In a time where diversity is valued and embraced, people with disabilities have been absent from texts or discussions on diversity (Jaeger and Bowman 2005, x). As Ian Birrell observed, in the midst of the “discussion of diversity and self-congratulatory talk of tolerance”, people with disabilities
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are still “stuck in the shadows of society” (Birrell 2014).51 Deliberative democrats too have left people with disabilities outside the scope of deliberative sites despite the theory’s emancipatory concerns and emphasis on equality. They have not grappled with questions and debates around able-bodiedness, disability and inclusion, which, given deliberative democracy’s emancipatory ideals, ought to be key discussions for deliberative democrats. This exclusion, mainly by omission, risks rendering deliberative sites ableist. Using the insights gained from the above discussion as reference, I explain below what I mean by ableism and the risk thereof.
In general terms, ableism refers to “promoting certain psychophysical features as superior or fully human” (Mladenov 2016). It denotes an attitude “that devalues or differentiates disability through the valuation of able-bodiedness equated to normalcy” (Ho 2008). Wolbring defines it as “the favouritism for certain abilities for example cognition, competitiveness or consumerism and the often negative sentiment towards the lack of favoured abilities” (Wolbring 2006). For Campbell it is a “network of beliefs, processes and practices that produces a particular kind of self and body that is projected as the perfect, species-typical and therefore essential and fully human” (Campbell 2009, 5). The common point between the various definitions is the belief that disability is inherently negative and should be rehabilitated, cured or if possible, alleviated.52
51 For instance, in a survey conducted by Scope recently, nearly half (43%) of the public said they do
not know anyone who is disabled and fewer than 17% of people said they have friends who are disabled. In the same survey two thirds (67%) of the people said they feel uncomfortable talking to disabled people (Aiden and McCarthy 2014). Evidence from a similar survey also shows that a significant proportion of society assume that disabled people are less capable than able-bodied people, in need of care and dependent on others (Grewal et al. 2002).
52 Discussions on related terminologies of “ableism”, “disablism” and the more recent “dis/ablism”
abound. To give a brief explanation of the distinctions between the three, while ableism promotes certain competencies, disablism renders individuals inferior and threatens to exclude, eradicate or neutralise them because of their impairments. Dis/ability on the other hand emphasizes that ableism and disablism “can only ever be understood simultaneously in relation to one another” (Goodley 2014). Given that the nuances between the three terms are not significant enough for the purposes of this work, I find it unnecessary to burden the discussion and will use “ableist” to denote the ways in which deliberative democracy favours able-bodiedness and excludes disability.
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Deliberative democrats’ demands from citizens, which were discussed in the previous chapter risk ableism to the extent that they promote certain cognitive and communicative competencies as necessary for participation in deliberative practices and therefore for individuals to count as deliberative citizens. These demands favour able-bodiedness as a precondition to be a full deliberative citizen. Adapting the very definition of disability espoused by the proponents of the social model and cited above, deliberative democrats take no or little account of people who have disabilities and thus exclude them from participation in deliberative processes (UPIAS 1976, 14). The omission of people with disabilities from deliberative sites undermine not only their personhood, but also their place in society as full citizens – disability becomes the marker of difference between those who are accepted as full citizens to deliberative sites and can therefore deliberate, and who are not citizens in the deliberative sense of the word.
In Chapter 1 four groupings of problems were identified regarding deliberative democracy’s assumptions about citizen competence: participation, rationality, language and equality. These were suggested as barriers to the full participation of average – able- bodied – citizens. However their exclusionary properties are exacerbated in a context where we attempt to imagine people with disabilities as prospective deliberative citizens. They can also help us identify the specific ways through which deliberative democrats may risk an ableist outlook.
The problem regarding participation was that the demands of deliberation might prevent the presence, voice or representation of all relevant parties in a deliberative site. When these demands favour able-bodiedness, the cost of participation might make it impossible for people with disabilities to be part of deliberative decision making processes. These demands may be related to physical access to deliberative sites or confidence and self- esteem issues that are required to participate in deliberation. Moreover, if the deliberative
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event is using an open door or self-selection policy, participation will still be skewed in favour of those with higher economic status and better education – both of which people with disabilities usually lack.53 The examples in the previous chapter from four deliberative events also provide evidence that an open door policy is probably inadequate to recruit people with disabilities to deliberative sites.
When it comes to rationality, deliberative democratic practices favour able-bodiedness against those who deviate from the norms that also define competent liberal citizens. This in turn links rationality to basic cognitive capacities to formulate and defend arguments in an understandable and persuasive way. As a result while those who speak less well, or who speak in ways that are devalued by the dominant culture are disadvantaged, those who cannot speak at all, those who take longer to formulate or understand arguments, or those who process information and ideas less well are kept out of deliberative decision making processes altogether. A similar situation is true for the use of language, which in some instances might act as a barrier for people with disabilities – people with disabilities are usually not the most elaborate orators.
In terms of equality, the problems that people with disabilities face are often multiple and interconnected – poverty, lack of qualifications, lack of education, unemployment, depression often coexist with disability in a cycle of deprivation and intensify the problem of access and inequality (Barnes 2001). These interconnected problems also have a negative impact on relevant and accessible information for people with disabilities. As a result, while deliberative theory is built on the twin principles of formal equalisation of access and equal opportunity to articulate
53 Disability is both a cause and effect of poverty. For more on the cyclical relationship between
disability and poverty see C. Hughes and Avoke 2010; Lustig and Strauser 2007. Disabled adults are nearly three times as likely as non-disabled adults to have no formal qualifications (30% to 11% respectively). See Office for National Statistics 2012.
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persuasive arguments, in practice people with disabilities are given neither access to the site nor opportunity to voice their preferences.
Conclusion
The purpose of this chapter was to bring to the attention of deliberative democracy the development and claims of the scholarship on disability issues, especially as they pertain to the inclusion of people with disabilities in public life and democracy. Becoming familiar with the vocabulary of disability studies serves to inform deliberative democrats about their unfounded assumptions about the able-bodiedness of the deliberative citizen and help recognise the blind spot of deliberative sites regarding the inclusion of people with disabilities, which in effect risk rendering these sites ableist – at least by omission. With this goal in mind I briefly surveyed historical attitudes towards disability which are still persistent today. Many of these attitudes will come up when we start discussing deliberation and deliberative sites, linking this discussion with the following chapters and reminding us once again that an awareness of these attitudes is an important first step in our analysis of the exclusion people with disabilities face in deliberative democratic theory and practice.
The history and discussion on the medical, social and critical models of disability that are provided in this chapter show that there is not a single disability theory or agenda that can guide our analysis. Although the community of scholars involved in this work is relatively small, the variety of approaches and the wealth of insight, especially as a result of links with other disciplines is remarkable. In the next few paragraphs I pull together the relevant themes from this body of work which will guide the discussion in the next chapters.
The first guiding theme is the rejection of normalisation as a response to disability. Along with the rejection is a call to shift the gaze from a focus on the construction of disability as a deviance from the norm to a focus on disability as one form of existence among others. One way of
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problematizing the norm is to challenge the diagnostic perspective that emphasises individual deficiency and imposes able ways of living – what McRuer calls “compulsory able-bodiedness” (McRuer 2006). Another way would be to challenge the idea of a rational, independent – liberal - subject who acts as a citizen. I have already problematized this construction of the deliberative citizen and proposed an alternative in the preceding chapter. In the next chapters I will explore what happens in the deliberative site when the liberal citizen is replaced with the caring citizen and when care becomes the guiding orientation as opposed to self-interest. The second theme is the rejection of binaries, especially the binary of the mind versus the body in favour of a more embodied conceptualisation of disability. Disability is not only medical versus social. It is not only body/physical versus environmental/structural. It requires a much deeper and more complex conceptual analysis, which takes into account both the physical and ideational environment in which the person lives, as well the person’s impairment and the effects of that impairment. The implications of this rejection of binaries will become clearer and more relevant in the discussion on the disabled body and spatiality in the next chapter.
The third theme is the multi-dimensionality of the disability experience and struggle. Just as disability cannot be considered as simply consisting of one or two dimensions, the engagement in disability studies or its emancipatory framework must be carried on along different axes of analysis. The present enquiry, therefore, cannot limit itself to include social, economic and political planes, but must extend to the psychological, cultural, discursive and carnal. To give an example, if disability is not simply about having a medical condition but about the way in which medical conditions come laden with meaning and connotation, the enquiry must discover first and take into account what they and essentially the construction of the difference based on them mean for the disabled person, her participation in public life as a citizen and for this project. These three overarching themes will become the lenses if you like through which we will look at deliberative democratic theory and its sites in the next three chapte
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CHAPTER 3
The Embodiedness of Disability and Deliberation
Introduction
In this chapter I highlight the embodiedness of the disability experience and the embodiedness of deliberation, and draw connections between the two to contribute to the case for the inclusion of people with disabilities in deliberative democracy and its decision making processes. As I have indicated in the introduction, political theory seldom connects citizens and bodies, and deliberative democratic theory is no exception in that it does not engage with deliberative citizens as embodied citizens. While the body with its functions and impairments lie at the heart of the disability experience, discussions on what constitutes deliberation mostly ignore the bodily dimensions of communication. Acknowledging the embodiedness of deliberation therefore addresses this theoretical gap, but at the same time helps open up the discussion to multiple possibilities for the practical inclusion of people with disabilities in deliberative sites.
In the following sections I first provide a brief discussion on how the body is conceptualised in social science. This discussion will also illuminate the links between theories of the body and models of disability. I will then explain what I mean by the disembodiedness of deliberative democratic theory and its deeply implicit assumption that the deliberative citizen has a “normal” body. The goal in these sections is to show that the present orthodoxy of disembodied deliberation and the assumption of normality excludes people with disabilities from deliberative sites and once again renders it ableist.
I will then challenge the twin issues of disembodiedness and normality, and present an alternative conceptualisation of deliberation and the deliberative site where the disabled subversively appear in the deliberative site in their embodied, “abnormal” state. I will analyse
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what their embodied presence in the deliberative site means and does. In this alternative deliberative site, the embodied presence of the disabled achieves a number of things. First, it makes citizens accessible and available to each other. Second, it disrupts the deliberative site and exposes the otherwise invisible physical organisation and the power relations embedded in this organisation. Third, it politicises the deliberative site which is depoliticised by the hegemony of rationality and order. By being present in the deliberative site in the first place and by attempting to communicate in ways that are unexpected, perhaps deemed to be unintelligible or even unacceptable by deliberative standards, people with disabilities both challenge the boundaries of what counts as deliberation and demand recognition in deliberative democracy. Fourth, and finally, their very act of embodied presence brings into light their exclusion and therefore performs one type of deliberation. The questions of how this presence can be translated into preference as well as how the physical organisation of the deliberative site can be used for inclusion will be taken up in detail in the following chapters.