Corporeality and critical disability studies: toward an informed epistemology of embodiment

Abstract

This paper forms an intervention into debates about the corporeality of impairment and ‘bodies that matter’ in critical disability studies. Toward informing the epistemology of embodiment present in critical disability studies, it proposes new directions for progression within four set parameters. Firstly, insights from disability might be better re-purposed toward understanding the nature of all human embodiment. Secondly, one must sufficiently address, but not necessarily polarise, materiality and abstraction. Thirdly, within its parent academy, the epistemological approach might adhere to critical disability studies’ conventions, whilst still avoiding present perils and impasses. Fourthly, it is important not to be so exhaustive and conclusive as to eliminate innovation and creative new trajectories. Overall, the sustaining proposition is, that the productive capacity of disability is immense, toward disrupting and re-configuring ableist understandings of the body in the material world. Points of interest Writers from a critical disability studies perspective have a particular way of understanding the role of the body in disability. This article considers this way of understanding the body, and then describes four directions for how this understanding could be further developed. The way that critical disability studies understands the role of the body in disability is called ‘epistemology of embodiment’ in this article. This article concludes by saying that disability is a great starting point for understanding the meaning of the body for all human beings. In this context, the article uses the term ‘dis/ability’ instead of ‘disability’ to highlight how people are disabled by interrelations between ability and disability.