Abstract
In this article, I ask what a Heideggerian analysis of subjectivity can do for disability politics, and to the investigation of subject formation more generally. I begin by outlining the historically dominant ‘social model of disability’, which frames disability as a form of oppression. In the section ‘Michael Oliver and the politics of disablement’, I suggest that a re-reading of Heidegger on subjectivity allows us to chart aspects of disabled personhood missed by the social model. Heidegger argues human existence (Dasein) defies subjectivity; I argue it is more primordial, but that the two can co-exist, particularly when disabled persons shape their own subjectivity. I provide a threefold ontological structure, Dasein-Mitdasein-Subjectivity, sensitive to the politics of subject formation. Finally, I turn to two cases of ontological disability politics, those of the French Muscular Dystrophy Association and global thalidomider politics, to show how my reading of subjectivity is preferable to the social model’s.
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Notes
There are, of course, many frameworks used to study disability sociologically; the social model is not the only one. It is, however, the most prominent: in the early days of Disability, Handicap, & Society (now Disability & Society), the journal edited by Oliver until his retirement, the social model was the dominant framework for studying disability, and is still taught in disability studies courses worldwide. Because of this ubiquity, it is also the most critiqued approach to studying disability.
In this way, social model thinking is very close to so-called ‘standpoint epistemology’, particularly that of Hartsock (1983). They differ in that hers is formed on the participation of women in two forms of labor, generating both exchange-value outside the home and use-value inside it, whereas Oliver’s is predicated on the inability of disabled persons to participate in the production and circulation of surplus value. Despite his proximity to such thinking, he does not cite Hartsock in the Politics.
More devoted Heideggerians will call this the difference between the ‘ontological’ and the ‘ontic’, between the Being of beings and their properties.
Dreyfus (1991) suggests threefold fundamental ontology – that of Dasein, things-present-at-hand, and merely present objects. I do not find this additional distinction helpful, as the latter two forms are available to human beings only because of the care-structure found in the first. Dasein is fundamental and only in its being do the other forms gain shape or meaning.
This is not a article about or against cognitive science and its purview. For a comprehensive account of cognitivism in cognitive science and a phenomenological way forward, see Thompson’s (2007) Mind in Life.
Here I use ‘rational’ not in reference to Cartesian philosophical rationalism, but rather to all members’ activities perpetuating social organization. I take this formulation from one of Harold Garfinkel’s Studies in Ethnomethodology, ‘The rational properties of scientific and common sense activities’ (1967, Ch. 8, pp. 262–284).
The term ‘Cartesianism’ is often used to describe this sort of thinking. I worry that this attributes too much to Descartes, who died in 1650, and not enough to each described position and the development of thought since the seventeenth century (I borrow this objection from Hacking, 2007). Heidegger does indeed discuss Descartes at length in Being and Time, but does so as part of Western philosophical history. I avoid the term because it attributes too much to one (straw) man, whereas the tradition should be our object. That said, Heidegger nonetheless dismisses Descartes as legitimate philosopher of human Being. For a more charitable reading of Descartes, as a ‘proto-phenomenologist’, who reads some but not all aspects of human bodily existence in his Meditations, see Leder’s (1990) The Absent Body. I find this reading more accurate – and thus preferable.
I requested permission to use an image of the statue in a previous article (Abrams, 2014a), but Grünenthal declined this request. Interested readers of Subjectivity can search images.google.com for ‘thalidomide sculpture’ to see the statue.
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Abrams, T. Heidegger, subjectivity, disability. Subjectivity 8, 224–242 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2015.3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2015.3