Precision ableism: a studies in ableism approach to developing histories of disability and abledment

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the historical project and idea of comparison, then moves on to a discussion of the role of thinking theoretically in terms of process and not object relations, a shift from a focus on binaries to aporias. The paper outlines the development of Studies in Ableism as well as presuppositional foundations of systems of ableism, and the delimitation of abledment and disablement. Finally, the paper contributes to thinking about the meaning of ableism in a more precise way.

KEYWORDS:

• Ableism
• abledment
• ability
• disability
• disability studies
• historiographic epistemology
• comparative research
• disability history

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In this paper I use ablement to express a productive relation, the ongoing, dynamic processes of becoming abled. Although ablement is something used interchangeably with ableism, I prefer to use ablement when I wish to emphasise its coupling with disablement. My approach contrasts with the terminology of ability/abled or able-bodied which are assumed to be static states. These states are not self-evident and require problematisation.

2. There is no space here to discuss notions of the captive mind or academic dependency (see Alatas 2006).

3. We-I, combined ‘we’ and ‘I’ in a symbiotic relation.

4. In other research (Campbell 2011), I suggest that there has been a movement toward uniformity of knowledge systems and coding in health and disability, what I refer to as geodisability knowledges. Ableism however is everywhere, but its manifestations as a practice is not the same everywhere and in every moment.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by none.

Notes on contributors

Fiona Kumari Campbell

Fiona Kumari Campbell undertakes research in Studies in Ableism, coloniality, disability studies as well as explorations about Buddhist formations of disability. Trained in sociology, theology and legal studies; she is interested in ways that law, new technologies and the governance of marginal populations produces understandings of the productive citizen, normative bodies, ideas of periphery and ways that ablement privileges and entitles certain groups in society. Campbell is the author of Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness (Palgrave, 2009) and numerous other journal articles and book chapters.