The Neoliberal Circulation of Affects: Happiness, accessibility and the capacitation of disability as wheelchair

Authors

  • K. Fritsch York University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/hcs.2013.136

Keywords:

International Symbol of Access (ISA), disability, wheelchair, affect, neoliberalism

Abstract

The International Symbol of Access (ISA) produces, capacitates, and debilitates disability in particular ways and is grounded by a happy affective economy that is embedded within neoliberal capitalism. This production of disability runs counter to the dismantling of ableism and compulsory able-bodiedness. In charting the development of the modern wheelchair, the rise of disability rights in North America, and the emergence of the ISA as a universally acceptable representation of access for disabled people, I argue that this production of disability serves a capacitating function for particular forms of impairment. These capacitated forms are celebrated through a neoliberal economy of inclusion. I conclude by critically approaching the happy affects of the ISA, including the way in which the symbol creates a sense of cruel optimism for disabled people.

Author Biography

K. Fritsch, York University

Kelly Fritsch is a PhD Candidate in Social and Political Thought at York University. Her work appears in Disability Studies Quarterly, Critical Disability Discourse, and Upping the Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action.

References

Accessible Icon Project. (2013). The Accessible Icon Project. Retrieved September 18, 2013 from http://www.accessibleicon.org/

Ahmed, S. (2007). Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Ahmed, S. (2010). The Promise of Happiness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Ahmed, S. (2013, September 11). Making Feminist Points. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://feministkilljoys.com

Ben-Moshe, L., & Powell, J.W. (2007). Sign of our times? Revis(it)ing the International Symbol of Access. Disability and Society, 22(5), 489-505.

Berlant, L. (2007). Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency). Critical Inquiry, 33(4), 754–780. doi:10.1086/521568

Berlant, L. (2010). Cruel Optimism. In M. Gregg and G. Siegworth (Eds.) The Affect Theory Reader (93-117). Durham: Duke University Press.

Butler, J. (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge.

Dolmage, J. (2012, June). From Retrofit to Universal Design, From Collapse to Occupation: Neo-Liberal Spaces of Disability. Paper presented at the Society for Disability Studies 25th Annual Conference, Denver, Colorado. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/1244157/_From_Retrofit_to_Universal_Design_From_Collapse_to_Occupation_Neo-Liberal_Spaces_of_Disability_

Dolmage, J. (2013, June). Disability Space-Time-Economy. Paper presented at the Canadian Disability Studies Association, Victoria, BC. Retrieved from http://disabilitycapitalism.wordpress.com/author/drjaydolmage/

Freund, P. (2001). Bodies, Disability and Spaces: The social model and disabling spatial organisations, Disability & Society, 16(5), 689-706.

Fritsch, K. (2013). On the negative possibility of suffering: Adorno, feminist philosophy, and the transfigured crip to come. Disability Studies Quarterly, 33(4). Retrieved September 27, 2013 from http://dsq-sds.org

Gerber, D. A. (2003). Disabled Veterans, the State, and the Experience of Disability in Western Societies, 1914-1950. Journal of social history, 36(4), 899–916.

Groce, N. (2002). From Charity to Disability Rights: Global Initiatives of Rehabilitation International, 1922-2002, New York: Rehabilitation International.

James, J. C. (2011). Gwendolyn Brooks, World War II, and the Politics of Rehabilitation. In K. Q. Hall (Ed.), Feminist Disability Studies (136-158). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Kolarova, K. (2011). How Sam Became a Father, Became a Citizen: Scripts of Neoliberal Inclusion of Disability. In M. do Mar Castro Varela, N. Dhawan, & A. Engel (Eds.), Hegemony and Heteronormativity: Revisisting the “Political” in Queer Politics (121- 142). Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Group.

Powell, J., & Ben-Moshe, L. (2009). The icons of access: From exclusion to inclusion. stimulus respond, 5, 91- 96. Retrieved September 25, 2013 from http://issuu.com/stimulusrespond/docs/icon

Puar, J. (2012). Coda: The cost of getting better. Suicide, sensation, switchpoints. GLQ, 18(1), 149-158.

Rehabilitation International. (2013). Symbol of Access. Rehabilitation International. Retrieved September 16, 2013 from http://www.riglobal.org/symbol-of-access/

Shapiro, J. (1993). No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement. New York: Random House.

Sapey, B., Stewart, J., & Donaldson, G. (2005). Increases in wheelchair use and perceptions of disablement. Disability & Society, 20(5), 489–505. doi:10.1080/09687590500156162

Smit, C. R. (2013, June). Disability Things: A Technological Ontology. Paper presented at the Society for Disability Studies Conference, Orlando, Florida. Retrieved September 25, 2013 from http://media.virbcdn.com/files/6e/15a827c30f9c9dca-DisabilityThingsATechnologicalOntology.pdf

Stiker, H. J. (1999). A History of Disability. Translated by William Sayers. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Titchkosky, T. (2003). Governing embodiment: Technologies of constituting citizens with disabilities. Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, 28(4), 517–542.

Titchkosky, T. (2011). The Question of Access: Disability, Space, Meaning. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Tremblay, M. (1996). Going Back to Civvy Street: A Historical Account of the Impact of the Everest and Jennings Wheelchair for Canadian World War II Veterans with Spinal Cord Injury. Disability and Society, 11(2), 149-169.

Woods, B., & Watson, N. (2003a). A Short History of Powered Wheelchairs. Assistive Technology, 15(2), 164–180. doi:10.1080/10400435.2003.10131900

Woods, B., & Watson, N. (2003b, September). Power to Independence: A Historical Glimpse at the Interactions between Powered Wheelchairs and the Physically Disabled Students Program at Berkeley. Paper presented to the Inaugural Conference of the Disability Studies Association. Disability Studies: Theory, Policy and Practice, Lancaster University. Retrieved September 20, 2013 from http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/events/disabilityconference_archive/2003/papers/woods_watson2003.pdf

Zola, I. K. (1982). Missing Pieces: a chronicle of living with a disability. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Downloads

Published

2013-11-15

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 1 (2013): Translating Happiness: Medicine, Culture and Social Progress

Section

Articles

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
  2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
  3. The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
    1. Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
    with the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
  4. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  5. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
  6. Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
  7. The Author represents and warrants that:
    1. the Work is the Author’s original work;
    2. the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
    3. the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
    4. the Work has not previously been published;
    5. the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
    6. the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
  8. The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.

Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.