Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:17:37.147Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

(Re)fusing the Amputated Body: An Interactionist Bridge for Feminism and Disability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Alexa Schriempf
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Disabled women's issues, experiences, and embodiments have been misunderstood, if not largely ignored, by feminist as well as mainstream disability theorists. The reason for this, I argue, is embedded in the use of materialist and constructivist approaches to bodies that do not recognize the interaction between “sex” and “gender” and “impairment” and “disability” as material-semiotic. Until an interactionist paradigm is taken up, we will not be able to uncover fully the intersection between sexist and ableist biases (among others) that form disabled women's oppressions. Relying on the understanding that sexuality is one such material-semiotic phenomenon, I examine the operation of interwoven biases in two disabled women's narratives.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 16 , Issue 4: Special Issue: Feminism and Disability, Part 1 , Fall 2001 , pp. 53 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Begum, Nasa. 1992. Disabled women and the feminist agenda. The Feminist Review 40: 70–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Begum, Nasa 1996. Doctor, doctor …: Disabled women's experiences of general practitioners. In Encounters with strangers: Feminism and disability, ed. Morris, Jenny. London: The Women's Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith 1993. Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex.” New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Butler, Ruth, and Parr, Hester. 1999. Mind and body spaces: Geographies of Illness, Impairment, and Disability. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Clare, Eli. 1999. Exile and pride: Disability, queerness, and liberation. Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press.Google Scholar
Corker, Mairian. 1998a. Deaf and disabled or deafness disabled? Buckingham, U.K.: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Corker, Mairian 1998b. Disability discourse in the modern world. In The disability reader: Social science perspectives, ed. Shakespeare, Tom. Buckingham, U.K.: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Corker, Mairian 1999a. Differences, conflations and foundations: The limits to “accurate” theoretical representation of disabled people's experience? Disability & Society 14(5): 627–42.10.1080/09687599925984CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corker, Mairian 1999b. New disability discourse, the principle of optimisation and social change. In Disability discourse, ed. Corker, Mairian and French, Sally. Buckingham, U.K.: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Crow, Liz. 1996. Including all of our lives: Renewing the social model of disability. In Encounters with strangers: Feminism and disability, ed. Morris, Jenny. London: The Women's Press.Google Scholar
Deegan, Mary Jo, and Brooks, Nancy A. eds., 1985. Women and disability: The double handicap. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books.Google Scholar
Fine, Michele, and Asch, Adrienne eds., 1988. Women with disabilities: Essays in psychology, culture, and politics. Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Hanna, William, and Rogovsky, Betsy. 1991. Women with disabilities: Two handicaps plus. Disability, Handicap, & Society 6(1): 49–63.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1991. Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1998. Is science multicultural? Postcolonialisms, feminisms, epistemologies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
International Classification of Impairment, Disability, and Handicap (ICIDH). 1980. Geneva: World Health Organization.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Margaret. 1992. Does she boil eggs? Towards a feminist model of disability. Disability, Handicap and Society 7(2): 201–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lonsdale, Susan. 1990. Women and disability: The experience of physical disability among women. Basingstoke: MacMillan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lugones, María, and Spelman, Elizabeth V. 1995. Have we got a theory for you! Feminist theory, cultural imperialism and the demands for “the woman's voice.” In Feminism and philosophy: Essential readings in theory, reinterpretation and application, ed. Tuana, Nancy and Tong, Rosemarie. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Monaghan, Peter. 1998. The faculty: Research. Pioneering field of disability studies challenges established approaches and attitudes. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 23 January.Google Scholar
Morris, Jenny. 1993. Feminism and disability. The Feminist Review 43(Spring): 57–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris, Jenny ed., 1996. Encounters with strangers: Feminism and disability. London: The Women's Press.Google Scholar
Mudrick, Nancy R. 1983. Disabled women. Society 20(3): 52–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicholson, Linda. 1994. Interpreting gender. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 20(11): 79–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oliver, Michael. 1996. Understanding disability: From theory to practice. London: Macmillan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Playboy editors. Meet Ellen Stohl. 1987. Playboy, 7 June, 70–77.Google Scholar
Shildrick, Margaret, and Price, Janet. 1998. Vital signs: Feminist reconfigurations of the biological body. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Carol. 1999. Female forms: Experiencing and understanding disability. Buckingham: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Thomson, Rosemarie Garland. 1994. Review essay: Redrawing the boundaries of feminist disability studies. Feminist Studies 20(3): 583–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tremain, Shelley. 2000. Google Scholar
Tuana, Nancy. 1996. Fleshing gender, sexing the body: Refiguring the sex/gender distinction. The Southern Journal of Philosophy: Rethinking Sex and Gender 35(supplement).Google Scholar
Tuana, Nancy 2001. Material locations: An interactionist alternative to realism/social constructivism. In Engendering rationalities, ed. Morgen, Sandra and Tuana, Nancy. New York: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Union of Physically Impaired People Against Segregation (UPIAS). 1976. Fundamental principles of disability. London: UPIAS.Google Scholar
Wendell, Susan. 1996. The rejected body: Feminist philosophical reflections on disability. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar