Civilising modernity and the ontological invalidation of disabled people
pp. 17-32
in: Dan Goodley, Bill Hughes, Lennard Davis (eds), Disability and social theory, Berlin, Springer, 2012Abstract
Elimination and/or correction have been the primary social response to disabled people in modernity. The primary form of experience (of disability), during the same period, has been one of invalidation. Invalidation carries a "dual meaning' as both "confinement through incapacity' and "deficit of credibility' (Hughes, 2000: 558). This (latter and more crucial) claim is based on the view that in the non-disabled imaginary disability is an "ontological deficit' – a reduction of "leib' to "korpor', human to animal, subjectivity to flesh, identity to excessive corporeal presence. It is this deficit of credibility that provides the spurious rationale for the disposal of disabled bodies by means of elimination (inter alia extermination or segregation) or correction (inter alia sterilisation or rehabilitation). These are the social practices that have been used to erase both the psychological aversion and the problematic social difference that disability has come to represent.