Drawing New Maps: A Radical Cartography of Developmental Disabilities

Abstract

Developmental disability is explored using a post-disciplinary approach through social construction and cultural cartography metaphors. It is drawn on social maps as a cultural territory created by the totalizing, mystifying science of positivism. People described as "having" developmental disabilities inhabit landscapes that are pathologized and marginalized, surrounded by impermeable label borders created by processes of quantification and numbering. Although seen as necessary by some in order to obtain adequate services for their survival in schools and other institutions of modernist society, these borders do not benefit those they contain. Instead, cartographies created by special education and other human service practices become reified, commodified, and objectified, providing a rationale for continued de-humanization and oppression. Alternative metaphors to labeling and other educational practices are suggested as new ways of drawing cultural maps. Policy implications for those educational and research sites seeking to change professionalized discourse to include labeled, otherized persons are discussed.

Access and participation in higher education of students with disabilities: access to what?

“…This view rejects the conventional 'pathologising' of individuals (Slee 1998) perceived to be 'deficient' or 'deviant' in some way (Gee 1996(Gee , 2001Rizvi and Lingard 1996;Smith 1999). Smith (1999) refers to this as 'cultural cartography', the drawing of borders around those considered to be 'normal', and subsequently to the labelling of those outside the curve as 'deviant', thus, according to Davis (1995), producing a 'hegemony of normalcy'. In contrast, a conventional 'medical' model of disability (seeing disability as an inherent medical condition of the individual) tends to be dominant in the areas of nursing and nurse education (Ashcroft et al 2008;Marks 2007;Moore 2004).…”

University education for all? Barriers to full inclusion of students with disabilities in Australian universities

“…This model views disability not as an inherent, medically defined feature of an individual but the product of socially constructed environments and attitudes, a result of the interaction between the individual's physical or mental condition and their socio-political environment. It rejects the measuring of individuals for perceived 'deficits', and advocates the measuring of environments for features that act to disable individuals (Zola 1994, Ballard 1997, rejecting the conventional 'pathologizing' of individuals (Rizvi andlingard 1996, Slee 1998) perceived to be 'deficient' or 'deviant' in some way (Gee 1996, Rizvi and lingard 1996, Smith 1999. It challenges the normative 'gaze' (Foucault 1973) arising from Western industrialization and its preoccupation with the 'normal' or 'average worker' (Barnes 1998).…”

“…RYAN ANI> JOHN STRUHS 1995, gave rise to the definition of the 'average' or the 'norm', most noticeably in the development of the Bell Curve. Smith ( 1999) refers to this as 'cultural cartography', the measurement of individuals and the drawing of borders around those considered to be 'normal', and subsequent labelling of those outside the curve as 'deviant', producing a 'hegemony of normalcy' (Davis 1995). This discourse of deficit thus acts to stigmatize, disempower and marginalize such individuals, and constructs 'different', 'deficient' or 'deviant' identities for them (Gee 1996, Corker 1998, Smith 1999, Kugelmass 2001.…”

“…Smith ( 1999) refers to this as 'cultural cartography', the measurement of individuals and the drawing of borders around those considered to be 'normal', and subsequent labelling of those outside the curve as 'deviant', producing a 'hegemony of normalcy' (Davis 1995). This discourse of deficit thus acts to stigmatize, disempower and marginalize such individuals, and constructs 'different', 'deficient' or 'deviant' identities for them (Gee 1996, Corker 1998, Smith 1999, Kugelmass 2001. Those who seek to challenge such views, in the vein of Habermas (1987) and Foucault (1973), see difference as not something residing in the 'other' but as a: marker of the human condition rather than as a problem to be solved ...• One problem in talking about difference and the consequent theorizing of 'difference' lies in the readiness with which difference becomes deviance and deviance becomes sin in a society preoccupied with normality.…”

The Biopolitics of Policy-Making: Medical Activism in the Century of the Brain

“…the threat of contagion." 80 Furthermore, not only are "people with autism" classified as having inferior brains and suffering from varying degrees of "mental retardation" under the disease model, they are also frequently described as a person trapped inside a malfunctioning body. 81 One such common description, used by the anti-autism movement, is the "child locked inside a shell" metaphor.…”