existentialsex4

Lately I'm reading up on the apparent conflict between sociologists of health and illness on disability and "oppresive models" of disability. The former, sociologists of health and illness, present disability as a social deviance, and understand disability through this lense. However, they still understand people with disabilities as having impaired bodies that lead to oppression of disabled individuals as violating some social norm. Oppression exists in many forms as a result of this deviance ranging from sexual oppression to paternalization in social and political policy. Oppressive models of disabilities, on the other hand, include the social model, these models critique a commonly held assumption about disability and imparement, presenting the disabled as impared is to misunderstand how disabled individuals are oppressed. Disability is not merely to be construed as a consequent of an impaired body, it is entirely as social construct. Later oppresive models attempt to even abandon any appeals to grand narritives of any sort offered by both social models and sociologists of health and illness. To cast the disabled as dependant in some way is to oppress them, rather the preferred idea is that disabled individuals are assisted in completing life tasks but can still be independant. In addition seeing the disabled as violating some social norm seems to be the wrong approach since it is extremely essentialists in it's theorization. To say "disability is essentially..." then provide some theoretical narritive is to ignore the post-modern turn. However, the post-modern stance in disability studies that abandons grand narritives and any appeals to subjective experience or embodied existence of disability is going too far I think. Although one can deconstruct typical essentialist visions of what it is to be disabled, everyone seems to live an embodied existence of some sort and identity is subjectively understood as a story or narritive. This is what it is to have a personal identity that makes ethical decisions about one's life. Anyways, I'm learning disability is philosophically interesting on all levels, and I think it is something more than regurgitating social models of disability. Disability is theoretically more complex and intellectually more deep than simply saying "disability is socially constructed".

Todays song is "This City's A Mess", by said the whale, another vancouver based band. Yay canadian music! Plus furries are also in for a special treate with this music video.