disability Culture and Community Performance: Find a Strange and Twisted Shape (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011), p. 71.

6. See Kuppers, Disability Culture for a detailed articulation of this argument.

7. Nancy, Inoperative Community, p. 48.

8. Kuppers, Disability Culture, pp. 70–71.

9. Nancy, Inoperative Community, p. 57.

10. ‘Conservative Party Conference 2012 in Birmingham: Full transcript of David Cameron’s Speech’, Independent, 10 October 2012, <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/conservative-party-conference-2012-in-birmingham-full-transcript-of-david-camerons-speech-8205536.html> [accessed 2 August 2013] (paras 45–46).

11. A study of changes to perceptions of disability was developed at Bournemouth University before, during and after the Games: ‘2012 Paralympics Changed People’s Perceptions of Disability and Disabled Sport, BU Study Finds’, Bournemouth University News and Events, 8 January 2013, <http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/newsandevents/News/2012/dec/ne11-paralympics-changed-perception-of-disability-BU-study.html> [accessed 2 August 2013].

12. See, for example, Joanne Ryan and Frank Thomas, The Politics of Mental Handicap (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980), p. 101.

13. In the UK, The Work Capability Assessment is a process of re-assessing the impairments of all individuals who receive disability benefits. It has the stated intention of getting as many disabled people as possible out of the ‘benefit trap’ and into employment. The process has attracted fierce controversy. The UK Government Guidelines can be found here: <http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/@en/@disabled/documents/digitalasset/dg_177366.pdf> [accessed 2 August 2013]; and a press report on the Work Capability Assessment in action here: Amelia Gentleman, ‘Benefits Assessment Firm Causing “Fear and Loathing” among Claimants, Says MP’, Guardian, 24 July 2011, <http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/jul/24/atos-faces-critical-report-by-mps?guni=Article:in%20body%20link> [accessed 2 August 2013].

14. For details of the protests against the Work Capability Assessments see ‘Atos Protest: Disability Rights Groups Target Firm’, BBC News, 31 August 2012, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-19437785> [accessed 2 August 2013].

15. I am very grateful to Jenny Sealey for talking to me in an interview on 6 November 2012.

16. Unlimited was a festival of D/deaf and disabled art that took place at the Southbank Centre, London from 30 August to 9 September 2012. ‘London 2012: Disabled Artists Launch Unlimited Festival’, BBC News, 10 July 2012, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18787268> [accessed 2 August 2013].

17. Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou, Dispossession: The Performative in the Political (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), p. 76.

18. In this case, the impairment profile comes from the British Paratriathlon regulations. The full document can be found at: <http://www.triathlon.org/images/uploads/ITU_Paratriathlon_Classification_Rules_and_Regulations_2012.pdf> [accessed August 2013].

19. Associated Press, ‘“Enlightenment” Gala Opens London Paralympics’, CBC Sports, 29 August 2012, <http://www.cbc.ca/sports/story/2012/08/29/sp-paralympics-london-stephen-hawking-oscar-pistorius-denise-leigh-miranda-sebastian-coe.html> [accessed 2 August 2013] (para. 6 of 32).

20. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 18.

21. Sigmund Freud, ‘Psychopathic Stage Characters’, in Penguin Freud, vol. 14 (London: Penguin, 1990), pp. 121–22.

22. James I. Charlton, Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 3.

23. Giorgio Agamben, The Signature of All Things: On Method (New York: Zone Books, 2009), p. 18.

24. I am grateful to Amelia Cavallo for her comments about this aspect of the performance.

25. Nancy, Inoperative Community, p. 26.

26. Ibid., p. 69.