Corporealities

Abstract

The project of theorising disability, of enquiring into its status as a dangerous discourse, throws up from the start some intriguing conundrums. On the one hand it is the site where body theory, that most vibrant of recent academic pursuits, has made some substantial and highly creative advances, and on the other it is still widely and dismissively seen as a minority concern of real interest only to those who are themselves disabled. It may certainly be the case at present that the majority of scholars within the field live with a disability, but my own passionate contention is that what the project tells us about being human is of high significance, both to every one of us on a personal level, and across the disciplines. A similar point could undoubtedly be made about feminist theory, postcolonial studies, or queer theory, those other areas of enquiry that deeply unsettle personal and academic conventions. What follows in the case of disability is that the object of study is simultaneously one that attracts widespread disinterest and even derision and yet has the capacity to change the way in which we think about human embodiment in the contemporary world. When David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder suggest that disability as the figuration of materially unfit bodies can be understood ‘as the master trope of human disqualification’ (2000: 3), their rhetoric is well-supported by the texts they address.