Studia postižení

Abstract

The second chapter talks about the development of disability studies and its key points such as the intersection of activism and academia, the social model of disability, or interconnection of various disciplines. The ways of thinking about ability, disability, normal and abnormal bodies and people, are highly formed by the society – by education, media, expert and lay discourses ranging from medicine to social policy – and influence how cities, streets and houses are designed. Therefore, the aim of disability studies is to change the discourses and modes of behavior so that they are more inclusive. The chapter discusses beginnings of this field at the interconnections of activism and academia, and its difficult position in the Czech Republic, where it is not an established major at any university. Here, especially the public discourse revolves around the medical model of disability that sees the core of the problem in one’s impairment, instead of focusing on disabling processes leading to discrimination, which the social model of disability, pivotal for disability studies, does. However, the chapter also discusses various critiques of the social model. It tends to unify disability and thus overlooks individual differences, as well as differences between diverse regions. As a reaction to these critiques, critical disability studies were established at the beginning of 21st century. They raise questions about relevance of some older concepts and premises of disability studies in the postmodern world and late capitalism. Critical disability studies challenge the very differentiation between normality and abnormality and at the related binaries on which disability is built. Departing from the humanist perspective of the social model, CDS adopt a posthumanist perspective abandoning the notion of an independent, autonomous, Subject. They focus on interconnectivity of the social and the material, the human and the nonhuman, the organic and the inorganic. Instead of the “capability and usability of the body,” critical disability studies ask about the meanings of “ability and disability.”