The experience of disability activism through the development of the disability movement: how do disabled activists find their way in politics?

Abstract

This paper reflects critically upon part of the findings of research about key activists’ experience of disability politics in Cyprus from 1966 to 2004. Disabled activists’ experience of politics is conceptualized through a critical analysis of the different stages they went through while struggling to develop the disability movement in the given social, cultural, political and historical context. Having located this research in the theoretical sphere of feminism and postmodernism I have developed a model to illustrate the strength of feminism and postmodernism in understanding disability, the contribution of feminism in explaining disability politics and the limitations of postmodernism in guiding powerful disability politics. Finally, I use this model to reflect critically on the need for theory to guide disability activism.

Keywords:

• disability movement
• experience
• feminism
• postmodernism
• Cyprus

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge the respondents of this study who were more than willing to share their life stories with me. I am grateful to Dr Lesley Dee for her continuous support and positive influence on my thinking while this research was being carried out. I also acknowledge the Overseas Research Students Awards Scheme (ORS) and to the Gates Cambridge Trust for sponsoring the total cost of my studies.

Notes

1. Feminism speaks with one voice in characterising the world it experiences as a patriarchal world and the culture it inherits as a masculinist culture (Crotty 1998). However, feminism takes various forms and thus scholars talk about feminisms rather than feminism. Tong (1995 in Crotty (1998)) suggests that feminism may be liberal (women's oppression as a result of restrictions towards their autonomy in an unfair society), Marxist (women's oppression as a result of capitalism), radical (women's oppression as the oldest, most profound and most widespread oppression of all), psychoanalytic (women's oppression as a result of the particularities of the female psyche), socialist (the confluence of Marxist, radical and psychoanalytic steams of feminist thought), existentialist (women's oppression as a result of being considered the Other compared to men who are the Self) or postmodern (deconstruction of women's oppression by breaking the binaries reason/emotion, beautiful/ugly, Self/Other).

2. For example, Campbell and Oliver (1996) draw upon certain aspects of social movement theory in their historical account of the British disability movement.

3. Learning difficulties is the UK way of referring to the group of people that in other countries is referred to as people with intellectual disabilities.

4. The terms federation and confederation as used by disabled activists in Cyprus do not correspond to their definitions. According to The new shorter Oxford English dictionary (Brown 1993), a federation is a union of states under a federal government, each remaining independent in internal affairs, whereas a confederation is a union of states for mutual support or joint action, a league, an alliance. In the debate presented in this section, PORDP considered itself a federation, although according to the findings it acted as a confederation and CODPC considered itself a confederation, although according to the findings it acted as a federation.