Disability Studies and Phenomenology: The carnal politics of everyday life

TLDR

Disability studies has inadequately addressed bodily agency, treating the impaired body as a passive recipient of social forces—a view losing ground in social theory and lacking political content when extended phenomenologically. The paper seeks to develop a sociology of impairment by theorizing embodiment in the lebenswelt and to counter disablism by proposing a radical phenomenological approach to the impaired body. The authors employ a radical phenomenological framework and apply Leders' (1990) concept of dys‑appearance to analyze the carnal politics of everyday life. Using Leders' dys‑appearance concept, the authors illustrate how the impaired body engages in carnal politics within everyday life.

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to develop a sociology of impairment and to theorise embodiment in the lebenswelt. Disability studies has failed to address adequately the fundamental issue of bodily agency. The impaired body is represented as a passive recipient of social forces. Such a conception of the body is losing ground within social theory. This paper attempts to overcome disability studies' disembodied view of disability by utilising a phenomenological concept of embodiment. Phenomenology offers the opportunity to transcend the traditional Cartesian dualisms which posit the body as a passive precultural object. However, such a view, when extended to impairment is empty of political content since phenomenological analyses have relied upon medicalised and individualised understandings of disability. In order to counter the disablism evident in phenomenology on the one side and disability studies' disembodied view of disability on the other, we argue for a radical phenomenological approach to the (impaired) body. To demonstrate the vitality of such an approach, we also attempt to deploy Leders' (1990) concept of dys-appearance as a means of analysing the carnal politics of everyday life.