Disability, self image, and modern political theory

Political Theory

Volumn 37, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 218-242

  Arneil, Barbara ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA   (Canada)

Author keywords

Charles Taylor; Disability; Ethic of care; Interdependence; John Rawls

Indexed keywords

EID: 62449283327     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: 15527476     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591708329650     Document Type: Article

References (73)

1. Charles Taylor, " Politics of Recognition, " in Multiculturalism, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1995). 64-65.
2. Ibid., 41-42. In my third year honours seminar at UBC in the fall of 2005, I assigned, as usual, Charles Taylor's "Politics of Recognition" for the class on multicultural citizenship. Before the class discussion began, one of my students, who has a physical disability, raised his hand and asked me, about this section of the essay, "What does Taylor mean when he says that I have only the 'potential' to be human but 'not in the normal way'?" It was one of the moments in a classroom where you realize one question has opened up a world of assumptions and misunderstandings rooted in something much deeper than one sentence in one particular essay. I was struck by the fact, as an able-bodied woman, I had never noticed this sentence in the text before and moreover, when I looked to see if there was any academic literature on Taylor and disability, was unable to find any other scholars who had commented on this particular section of his work. This classroom incident speaks to a number of issues, perhaps most importantly what Anne Phillips has called the "politics of presence," that is, how important it is to both teaching and research that people need to be present in the scholarly world (as well as the political world) if the various aspects of, in this case, citizenship theory are to be uncovered and recognized for their implications on the full diversity of human subjects and their "self-image." In any case, this essay represents my best effort to answer my student's profoundly important question. Emphasis added.
3. Jenny Morris. " Impairment and Disability: Constructing an Ethics of Care That Promotes Human Rights, " Hypatia 16, no. 4 (Fall 2001). 1-16, 2. Emphasis added.
4. Henri Stiker, A History of Disability (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000). 167.
5. Disability scholar Lennard Davis describes how the rise of statistical "norms" in the nineteenth century inevitably constructs disability as deviance: "The norm pins down that majority of the population that fall under the arch of the standard bell-shaped curve... any bell curve will always have at its extremities those characteristics that deviate from the norm. So, with the concept of the norm comes the concept of deviations or extremes. When we think of bodies, in a society where the concept of the norm is operative, then people with disabilities will be thought of as deviants." Lennard J. Davis, "Constructing Normalcy: The Bell Curve, the Novel, and the Invention of the Disabled Body in the Nineteenth Century," in The Disability Studies Reader, ed. Lennard J. Davis (New York: Routledge, 1997), 9-28, 10.
6. Desmond King, In the Name of Liberalism: Illiberal Social Policy in the United States and Britain (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999);
7. Philip Reilly, The Surgical Solution: A History of Involuntary Sterilization in the United States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991);
8. and Matthew Thomson, The Problem of Mental Deficiency: Eugenics, Democracy, and Social Policy in Britain c. 1870-1959 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1998).
9. Stiker, A History of Disability, 122. Emphasis added.
10. Until the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, federal legislation in the twentieth century with respect to disability in the United States was a series of "Rehabilitation Acts," the most recent of which was the 1973 Rehabilitation Act.
11. Online Etymology Dictionary, s.v. "handicap" (by Douglas Harper, historian), http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/handicap (accessed March 12, 2008): "c. 1653, from hand in cap, a game whereby two bettors would engage a neutral umpire to determine the odds in an unequal contest. The bettors would put their hands holding forfeit money into a hat or cap. The umpire would announce the odds and the bettors would withdraw their hands... Reference to horse racing is 1754 (Handy-Cap Match), where the umpire decrees the superior horse should carry extra weight as a 'handicap;' this led to sense of 'encumbrance, disability' first recorded 1890. The verb sense of 'equalize chances of competitors' is first recorded 1852, but is implied in the horse-race sense... The main modern sense, 'disability,' is the last to develop; handicapped (adj.) is 1915."
12. Beyond Affliction: The Disability History Project, "The Overdue Revolution" NPR (1998), http://www.npr.org/programs/disability/ba-shows. dir/revoluti.dir/prg-3-tr.html (accessed November 23, 2008). Emphasis added.
13. The child has reached adulthood when he has "the Reason and Ability to govern himself and others." John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), II:61. Emphasis added
14. In chapter 15 of the Second Treatise, Locke distinguishes between "political," "paternal" and "despotic power," depending on the capacity of individuals for "reason." Slaves, for example, have "quitted" reason and are subject therefore to an unlimited "despotic" power, children have immature reason and are subject to a limited "parental" power, and citizens, who have a fully developed capacity for reason, exercise "political" power. "For having quitted Reason, which God hath given to be the Rule betwixt Man and Man... [the slave] is subject to a despotical power." Locke, Two Treatises, II:172. Emphasis added
15. Locke, Two Treatises, II: 60.
16. There is, of course, an important distinction in this absolute power exercised in the domestic sphere over slaves and mentally/ill disabled persons, which is that while masters have absolute power over life/death of the former, the authority over the latter is tempered by the principle of charity, and hence, parents do not have the same kind of absolute power (meaning life/death) over their disabled children.
17. Locke, Two Treatises, I:42.
18. Carlos Ball, " Autonomy, Justice, and Disability, " UCLA Law Review 47, no. 3 (2000). 599-651, 614.
19. David Hume. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000). 190 (emphasis added).
20. Jean Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract ( New York: Penguin Classics, 1968 ).
21. Isaiah Berlin. 2002. Liberty: Incorporating Four Essays on Liberty ( New York: Oxford University Press ).
22. Immanuel Kant. Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals ( Lenox, M: Hard Press, 2006 ).
23. John Rawls. Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). 256, 264.
24. Kant, Fundamental Principles, 36. The practical necessity of acting on this principle, that is, duty, does not rest at all on feelings, impulses, or inclinations but solely on the relation of rational beings to one another, a relation in which the will of a rational being must always be regarded as legislative, since otherwise, it could not be conceived as an end in itself. Reason then refers every maxim of the will, regarding it as legislating universally to every other will and also to every action towards oneself, and this not on account of any other practical motive or any future advantage but from the idea of the dignity of a rational being, obeying no law but that which he himself also gives.
25. Kant, Fundamental Principles, 37.
26. Taylor, " Politics of Recognition, " 41.
27. Ibid., 42.
28. Davis, " Constructing Normalcy, " 9-11.
29. See, for example, Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006);
30. and Eva Kittay, "At the Margins of Moral Personhood," Ethics, Symposium on Disability 116 (October 2005): 100-31.
31. Rawls, Theory of Justice, 233.
32. Ibid., 234 (emphasis added).
33. "But the 'by whom' and the 'for whom' questions need not be linked in this way. One might have a theory that held that many living beings, human and nonhuman, are primary subjects of justice even though they are not capable of participating in the procedure through which political principles are chosen." Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 17.
34. Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 17-18.
35. Peter Handley, " Theorising Disability: Beyond "Common Sense, " Politics 23, no. 2 (2001). 109-18, 111.
36. See, for example, Lawrence Becker, "Reciprocity, Justice and Disability," Ethics, Symposium on Disability 116 (October 2005): 9-39;
37. and Anita Silvers and Leslie Pickering Francis, "Justice through Trust: Disability and the 'Outlier Problem' in Social Contract Theory, Ethics, Symposium of Disability 116 (October 2005): 40-76
38. Ball, " Autonomy, Justice, and Disability, " 641.
39. Nussbaum Frontiers of Justice, 220-1.
40. Ibid., 221.
41. Ibid., 180-1 (emphasis added).
42. It is worth nothing in this regard that Nussbaum may go beyond Taylor who argues that people "in a coma" are covered under the revised version of Kant's equal dignity in that they have the potential to be rational. Lennard Davis argues in a review of her book that Nussbaum fails to engage with "many of the major thinkers and activists who have concerned themselves with disability," concluding that she seems concerned "more with Rawls than disability." Lennard J. Davis, "Dependency and Justice," Journal of Literary Disability 1, no. 2 (2007): 1-4, 3.
43. Eva Kittay, " Equality, Dignity and Disability, " in Perspectives on Equality: The Second Seamus Heaney Lectures, ed. Mary Ann Lyons and Fionnuala Waldron (Dublin: Liffey Press, 2005). 95-122, 110.
44. I want to thank Hamish Telford for his wonderful personal insights into these ideas of disability and tragedy. I am not trying to suggest that parents should not feel that their own situation is tragic but rather to argue that this should not be the dominant image associated with disability and to emphasize the importance of distinguishing between parents' perspectives and those of the disabled child (hence, the importance of 'self-images").
45. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. " tragedy " ( Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1982, 1136.
46. Kittay, " Equality, Dignity and Disability, " 110.
47. Judgments of the Supreme Court of Canada, R. v. Latimer [ 1997 ] 1 S.C.R. 217, February 6, 1997.
48. Kittay, " Equality, Dignity and Disability, " 110.
49. Of course, there will be some who see their own disability as "tragic," so I do not want to overstate this point about the "otherness" of the "tragic" imagery. At the same time, in the literature written by disabled scholars and advocates, the language of tragedy is uncommon perhaps because it is easier to tell a "tragic" story about somebody else than to live an ongoing "tragic" self-narrative.
50. Ian Hacking, " Making Up People, " in Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought, ed. Thomas C. Heller, Morton Sosna, and David E. Wellbery (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986). 222-36.
51. Kittay, " Equality, Dignity and Disability, " 110.
52. Ibid., 111.
53. Eva Kittay " Equality, Dignity and Disability " p. 117-118.
54. Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 218-9.
55. Joan Tronto, in her book Moral Boundaries, defines interdependence in the following way: "Humans are not fully autonomous, but must always be understood in a condition of interdependence. While not all people need others' assistance at all times, it is a part of the human condition that our autonomy occurs only after a long period of dependence, that in many regards, we remain dependent upon others throughout our lives." Joan Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (New York: Routledge, 1993), 162.
56. As Handley points out, an important articulation of the individual deficit model in the international arena was the 1980 World Health Organization's International Classification of impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps that defined disability as the impact that physical limitations have on individual lives. The social model of disability articulated by the Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation in 1976 "draws upon the feminist distinction between sex and social gender" to define impairment as "lacking part or all of a limb, organ or mechanism of the body" and disability as the "disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organization which takes little account of people who have physical impairments" (Handley, "Theorizing Disability," 110, 112).
57. Susan Wendell points to the same distinction in the 1983 UN definition of disability, where "impairment" is used to describe individual limitations and "handicap" is used to describe " disadvantages" as a result of "barriers encountered." Susan Wendell, The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability (New York: Routledge, 1996), 13.
58. Handley, " Theorizing Disability, " 112.
59. Morris, " Impairment and Disability, " 10.
60. Morris, "Impairment and Disability," 10;
61. and Wendell, The Rejected Body.
62. See Wendell, The Rejected Body;
63. and Ruth O'Brien, "Other Voices at the Workplace: Gender, Disability and an Alternative Ethic of Care," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 30, no. 2 (2005): 1529-55.
64. Tronto, Moral Boundaries, 108.
65. Michael Davidson, " Introduction" in "Disability and the Dialectic of Dependency, ed. Michael Davidson, special issue, Journal of Literary Disability 1, no. 2 (2007). i - vi, i - ii.
66. As Rita Dhamoon has argued, the focus in political theory must shift from only examining the "minority" who is to be "included," to also examining dominant cultural communities. Thus, it is necessary to examine the assumptions made with respect to the "autonomy" of the nondisabled population. Rita Dhamoon, "Beyond Inclusion Politics: Reconstituting the Political Order" (paper presented at the annual general meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, London, Ontario, June 2-5, 2005), 1-27.
67. Simo Vehmas, " Discriminative Assumptions of Utilitarian Bioethics Regarding Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities, Disability and Society 14, no. 1 (1999). 37-52, 42.
68. Ball, " Autonomy, Justice, and Disability, " 619.
69. "A failure by society to act when confronted with the consequences of [physical] defects [meaning disabilities]... is unjust in the same way that a failure by society to protect the property of individuals who lack the physical capability to protect it from physical aggressors is also unjust." Ball, "Autonomy, Justice, and Disability," 623
70. Audrey King, http://www.independentliving.org/ (accessed May 2006).
71. Within the disabled persons' movement, the term temporarily able-bodied or TAB is often used to underline the reality that most of us will become disabled at some point in life. For a discussion of TAB, see Temple University Disability Studies Web site at http://disstud.blogspot.com/2007/05/in-search- ofthe-first-tab.html (accessed November 23, 2008).
72. To recognize disability as one dimension of human diversity is not to exclude the possibility that individuals or their families will view their disability as having "tragic" elements. Rather, like Kittay argues earlier, it is to undermine the idea that tragedy should be the dominant image for disability, as is the case in so much academic and popular literature that has led, amongst other things, to the conflation of physical and mental disabilities as equally "tragic" from the perspective of nondisabled people.
73. Adolph Ratzka, a disability advocate, provides an excellent articulation of what I have called interdependence embedded in a politics of positive self-images. He urges society and disabled people to purge themselves of the historical language and images of tragedy, pity, handicaps, and passivity and replace them instead with the principle of "self-respect" within a social model of disability that puts emphasis on the interdependence of disabled persons through the principles of accommodation, accessibility, and dignity. "Independent Living is a philosophy and a movement of people with disabilities who work for self-determination, equal opportunities and self-respect. Independent Living does not mean that we want to do everything by ourselves and do not need anybody or that we want to live in isolation. Independent Living means that we demand the same choices and control in our every-day lives that our non-disabled brothers and sisters, neighbors and friends take for granted... As long as we regard our disabilities as tragedies, we will be pitied. As long as we feel ashamed of who we are, our lives will be regarded as useless. As long as we remain silent, we will be told by others what to do." Adolf Ratzka (2005), http://www.independentliving.org/ (accessed May 2006).