Class consciousness, disability, and social exclusion
Subtitle: a relational/reflexive analysis of disability culture.
Published: 2005
Language: eng
Number of pages: 255
Subjects: Handicapped -- Social conditions.; Class consciousness.; Marginality, Social.; Disabilities -- Social aspects.; Disabilities -- Political aspects.; People with disabilities and the performing arts
Description: My theoretical/methodological framework is based on Dorothy Smith's standpoint theory and Himani Bannerji's relational/reflexive method of social analysis. I consider testimony as a way of bridging what Smith calls the 'line of fault' between embodied experiences and objectified knowledge about those experiences. Through an analysis of autobiographical accounts, I discuss disability oppression in terms of the Marxist concept of 'alienation'. I argue that the concept of 'social exclusion' functions as an ideology that obscures the social relations of exploitation and imperialism. I contend that social inequality organized through disability relations should be understood as an expression of class contradiction, rather than as a result of the exclusion of a particular category of people from society. My challenge to the field of Disability Studies is that we must develop a theory of disability oppression that includes an explanation of how class contradiction, expressed on a global scale through war, scarcity, and environmental destruction, causes thousands of people to become disabled on a daily basis.The concept of 'social exclusion' is central in the current theoretical and policy-related literature on disability. I problematize the use of this concept as a common-sense way of understanding disability oppression. I argue that disability oppression can be understood by examining how forms of consciousness and objectified knowledge mediate disability as a  social category. My analysis of disability theory is framed by two concepts. First, I approach political consciousness as a quality related to a social group, rather than as the sum of individual ideas held by members of the group. Second, I am concerned with the dialectical relationship between theories and the social reality in which people think and act. I ground my analysis in theatrical works by members of a Toronto-based group of artist/activists with disabilities. I do not consider this group as representative of disability activists. Rather, following Dorothy Smith, I use the particularizing work that organizes this group's consciousness as a focal point for uncovering the relations of ruling through which disability oppression is organized. The group as a group becomes my entry point for an inquiry into collective, rather than individual, consciousness.
Notes: Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

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Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-06, Section: B, page: 3464.