Worlding Disability: Categorizations, Labels, and the Making of People

摘要

Words matter. In gathering an international list of disability terminology, Illes and Lou (2019) remind us that language is not static or neutral. Words are active; that is, they do and make things in and of the world. Debates regarding disability terminology are thus important in that they are world making. Language both shapes and is shaped by how disability is understood and addressed. In new materialist (Fox and Alldred 2015, Barad 2003) parlance, words matter—that is, they are matter, and make things matter (materialize) in very real ways. Said differently, words are real entities in that they have the power to bring some forms of disability into being and to suppress others. Illes and Lou note that disability terms can be "stigmatizing or elevating" (75). These are material, world-making effects. However, I offer that disability terms do more than this. They (including the term "disability" itself) create and sustain categories of being, of persons, and of bodies. They contribute to the binary divisions of people that are labeled as disabled (the exception), or not disabled (the putative norm). Persons labeled as disabled experience a host of effects, often (but not always) negative. They are positioned as patients, objects of pity, welfare recipients, or erroneous sources of "inspiration" (Grue 2016). Because categories do things in the world, changing categories can change the world. In other words, categories are worlding.