OK. The talk is asking a simple, but of course
also a very very complex question. And it
asks, what does it mean to be human in the
21st century, and crucially, in what ways
does disability enhance these meanings? So
my position is that disability, rather than
leading us to think about lack, in relation
to the human, actually allows us to think
in productive and possible ways. So in addressing
this question, we seek to work through entangled
connections between nature, society, technology,
medicine, buyer power and culture, to consider
the extent to which the human might be an
outdated phenomenon. And perhaps we might
want to think about replacing this notion
of the human with what Rosi Braidotti says,
auteurs as the posthuman condition. There's
a picture of the wonderful Rosi Braidotti
in front of her equally wonderful bookshelf.
You'll also see on the photo, for those people
who, like me, lack a social life, the photo's
of Deleuze and Guattari. I imagine that's
how they used to write their books, just sit
there for a while and randomly put together
words. And this paper is – I'd hope – haunted
by their ideas, as well as the work of Braidotti
and others. The main idea, that, if you like,
pushes this paper, is the idea of disability.
Disability, then, is considered to be a number
of things. It's considered to be a political
category. It's considered to be an identity,
and, crucially, it's considered to be a moment
of relational ethics. Disability pushes us
in these, dare I say, exciting ways. And I
want to argue that disability and disability
studies are perfectly at ease with the notion
of the posthuman, because disability has always
contravened the traditional, classical Humanist
conception of what it means to be a human
being.
So in the paper, what I want to do is work
through three themes of a number of themes
that Braidotti sketches out in her book, but
I want to flesh these out, and I use that
term advisedly, if you like, through thinking
through disability. And again when going back
to the work of a writer such as Tichkowsky,
disability is almost like a moment to pause
and think about the human, but I also think
disability is something that keeps us very
mobile in our thinking about what it means
to be a human. So, what I want to do is to
think about the ways in which disability – and
here's a reference to some of my colleagues
across the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester,
who have, I believe, urged us and pushed us
to think again about what it means to be human.
Now, Braidotti's book, the 2013 book - and
I don't know if anyone has had the pleasure
of reading this - it starts off, in a way,
I would suggest, very similar to Frantz Fanon's
book. When he talks about the sense of, for
some of us, never ever being recognized as
human. And the quote here says that not all
of us can say with any degree of certainty
that we have always been human, or that we're
only that. Some of us are not even considered
fully human, let alone at previous moments
of Western sociopolitical and scientific history.
So in this sense, what I think Braidotti does
– and this is a well-worn argument, really
– is to suggest that humanity is very much
a male of the species. The Humanist human,
which is captured well here in this image
of Vitruvian Man, is, to quote her, a he.
He tends to be white, European, handsome,
and able-bodied. An ideal of bodily perfection.
And she also pushes it further. She says that
this Humanist human is implicitly assumed
to be masculine, white, urbanized – not
living in Montreal – speaking a standard
language, heterosexually inscribed in a reproductive
unit, and a full citizen of a recognized polity.
I love that quote, because when you present
that to people, they just think, Christ, that's
so dull! Well, you know, that is part of the
Humanist human that we're talking about. Moreover,
it's a rational animal endowed with language.
Now, of course Humanism has a eurocentric
core, and it has imperialist tendencies.
What we know from disability studies scholars,
they would add to this Humanism's convenient
relationship with these idealized notions
of the human. They would add processes such
as medicalization and psychologization, which
have colonized the mind (or the psyche) and
the body. So, the disabled and the non-Europeans
become known in terms of what they are not.
And what they are not, often, is a human being.
Now, so here we have the problems with the
Humanist human. But let us straightaway recognize
the perils or the dangers of tinkering or
tampering with a humanist ideal. If you say
to somebody, I'm not quite happy with this
notion of the human, maybe we should get rid
of it, then, understandably, people might
throw things at you.
For example, all those people within the disabled
people's movements, who have helped to write
up and contribute to the United Nations Convention
on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
– give a little feedback, trying to get
the title shorter would have been mine – is
that within that process is this recognition
of being a human too. Yeah? And what we know
is, like all good conventions, it says two
things. One, disabled people are human. And
two, humanity should be recognized. And that,
still, is a profound thing to do. Yeah? Across
the globe, this is a way of recognizing oneself
when oneself has been ostracized or marginalized.
So, we recognized, and I think Braidotti recognizes,
that we can get ourselves into some dangers
when we tinker with the human. Well, the point
is, is that we are entering, particularly
now, a time when the human is not as easily
recognizable as perhaps it once was. I would
actually add to that perhaps it never is as
recognizable as, perhaps, the Humanist human
might present. So here we have a beautiful
picture, or a scary picture, depending on
your view, of a university professor – only
joking – of a child with an iPad. We know
this. My biggest single argument in life,
apart from with people on Twitter – suggesting,
again, I need to develop a social life – is
with my twelve year old and my thirteen year
old daughters, who spend too much time on
their iPhones, in my humble opinion. I don't
say that to them. I don't say in my humble
opinion. I say thinks like, get off the phone!
Because clearly things are happening, we know
now. Things are becoming a lot more difficult
and tricky than they once were.
For Braidotti, this image, I think she would
say, is a nice kind of way of capturing - a
signifier, if you like, of the ways in which
the typical unitary, embodied, closed-in,
solitary human being is opening themselves
up to the world through technology. She says
this: the 21st century citizen is a knowing
subject with the potential to free us from
the provincialism of the mind, the sectarianism
of ideologies, and the dishonesty of grandiose
posturing, and the grip of fear. All, as I'd
like to call it, we Google. So the googling,
in some sense, instantly opens up, makes us,
potentially, to use the term, a knowing subject.
Now, at the same time, we need to acknowledge
that technology is also being used to occupy
a Humanist position. It allows people to say,
yes, I am someone that should be recognized
at the Humanist table. Well, there's something
more going on here that I want to turn to.
And this is where we will find it through
disability. It's the sense that in the current,
if you like, year – or 2014 – the human
is such an expanded entity, that one wonders
if old ideas of the human can actually capture
it. So what Braidotti urges us to do is this,
and I'll quote page 153, not that I'm in any
way anal about these things, she says, we
need to find the courage to move beyond an
exclusive concern for the human, to embrace
more planetary, intellectual challenges. This
not only means shifting how we understand
the human, but also our relationship with
our environment, our world, and human and
non-human inhabitants of our planet. And in
this recognizing this, for Braidotti, is this
move to what she terms the posthuman condition.
So, just briefly, the posthuman condition
for Braidotti is – and I'm not going to
read this quote but there is something quite
circular going on within it – is this notion
that the knowing subject is now a complex
assemblage of human and nonhuman, planetary
and cosmic, given and manufactured. And this
requires major readjustment in how we think
about ourselves, and others, and the world
around us. The crisis of Humanism, that is,
the realization that we all fail to dance
to the beat of the drum of the idealized big
subject in modernity means that, quoting,
again, Braidotti, structural others of the
modernist, Humanistic subject reemerge with
vengeance.
And she has this lovely quote, which brings
together a politicized position with her posthuman
ideas. She says this: the great emancipatory
movements of post-modernity have their fires
stoked by structural others, such as the pro-environment,
anti-nuclear, and anti-globalization. And
I would also add here disability movements.
Disability movements that too often, in many
transformative writings, are either ignored,
or sometimes added on when people are reminded
that disabled people actually exist. So what
Braidotti is doing here is she is getting
us to think about the human or the – if
you like – the extension of the human, and
the moral and the political and ethical questions
associated with the human in a number of ways.
And I want to talk through three themes. So,
what I want to do is I want to talk through
the notion of life beyond the self, is the
idea of rethinking enhancement, life beyond
the species, rethinking animal, and in doing
that actually the human, and thirdly I want
to think through life beyond death, rethinking
death.
And these are all taken from Braidotti and
her conception of what it means to be post-human.
And what I want to do is to suggest that these
are helpful ideas, but then, actually, if
Braidotti or others interested in contesting
the human, if they're looking for the space,
the sites – to use [unintelligible]'s phrase,
the scene of the crime, or the scene of where
we look at the ways in which some people are
deemed to be more human and others not, then
disability is the place. But of course I would
say that when my title is Professor of Disability
Studies, I suppose.
So, what I want to do is to very briefly now
introduce you to what disability and disability
studies can do. I – one's argument here
is that disability is, we could argue, the
quintessential posthuman condition. That disability
necessarily demands interdependent connections
with other humans, technologies, and non-human
entities, communication streams, and people
and non-people networks. Quite simply, disability
complicates the myopic perspective and non-representative
nature offered by Humanism. In a project that
I was involved in with a colleague, Janice
McLaughlin at the University of Newcastle,
which looked at the experiences of disabled
babies and their families, we came across
a young child of one years old with a label
of Down's Syndrome, who at that time had had
contact with over 120 health, social care,
and educational professionals. At the age
of one. A hundred and twenty. That's some
serious engagement with others.
Now, that raises straightaway the question
of why are all those kind of clashes going
on there? What kind of things are being served
by those connections? And one then gets thinking
about what kind of entity is left after all
those connections? And indeed, over the years,
disability scholars have emphasized the ways
in which disability, to use the words of Tanya
Tichkowsky, urges us to think productively
about the human. So, Tom Shakespeare in 2002
argues that disability emphasizes interdependence
instead of endlessly desiring independence.
There's a great quote from a disability activist,
I think it was Liz Crow, who said, how many
people cut their own hair? Well, I do, obviously.
But how many cut their own hair? We all are
in some ways connected with others.
Disability pushes this further. Families with
disabled children, for example, tell us, and
a common language that we hear from when we
speak to families of disabled children, is
the notion of struggle and fight and a endless
replaying, if you like, of the relationships
between their family and the wider community.
Moreover, the political work of disability
organizations, such as People First, for example,
and People First is a term employed by people
with the label of intellectual disabilities,
to define their politics. I mean, just think
about that for a minute. We are people first
- you don't get anything more quite profound
than that, as a form of political, if you
like, demands - have always demonstrated the
need for distributed support. Distributed
competence. They might not use words like
that, but they would say things like, we need
the support of others, and that's OK.
And disability, then, emerges in this posthuman
time that Braidotti and others are talking
about, as a moment of relational ethics. That
is, it urges us to think again about how we
are all made through our connections with
others, and more than that, disability encourages
to embrace ways of living that are not rigidly
framed by Humanistic values of independence
and autonomy – and that's a quote from Kirsty
Liddiard. So disability and projects of disability
seem to move very neatly alongside, perhaps
into, and parallel with, posthuman projects.
So, what I want to do is to kind of think
through, then, the ways in which disability
is an opportunity. This is another lovely
quote from Braidotti. She says this: the Humanism
normative convention, which does not make
it inherently negative – it's OK to be normal
sometimes. We have to be normal so you don't
get arrested – just highly regulatory and
hence instrumental to practices of exclusion
and discrimination.
We know that some people are allowed the category
of the human, and some people are denied it.
So of course we want rights. We want human
rights to be recognized. But we also know,
for example, in Britain, that we can have
a variety of what might be seen to be human
rights-based legislation and policies, but
disabled children still don't get invited
to non-disabled children's birthday parties.
Now, that might sound like a quite, like,
#Firstworldproblem. But what it does do is
it actually demonstrates that regardless of
this, if you like, engagement of the category
of the human, shit still happens. And no doubt
these fights will go on to secure some recognition
within the register of the human.
But at the same time, we know, globally, that
alongside these battles to be recognized as
human, there are other everyday negotiations,
performances, lobbying, debates, embodiments,
relationalities, emotionalities, and recognitions
that are being demanded by disabled people
and their allies in the communities where
they live. And these practices, I want to
suggest, are equally important. So let us
think then through three disabled posthuman
possibilities, and more importantly, A, see
if Braedotti is talking any sense, and B,
if she is, what does disability add to the
consideration of the posthuman?
OK, so where I want to start is to think about
life beyond the self, or rethinking enhancement.
Now, for Braedotti, in the posthuman condition,
matter is not dialectically opposed to culture
nor to technological mediation, but continuous
with it. So, matter and culture are endlessly
kind of feeding into one another in the ways
described by many materialist feminists for
a number of years. As Braedotti said, we have
entered an epoch of pan-humanity, where each
and everything is technologically mediated.
The question is not should we be enhanced
by technology? The question is something along
the lines of, what ontological, ethical, and
political questions are raised by our technological
enhancement, or is the iPhone fucking us up,
or actually doing maybe something positive
with us? An argument, just to clarify, that
I would not use with my own children, for
that would be inappropriate and rude.
And so when we think of enhancement, of course,
we are plunged into the shiny, sexy world
of sci-fi and cyborgs. And here's an example.
If you type in cyborg on Google, be careful.
You get drawn into a variety of forum and
chatrooms and end up meeting people in Manchester
on a Wednesday evening when you shouldn't
have done. But that's maybe time for another
paper. We all, I'm going to have to do this,
to quote the British musician Damon Albarn,
who has recently observed we are everyday
robots, plugged into the global information
superhighway with our smart phones and our
relentless use of social media. At the same
time, as Gregor Wolbring, the Canadian disability
scholar cautions, one needs to ask what kinds
of enhancements are being produced and promoted
through technology.
Indeed, what kinds of lacking humanity does
technology have in mind when it wants to enhance
us? So, for Wolbring, this celebration of
the life beyond the self promoted by Braedotti
needs to be treated with caution. Because
if we take, for example, the idea that if
we were to develop a wheelchair that could
actually go up steps, a point made by Nick
Watson in a project around the social implications
of the wheelchair, would we be happy that
that wheelchair is getting us up the steps?
Or is this saying something wider about the
ways in which our wider physical spaces are
normatively conceived in ways whereby, unless
you walk, you're kind of shuttered.
So there's a need to be cautious here. Disability
reminds us of the need to be cautious about
enhancements. At the same time, one argument
could be made is that disability has always
been about enhancement. That it's always been
about this kind of complex relationship between
the body and the machine, between matter and
between technology. So some examples would
be as follows. This is a picture of what might
– has been deemed a futuristic wheelchair.
I'm not being funny, but I'm a bit disappointed
with this already. You can't fly, for god's
sake. That's what I would want from it. But
one might – if we take this notion of the
posthuman – we might want to revisit this
wheelchair user as a cyborg. That might be
a nice, helpful way of thinking through things.
The second image tries to capture the notion
of a disabled person employing a number of
personal assistants. So rather than a disabled
person lacking, they are naturally an assemblage
of humanity. The image here is of a blind
woman walking down the street with the support
of a guide dog. Or a complex hybrid of human
and animal. Again, disability pushes toward
these post-human ideas. The augmentative and
alternative communication user, long before
the iPad was invented was already a productive
blending of wetwear and hardwear. The child
labelled with special educational needs (I'm
not going to tell you which one it is in this
image, because it's not actually even an image
of that, but I just thought I'd throw this
in) is either somebody who takes up a lot
of resources from the other children, or extends
educational opportunities for everybody. And
we know from research that if you have disabled
children in classrooms, then actually other,
non-disabled kids' learning experiences can
be improved.
The tube-fed baby reminds us that technology
gives life, and gives life to technology.
The person with so called label of profound
intellectual disabilities, whose very existence
permits the employment of four people to offer
24/7 support widens our sense of what it means
to be interdependent. Parents with intellectual
disabilities demand us to think again about
parental competence. Quite simply, if you
are a parent with a label of intellectual
disabilities and you've still got your children,
you've reached a gold standard of parenting
no one in this room will ever achieve. Because
of the massive surveillance that they are
to endure.
And I want to move on to, now, the notion
of the life beyond the species, which is the
second theme of four within the book, but
I'm only going to look at three. One of the
most exciting moments for the posthuman condition
for Braedotti is that we stop being so anthropocentric.
That we stop bigging up or celebrating everything
that's to do with the human or the Humanist
human. And, more than that, recognize notions
of trans-species solidarity. And this is where
Braedotti very much is drawing upon the work
of Deleuze and Guattari. She talks about the
need for us to all think about how we might
become animal, or become animal and human
together. And I'm thinking here about the
work of Rob [unintelligible] and his beautiful
text, which is a 1999 text which looks at
the becoming together of animal and human
being.
Too often, Braedotti writes, we think of animals
in terms of a taxonomy – three groups. Those
we eat, those we watch TV with, and those
we're scared of. Now, what's interesting we
could add to the taxonomy there, in terms
of disability, is that we have animals that
are companions, animals that are supporters,
animals that are workers, and maybe animals
that become overworked. So what disability
allows us to think, then, is about the kind
of relationships we have with animals. And
more than that, the kind of alliances we would
want to create with animals. And in doing
so, this pushes us out, according to Braedotti,
away from a kind of speciesism and starts
us to ask ethical questions, about not just
animals and humans, but also humans and humans
as well.
I'll just really quote from Margrit Shildrick
and Janet Price's beautiful piece where they
talk through the kind of relationships that
disability prompts us to think about. And
this is their quote: the disabled woman who
relies on an assistant or carer to help her
prepare for a sexual encounter, be it in terms
of dressing appropriately, negotiating toilet
facilities, or acquiring direct physical support
in a comfortable sexual position is not different
in kind from other women, but simply engage
more overtly in just those networks that Deleuze
and Guattari characterize as desiring production.
Similarly, a reliance on prosthetic devices,
the linkages between human, animal, and machine,
would figure not as limitations but as transformative
possibilities, are becoming other along multiple
lines of flight. That was a bit of Deleuze
and Guattari word-bingo played in there by
Shildrick and Price, throwing in as many of
the kind of ideas of Deleuze and Guattari
as possible.
What I like about it, that quote, is it gets
us to think again about the kind of connections
that human beings might want to be making
as they extend themselves out, as they try
to live life beyond their species. And back
to Ron [unintelligible]'s work, this raises
some ethical and political and challenging
questions. And I think it's in his ethico-political
account of life with a guide dog and companion
animal, we're encouraged to reflect what do
we ask of animals, what are our ethical rights
to do so, and how do humans and animals become
together? And interestingly and importantly,
and also, one might say, shockingly, the animal
is often referred to and does appear in representations
and discussions of disability.
Shame on me, but this is actually taken from
the Daily Mail newspaper. The Daily Nazi,
as we like to call it in the UK. The reason
I use it is to look at the way in which this
newspaper reported the shocking abuse cases
at Winterbourne View, a residential hospital
in Bristol. I don't know if this story got
to you here in Canada. But this was a story
of systemic violence by care staff against
adults with intellectual disabilities. And
what actually happens within the portrayal
of what happened to these serve issues, and
there's an interesting euphemism, is that
we had within the representation a number
kind of – in whistleblowing – a number
of kind of blames being made at individual
care workers. These were violent, bad, evil
people that were doing these kind of things,
rather than actually asking maybe institutionally
the system is set up in ways that might encourage
those kinds of actions. That's for a different
discussion.
What is interesting in this representation
is underneath our photo caption it reads:
vile. Care workers dragged vulnerable patients
around like animals at the Winterbourne View
private care hospital in Bristol. And there
is the image to show that. What is illuminating
about that quote is the way in which the animal
is evoked as a way of talking about abuse.
Winterbourne shocked because humans were being
treated like animals. One assumes it would
be doubly shocking to treat non-disabled people
as if they were animals. It would appear that
there is an unconscious human desire to view
animals as less than human, and in some cases,
treat certain categories of humans as if they
were not. Non-humans would be people with
learning disabilities.
Now, the trouble with this anthropocentric
position, is it, again, upholds, as Braedotti
calls it, transcendental human exceptionalism.
It has the potential to to expel those of
us that fail to match up to its standards.
The care workers failed – they were vile,
they themselves were like animals. And in
this sort of way of thinking through, there's
a danger. Because what it does is it leaves
the human as a category that's troubled, and
seemingly the right category, and views the
animal as non-human and often the recipient
of certain kinds of behaviours that we would
not do to human beings. Let me remind you
of the quote: care workers dragged vulnerable
patients around like animals.
One might want to throw in there, care workers
dragged vulnerable patients around like the
categories of human that are deemed, in the
current sociopolitical climate, around the
ways in which we understand what it means
to be human. That wouldn't get printed in
the Daily Fascist, though. That's for another
consideration. So, what we have here, then,
is that disability, because disability's historical
relationships, often, with its extended connections
of, firstly, extension of humanity, but also
disability's space or relationship with the
notion of the animal, whether it be practical,
through support, or whether the animal is
evoked to describe certain disabilities, this
might be a way of getting us thinking of a
life beyond the species.
The third and final theme I want to talk about
is Braedotti's notion of life beyond death,
or rethinking death. Now this, I think, is
particularly an important intervention in
Braedotti's posthuman approach. In a recent
research project that I was involved with
with Catherine Cole, we were fortunate to
meet and talk with some young disabled people
who were living with life-limiting, life-threatening
impairments. These were young people who,
in short, realized they were going to die.
Their perspectives on the value of their short
lives were, in surprise to us, perhaps, incredibly
productive. They shared with us their concerns,
their worries, and their sadness. They told
us how difficult their families found their
prognosis. But they also crucially told us
jokes, shared fun stories, sexual ambitions,
and exciting projects that they were involved
in.
They demanded us to rethink about how we put
together words such as 'valued,' 'quality,'
'life' and 'living' in their discussions with
us. They also asked us to revisit our own
problematic and inherently deficit-leaning
thoughts around death. And indeed, one of
the disability slogans in North America was
“not dead yet.” Now, what Braedotti suggests
is that, within a post-human condition, we
are to think again, and crucially more affirmatively,
rather than depressingly, about notions of
life and death. And indeed, these young people
did this with us. They asked us and they urged
us and they encouraged us to think positively
and productively about death, disability,
and short lives. And this, we think, is something
maybe also part of the post-human condition.
Indeed, [unintelligible] proposes that all
of us now are living as global citizens with
debility.
So we are living with the notion of debility.
And perhaps nowhere is this more the case
than children and young people who are living
with life-limiting impairments. So, the young
people and a posthuman condition pushes to
ask some interesting and tricky questions.
How might we think positively about death?
How might we think about short lives in ways
which are not endlessly about misery? Of course,
honouring the idea that families – no one's
denying that families will not be sad about
their children dying young – but to think
again about how we understand quality, life,
and, crucially, death. In what ways, then,
can we promote valued understandings of real
bodies facing death? How can death, disability,
and short lives be conceptualized in less
liminal and pathological ways?
Again, disability intervenes. One might argue
that children with life-limiting and life-threatening
impairments are pioneers. They're pioneers
in terms of getting us to think again about
what counts as a valued life and what it means
to die. Death and short lives, then, are pulled
away from a depressive position to think again
in a productive space. More than that, many
of the young people we spoke to were also
plugged into a variety of human and non-human
assemblages. Machines that were there to give
them life, to deal with pain. Relationships,
everyday caring relationships, palliative
care in which their humanity or their shared
humanity, their panhumanity, was being valued.
This is not to deny the tragedy of young people
dying far too early. Rather, it is about inviting
an alternative conceptualization of life and
death, what Braedotti calls a relational vitality.
OK. So where does this lead us, then, in terms
of concluding your thinking about the relationships
between the posthuman and disability studies?
Braedotti doubts Deleuze and Guattari's notion
of the pedagogy of the concepts. When she
argues this on page 104, the thinking is about
the invention of new concepts and new productive
ethical relations. In this respect, she argues,
theory is a form of organized estrangement
from dominant values. I love that. A form
of organized estrangement from dominant values.
And I share this view of theory, and of the
view that disability also allows us to become
estranged from dominant values.
So we also think that disability brings something
critical, politicized and rich to post-human
theory. The sense here is that disabled people
and disabled people's politics are already
fighting within using and wanting to be recognized
by the human register, but equally are already
enacting forms of activism, art, and relationality
that push us all to think more imaginatively
about what it means to be or become. So disability
politics, then, is potentially where it's
at, if we're thinking about the ways in which
we can think through human and posthuman possibilities.
So to finish, then, disability disavows the
human. Disavow in that classic psychoanalytic
sense. It designs the human and it rejects
it equally at the same time. And in this dynamic,
necessarily contradictory play with the human,
we find possibility. Disability allows us
to think again about ourselves, our relationships
and our politics. Posthuman disability studies
capture the now and the future of our activism
and our thinking. Thank you.
