Table Of ContentDangerous Discourses of Disability, Subjectivity and
Sexuality
AlsobyMargritShildrick
LEAKYBODIESANDBOUNDARIES
EMBODYINGTHEMONSTER
ETHICSOFTHEBODY(co-edited)
Dangerous Discourses of
Disability, Subjectivity and
Sexuality
Margrit Shildrick
Queen’sUniversityBelfast,UK
©MargritShildrick2009
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-21056-1
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Shildrick,Margrit.
Dangerousdiscoursesofdisability,subjectivityandsexuality/
MargritShildrick.
p. cm.
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ISBN 978-1-349-30312-0 (alk. paper)
1. Peoplewithdisabilities. 2. Marginality,Social. I. Title.
HV1568.S4542009
305.9(cid:2)08—dc22 2009013616
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
1 Corporealities 17
2 Genealogies 39
3 ContestedPleasuresandGovernmentality 60
4 Sexuality,SubjectivityandAnxiety 81
5 TransgressingtheLaw 103
6 QueerPleasures 125
7 GlobalCorporealities 146
Conclusion:ThinkingDifferently 170
Notes 178
Bibliography 193
Index 206
v
Acknowledgements
Themanuscriptiscompleteandreadytosendofftothepublisher,my
studyfloorisfinallyclearedofaccumulatedreferencematerial,andnow
comesthealwaysdifficulttaskofwritingtheacknowledgements.Itend
towriteinextended,intense,andisolatedstretches,butsomuchintel-
lectual,emotional,andevenphysicalworkgoesintogettingtothisstage
oftheprocessthatnothingIsayherewillbefullyadequate.
During the years I have been pursuing this project I have been for-
tunateenoughtohavetravelledandworkedorheldresearchpositions
widely beyond my home location, and I’m grateful to all those who
provided time, space, and funding. My thanks go especially to Ailbhe
Smyth of University College Dublin for her unwavering support, and
to all the participants in the three years of the open seminar series,
Advanced Feminist Theory, which provided the opportunity for me
to try out some of the nascent ideas that later developed into chap-
ters in Dangerous Discourses. During much of the same period I was
co-editing a book on feminist corporeal ethics with Roxanne Mykitiuk
of Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto, who made the inspired sug-
gestion that I take up a visiting research scholarship at Cornell Law
School under the direction of Martha Fineman, who is well-known
as a great supporter of disability scholarship. The Toronto connec-
tion itself produced further openings, including a wonderful semester
teaching at York University on the newly convened Masters in Crit-
ical Disability Studies. The director of the programme, Marcia Rioux,
despite her own very different approach to disability, gave me all
encouragement to work with the students in a way that surely over-
turned some cherished doxa. The vigorous response of the course
participants challenged me to think more clearly and effectively, to
the extent that it remains my own most valuable period of teach-
ing. Since then, as an adjunct professor of disability studies at York, I
have supervised several excellent graduate dissertations with outstand-
ingcontributionsfromLoreeErickson,JulieDevaney,JenPaterson,and
Kelly Fritsch. A series of visiting fellowships at HCTP and Centre for
Women’sHealth–bothinstitutionsofUniversityofToronto–brought
me into close contact with Pat McKeever and Gillian Einstein, both
highly innovative thinkers; while time at the Centre for Somatechnics
atMacquarieUniversityandatSydneyLawSchoolwasenabledbyNikki
vi
Acknowledgements vii
SullivanandIsabelKarpinrespectively.Allthosementioned,andmany
more, have played a significant role in the process of my writing this
book.
BackintheUnitedKingdom,mymajorthanksonbothanintellectual
andpersonallevelareduetoJanetPricewhohascollaboratedwithme
onnumerouspresentationsandpublications.Herwillingnesstopursue
all sorts of unorthodox ideas has been a mainstay in the development
of the modes of thinking that inform Dangerous Discourses, though I
hesitatetosayshewouldagreewithitall.Manyotherfriendsandcol-
leagues have contributed in multiple ways, including Holliday Tyson
andNancyHalifaxwhohavemadeTorontohomefromhome.Finally,
theprojectsimplywouldnothavecometofruitionwithouttheongoing
andunquestioningsupportandgenerosityofmypartner,LisDavidson.
Aswithmostsingle-authoredbooks,someofthematerialhasalready
seenthelightofdayinotherforms.Severalchaptersarebasedonpre-
viouslypublishedarticles,whichhavebeentoagreaterorlesserextent
reworkedandrecontextualised,andoftendistributedovertwoormore
locations. In the era of postmodernity and cyberspace nothing is ever
final, and I have incorporated some work from my own prior publi-
cations in Cultural Studies 2005, 19. 6, Critical Quarterly 2005, 47. 3,
Sexuality Research and Social Policy 2007, 3. 3, SCAN 2004, 1.3, Studies
in Gender and Sexuality 2007, 8. 3, and from a joint paper with Janet
Price that appeared in Rhizomes 2005, 11. I gratefully acknowledge all
permissionsgranted.
Introduction
Why is it that at the beginning of the twenty-first century – with its
multiple geo-political insecurities and anxieties, its distinctly ambiva-
lent expectations of the future, and its growing awareness of internal
pressures–thewesternworldanditsdevelopedcounterpartsshouldbe
so unsettled by anomalous embodiment? What is it about the variant
morphologyofintra-humandifferencethatissodisturbingastoinvoke
in the self-defined mainstream not simply a reluctance to enter into
fullrelationship,butapositiveturningawayandsilencingoftheunac-
ceptedother?Forsuchadisengagementtopersistinthefaceofappar-
entlymoreweightyglobalconcernsspeaksnottoanover-investmentin
thelocalandindividual,akindofdisplacedanxietyeven–thoughthat
cannotbeentirelydiscounted–buttotheextraordinarysignificanceof
humancorporeality.Tobenamedasdifferentlyembodiedisalreadyto
occupy a place that is defined as exceptional to some putative norm,
rather than to simply represent one position among a multiplicity of
possibilities. The self-evidence of differential form across human mor-
phologyasawholeisputasideinfavourofadiscourseinwhichsome
peoplearetakentoinherentlyexceedtheboundariesofwhatcountsas
normative embodiment. In this text, I concentrate on the continuing
discursive exclusion of disability within western and western-inflected
societies,andarguethatattheverysametimethatsuchstatesaremak-
ingtremendousstridestowardstheformalintegrationofdisabledpeople
intothe rights, obligations,and expectations of normativecitizenship,
acounter-trendofsegregationisequallyinplay.Thetitleofthisbook–
DangerousDiscourses–isnorhetoricalflourish,butanindicationofthe
depthofanxietythatengagementwithdisabilityelicits.
My thesis is that disabled people1 continue to endure broad cultural
discriminationandalienation,notsomuchfortheirdifference(which
1
2 DangerousDiscourses
may of course be hidden) but because their form of living in the body
lays bare the psycho-social imaginary that sustains modernist under-
standings of what it is to be a subject. Where physical and mental
autonomy,theabilitytothinkrationallyandimpartially,andinterper-
sonal separation and distinction are the valued attributes of western
subjectivity, then any compromise of control over one’s own body,
any indication of interdependency and connectivity, or of corporeal
instability, are the occasion – for the normative majority – of a deep-
seated anxiety that devalues difference. In an earlier book, Embodying
theMonster,Itracedthatnegativetrajectorythroughthehistoryofthe
monstrous into present-day manifestations that implicate a variety of
non-normative forms of embodiment: from conjoined twins, through
displaced persons like refugees, to the futuristic cyborg. Yet for all the
narrative of violence, oppression, and disavowal of the monstrous,
the coincident exposure of a motivating and irreducible vulnerability
attheheartofallhumanembodimentsignallednottheinevitabilityof
rejection,butthepossibilityofwhatHaraway(1992)termsa‘regenera-
tivepolitics’.Heropeningupof‘thepromisesofmonsters’giveshopeto
adifferentfuture.Intakingupmypresentfocusonstatesofdisability,I
reiteratesomeofthesamethemes,butinamoresubstantiveandevery-
day contextthatimbricates with,yet fundamentallycritiques,a recent
historyofdisabilitypoliticsthathasalsosoughttooverturnthenorma-
tiveparadigmsthatdeterminewhoshallbevaluedandwhonot.Against
the standard demands for an extension and solidification of rights for
disabled people, and for a more thoroughgoing inclusion of their spe-
cificinterestsinculturalproduction,Iturninsteadtoaninvestigationof
whatitisthatcontinuestoimpedetheevolutionofequitableconditions
ofpossibility.Suchamodeofthinkingmarkswhatisoftentermed‘crit-
icaldisabilitystudies’,arelativelyrecentdevelopment–withinwhichI
situatemyownwork–thatisbroadlyalignedwithapostconventional
theoretical approach. Its purpose is both to extend into new territory
the achievements of working through a more modernist paradigm of
disability, and where necessary to productively critique the limitations
ofthatmodel.
Before proceeding further it is necessary to ask what comprises the
category of disability, or what I have less contentiously referred to as
anomalous embodiment. Although some form of definitive answer is
oftencalledfor–inacademianolessthanintermsofageneralpublic–
it is one that I, along with many other critical disability theorists, and
particularly those working within a postconventional framework, am
reluctanttoprovide.Tosetoutanymutuallyagreedseriesofparameters
