1st Edition

Critical Disability Studies and the Disabled Child Unsettling Distinctions

By Harriet Cooper Copyright 2020
188 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

186 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

186 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book examines the relationship between contemporary cultural representations of disabled children on the one hand, and disability as a personal experience of internalised oppression on the other. In focalising this debate through an exploration of the politically and emotionally charged figure of the disabled child, Harriet Cooper raises questions both about what it means to ‘speak for’ the... Read more

Acknowledgements

Abbreivations

Introduction

1. The look which made me: The early gazing relationship and the construction of disabled subjectivity

2. Making her better? Denaturalising the notion of the ‘developing child’

3. (Un)making the child, making the future: On gifts, commodities and diagnostic speech acts

4. Making, unmaking, remaking? Finding a position from which to resist

Conclusion

References

Index

Biography

Harriet Cooper is currently Senior Research Associate in Health and Medical Humanities at the University of East Anglia, UK. Having worked across both critical disability studies and health sociology, she is interested in how (inter)disciplinarity imagines itself and polices its operations, as well as in the ways in which concepts of inclusivity, involvement and democracy animate and shape academic agendas. The themes of disability and emancipation connect all of Harriet’s work to date, yet as a methodologist she continues to be irked by the question of how best to combine academia and activism.