Accountability: the ethics of devising a practice-as-research performance with learning-disabled practitioners

Abstract

This article discusses the dilemmas encountered by non-disabled performance researchers and practitioners working with learning-disabled people. I demonstrate how the ‘accounts’ of empirical social scientists informed my PARIP [practice-as-research-in-performance] project, BluYesBlu, and how Judith Butler's reformulation of the concept of ethics, from the responsibility of the individual to negotiations within social relations, has revealed the complexity of the tensions between ‘othering’ and ‘normalising’ tendencies within this practice.