Conference Report: Theorising Culture and Disability: Interdisciplinary Dialogues

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Held at Manchester Metropolitan University on 3 July, 2008, Theorising Culture and Disability: Interdisciplinary was an opportunity to take stock of interdisciplinary approaches to culture and disability in Britain. Attracting scholars from Prague and Belgium, as well as astrong contingent from the UK, apacked day included eight papers and the launch of Stuart Murray's Representing Autism: Culture, Narrative, Fascination, the first title in the Representations: Health, Disability, Culture series from Liverpool University Press. Offering asnapshot of where we are now, the event also provided apoint from which to look forwards, demonstrating the significant possibilities, as well as the potential problems, of the interdisciplinary study of disability and culture. Dan Goodley described his opening address as the what, why and how of disability studies. Trans-disciplinary, trans-national, and connecting disability with other forms of politicization, disability studies incorporates both materialist and non-materialist approaches. Rather than focusing on sociology or social policy, as much UK disability studies writing has done, acritical disability studies involves reconnecting with social science and humanities disciplines. It offers ameans of moving beyond tired debates for and against the social model, while still recognizing the debt owed to the activism of disabled people. This raises the question of the relationship between critical and disability studies, an issue that was never explicitly addressed during this event. Cultural disability studies is distinctive because it seeks to contribute both to our understanding of disability and its role in wider culture, and to our understanding of the particular cultural form or artefact under consideration (see the Aims of this journal, for example). The majority of the papers presented in Manchester took this approach, considering the representation of disability in various media with this dual aim. The exceptions were the papers by Brett Smith and Alison Wilde (discussed further below), which analysed and theorized interviews. While offering excellent illustrations of what amore inclusive disability studies might look like, they seemed to me to have asingle rather than adual focus. How significant this difference is, and how we might think about it-whether it is better understood as avariation in the type of data used, as adifference between social science-based and humanities-influenced approaches, or between a critical and disability studies-is atopic that requires further exploration. The significant contribution cultural disability studies can make was illustrated in anumber of strong papers. Rebecca Mallett's Claims for Comedic Immunity: Or, What Do You Get When You Cross Contemporary Comedy with Disability? examined representations of disability in recent British comedy, including programmes such as Little Britain and The Office. Noting challenges to the idea of comedic immunity from those working on race, gender, and sexuality, she called for agreater engagement with comedy and asserted the necessity of using tools from other disciplines to approach it. From literary studies, Clare Barker's Disability and Postcolonial Studies: Initiating Interdisciplinary Dialogues illustrated aparticularly fruitful field of enquiry: the integration of disability studies with postcolonial approaches. While both disability-influenced and postcolonial approaches share acommon sensitivity to issues of representation, Dr. Barker noted the limitations of western-based methodologies for examining disability in other countries. Engaging productively with David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder's work on disability and metaphor, she concluded with areading of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, arguing that while current criticism tends to focus on shortcomings in representation, it is our reading strategies that need to change. …