Working the edges of Posthuman disability studies: theorising with disabled young people with life‐limiting impairments

Abstract

This paper is built upon an assumption: that social theory can be generated through a meaningful engagement with a co‐researcher group of disabled young people. Our co‐researchers are theoretical provocateurs and theorists in their own right who, through their activism and writing, are challenging us to reconsider the meaning of life, death and disability. Their work on our funded Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project has enabled us to consider the promise and potential of humanist and posthuman epistemologies, theories, methodologies, interventions and activisms. The paper introduces the research, the authors of this paper (academics and co‐researchers) and then explores three layers of analysis that work the edges of posthuman thinking; sovereign and assembled selves; affects and desires; mourning and affirmation. We conclude by asserting that as a research team we are engaging with a DisHuman approach to theory and activism: one that blends the pragmatics of humanism with posthuman possibilities.

A legacy of silence: the intersections of medical sociology and disability studies

“…In this section, I have captured how parents offered affirmative, yet not sentimental and one-dimensional, narratives of their lives. Their accounts are similar to those observed in the study by Liddiard et al (2019) with five disabled young women living with life-limiting/life-threatening impairments. At odds with assumptions of limitations and a poor fit with a ‘good life’, they conveyed their hopes, dreams and impact on others.…”

“…The likes of Thomas (2012, 215), instead, plug a ‘social oppression’ paradigm, which sees living with a disability as being subjugated and at the mercy of structural hostilities. This is a central tenet of disability studies, an interdisciplinary field of both scholarship and activism, that simultaneously seeks to ‘quash damaging pathological discourses of disability to offer more sociocultural conceptions’ (Liddiard et al 2019, 1474). It runs counter to dominant hegemonic narratives of disability that ‘individualise, pathologise, medicalise, psychologise, essentialise and depoliticise disability’ (Goodley et al 2019, 973).…”

Developing a research approach to explore therapeutic relationships with children and young people with complex needs: A critical reflection

“…Children and young people and family members will be co-researchers, which challenges academic research conventions. This position is in line with theoretical and political approaches informed by critical disability studies, crip and posthuman theories (Braidotti, 2013; Goodley and Runswick-Cole, 2016; Goodley et al, 2014; Liddiard et al, 2019a; McRuer, 2006).…”

(Re)defining their place at the table: Frank discussions by adults with disabilities on contemporary self‐advocacy

“…The first limitation orbits on methodology. While this project held participatory elements in the analysis (Liddiard et al, 2019), much of the project was not driven by adults with disabilities. More participatory research controlled by adults with disabilities, including adults who experience intersecting oppressions, and have intellectual disability and/or diverse and complex support needs, is needed from theorisation to dissemination (Seale et al, 2015).…”