Countering ableist life courses: The (re)production of dis/ability in...

Abstract of the symposium in which I gave my presentation:

Disability studies has repeatedly contended “all of us live with disability at some point in our lives [...], suggesting that becoming disabled is ‘only a matter of time’” (Kafer, 2013:26; cf. Oliver 1996). Depending on the nature of the impairment and when in one’s life it occurs, it is not necessarily understood by the person or others as a disability. The cultural understanding of what constitutes a disability is hence connected to understandings of time, aging and the idea of a normative life course. However, research with a life course perspective within disability studies (cf. Barron 2004; Priestley 2003; Söder 2009) has often been focused on possibilities and/or obstacles for people with disabilities to achieve the goals of normative life such as work, marriage and children. Studies have yet to focus on the construction of the normative life course itself.

Amongst others Alison Kafer (2013) and Fiona Kumari Campbell (2012) have scrutinized the concept of disabled people’s futures by positioning ableism, and not disability, as the obstacle to a life course enabling a future, both imagined and real. Studies in ableism, as Campbell suggests, “shift our gazefrom a disability pre-occupied minoritisation towards ableist normativity [...]. The direction is to examine elements of what is presented as normal or aspirational” (215). Kafer argues that living with a disability implies “... a detour from the timeline of normative progress.../ recognizing how expectations of how ’long it takes’ are based on very particular minds and bodies” (2013: 25, 27). Akin to the ideas of heteronormative time presented by for example Halberstam (2005), Kafer argues that the idea of ableism and able-bodiedness as the desirable normal permeates our understanding of time. Rendering crip embodiments and their challenges 15to normative time creates an understanding of time that differs from the able-bodied one -as well as presenting a challenge to the construct of time and life courses in a normative ableist sense.

With the overall objective to develop and examine disability and ableism in relation to the notion of normative time and temporality, this symposium aims to advance knowledge and deepen the discussion of the ascribed disabled life course by employing perspectives on disability and time that draws from the understanding of ableist normalcy and crip time following Alison Kafer (2013) and Fiona Kumari Campbell (2012). Thus, this symposium will contribute to the recent and growing field of ableism studies by attracting participants interested in how ableist cultural norms and ideas shape both perceived and lived lives of people with disabilities.The topics in the symposium will address the following themes: 

• The embodiment of crip time/ableist time
• Cultural representations of crip/ableist time
• Notions of ableism in transitions throughout the life course (e.g. education, work, marriage/cohabitation, parenting)