FEM 2104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Social Constructionism, Ableism, Performativity

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Women's Studies
• Course: FEM 2104
• Professor: Emilie Dionne

Document Summary

Disability in theory: from social constructionism to the new realism of the body tobin siebers. Usually, it means that the disabled body provides insight into the fact that all bodies are socially constructed that social attitudes and institutions determine far greater than biological fact the representation of the body"s reality. Expose how dramatically social representations determine the nature of the disabled body and the forms of self- knowing attached to it, providing a convincing example of the explanatory power of the social construction model. The medical model situates disability exclusively in individual bodies and strives to cure them by particular treatment, isolating the patient as diseased or defective. Social constructionism makes it possible to see disability as the effect of an environment hostile to some bodies and not to others, requiring advances in social justice rather than medicine. It prefers pleasure: it has often been claimed that the disabled body represents the image of the other.