Rethinking Disability: Bodies, Senses, and Things (Routledge Studies in Science, Technology and Society)

Rethinking Disability

Routledge Studies in Science, Technology and Society

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10. Global Public Health Vigilance Creating a World on Alert Lorna Weir and Eric Mykhalovskiy 11. Rethinking Disability Bodies, Senses, and Things Michael Schillmeier

Rethinking Disability Bodies, Senses, and Things

Michael Schillmeier

New York

London

First published 2010 by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2010 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Schillmeier, Michael W. J. Rethinking disability : bodies, senses and things / by Michael Schillmeier. p. cm.—(Routledge studies in science, technology and society ; 11) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Sociology of disability. 2. Human body—Social aspects. I. Title. HV1568.S35 2010 305.9'08—dc22 2009039702 ISBN 0-203-85484-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-99325-3 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-85484-5 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-99325-8 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-85484-6 (ebk)

This book is dedicated in gratitude to Elizabeth Schillmeier, and in memory of Heinz Schillmeier, Elke Schillmeier, and Maria Assumpció Monguilod Porqueras.

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: Rethinking Disability—Revisiting the Social

ix 1

PART I ‘The Social’ in Question: Rethinking Modern Di/visions 1

The Social and the Religion of Modernity

2

Othering Blindness in the Light of Vision and Di/vision

9 42

PART II In Medias Res 3

A Dis/ability Manifesto

101

PART III Dis/abling Practices 4

Dis/abling Spaces of Calculation

127

5

Time-Spaces of In/dependence and Dis/ability

155

6

From Exclusive Perspectives to Inclusive Differences

169

7

Concluding Remarks

182

Notes References Index

185 191 207

Acknowledgments

Rethinking Disability could not have been possible without all the dis/ abled people I have met. I feel very honored to have been able to partake in their histories, lived experiences and stories, their concerns, their pragmatics and hopes, sensitivities, laughter and sorrows. Such a project also needs institutional support: I thank the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), The Royal Institute of Blind People (RNIB), the Universities of Keele and Lancaster. I have been lucky to meet people who made me think differently about and marvel at the world. Thanks to Cristina Pallí Monguilod, Joanna Latimer, Rolland Munro, Nick Lee, John Law, Michel Callon, Joost van Loon, Yvonne Lee Schultz, Vicky Singleton, Ulrich Beck, Siegfried Saerberg, Carolin Länger, Bob Cooper, Floris Tomasini, Yvonne Dittrich, and Daniel B. Lee. I also would like to thank Lara Mosdal and Felix Bader, Annette Schaal, Lea Schütze, and Verena Stoppel. Various Parts of some chapters have been published previously: Part 1/Chapter 4: “Othering Blindness—On Modern Epistemological Politics.” Disability & Society 21(5): 471-484. Taylor & Francis. http:// www.informaworld.com Part 3/Chapter 6: “Dis/abling spaces of calculation: blindness and money in everyday life.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25(4) 594–609. Pion Limited, London. Part 3/Chapter 6: “Dis/abling Practices. Rethinking Disability.” Human Affairs 17(2): 195–208. Part 3/Chapter 7: “Time-Spaces of Becoming In/dependent and Dis/abled.” Time & Society 2/3: 215–231. Part 3/Chapter 8: “(Visual) Disability—From Exclusive Perspectives to Inclusive Differences.” Disability & Society 23(6): 611-623. Taylor & Francis. http://www.informaworld.com

Introduction Rethinking Disability: Revisiting the Social The a priori of empirical social life consists of the fact that life is not entirely social. —Georg Simmel, ‘How Is Society Possible?’ (1992d)

Rethinking Disability underscores the historical breakthrough of understanding disability as a social reality. To address the social meaning of disability is very much to the merit of the active disabled community itself, which has been tackling the disabling practices and experiences of disability as they emerge in the course of their everyday lives. Disability activists all over the world have been very much concerned about drawing attention to the societal forces that make up the changing experiences of disability in order to question any attempt to biologize, individualize or ontologize the nature of disability. Personal experiences of disability played a major role in outlining a political program addressing the diverse experiences of societal exclusion, oppression and discrimination. With the political program ‘nothing about us without us’, British disabled activists inaugurated a social model of disability that distinguished between ‘impairments that people have, and the oppression which they experience’ (Shakespeare & Watson, 2001: 10). Obviously, disability studies have originated, are organized and conducted at different times and spaces in varying manners. So there are approaches that may be roughly linked to a British style, which then differs in some respects from a North American discourse (cf. e.g. Barnes, 1991; Barnes, Oliver, & Barton, 2003; Barnes & Mercer, 1996, 1997; Barnes and Pfeiffer, 2001; Titchkosky, 2002, 2003; Davies, 2006; Mitchell & Snyder, 1997; Waldschmidt & Schneider, 2007). These studies may be part of sociological, cultural, psychosocial or social anthropological studies, which may all differ in their theoretical framings, may outline diverse research agendas and may employ different methodologies that may be qualitatively or/and quantitatively oriented, as well as informed by regional, national or transnational studies. This book rethinks the social studies of disability. Social studies of disability differ from other accounts inasmuch as they employ specific methods, concepts and theoretical generalizations to visualize the very

2

Rethinking Disability

societal construction of disability. Under social scientific scrutiny, ‘disability’ turns into a theme that draws attention to societal issues in similar ways as gender, race or migration do. A social science of disability, then, like any other ‘social studies of X’, aims to highlight the societal construction of disability in order to show that disability isn’t merely a naturally given matter of fact. Rethinking Disability outlines a constructivist account of disability. Yet it differs from a classical social constructivist perspective in one very decisive point. For classical interpretations of social scientific investigation, it is ‘the social’ that is meant to explain societal matters and problems. However, this book will argue that disability cannot be explained by ‘the social’ understood as a self-sufficient matter of fact that acts as a universal explanans.1 Rather, ‘the social’ is in need of explanation by the practices and experiences of disability that emerge from the different ways of how bodies, minds, senses and things relate. This is the main thesis of this book: Rethinking Disability entails Revisiting the Social. As a result, Rethinking Disability attempts to re-read the very understanding of ‘the social’ that can be understood as the dominant explanatory link between disability studies and social sciences. This is most obvious if we consider the British social model of disability. Still, the focus on the ‘social dimension’ of dis/ability is global in essence when disability studies are considered to be a ‘social scientific’ model.

THE SOCIAL MODEL OF DISABILITY Hence, it seems to be important to briefly trace back the trajectories of the British social model of disability since it provides the closest tie to a social understanding of disability. The critical politics of the Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) in the 1970s stressed the societal origin of disability, highlighting disability as the outcome of societal processes and structures, cultural differences and historical change. The autonomous groups of the UPIAS strive to fight against the disabling barriers of an oppressive society that systematically enforces social segregation, marginalization, exclusion and dependency. It has been the focus on the structurally given, disabling materialities of everyday life that made impaired people become politically active. UPIAS’ policy statement from 1974 made this very clear. It says: ‘We fi nd ourselves isolated and excluded by such things as fl ights of stairs, inadequate public and personal transport, unsuitable housing, rigid work routines in factories and offices, and a lack of up-to-date aids and equipment.’ What is important in UPIAS’ statement is the very focus on the material production of disability dictated by societal organization. In the following year the politics of UPIAS led to the fi rst and most influential defi nition of disability that addresses disability as a societal matter:

Introduction

3

In our view it is society which disables physically impaired people. Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society. Disabled people are therefore an oppressed group in society. (UPIAS, 1976: 14) In keeping with this statement a social model of disability emerged that defi ned itself in opposition to other accounts which were accustomed to seeing disability merely as an individual limitation, and/or medical problem. Like gender-related issues it was argued that a good social theory of disability couldn’t exist without the very personal experiences of those involved (cf. Oliver, 1996). These experiences not only refer to socially induced, i.e. ‘externally imposed restriction’ (Michael Oliver), but are very much related to the power of techno-scientific and medical practices that—according to the social model—translate (bodily and mental) disability into an ‘individual model of disability’ that locates the ‘problem’ of disability within the individual and ( . . . ) sees the causes of this problem as stemming from functional limitations or psychological losses which are assumed to arise from disability.’ Such a ‘personal tragedy story of disability’ ( . . . ) suggests that disability is some terrible chance event which occurs at random to unfortunate individuals. (Oliver, 1996: 32) Oliver, then, draws upon the social model of disability that ‘is a rejection of these fundamentals’ of the so-called individual model. Although the social model does not deny the problems of disability (impairment), ‘it locates it squarely within society’, and refers to ‘all the things that impose restrictions on disabled people’ (Oliver, 1996: 32–33). Consequently, it is ‘society’ that has to change not individuals’ (ibid. 37). Tom Shakespeare (1997), who has been a radical advocate of the social model for many years, stresses that it is precisely the division between individual bodies and society which makes the social model so powerful in unravelling the very truth of disability. 2 He argues: The achievement of the disability movement has been to break the link between our bodies and our social situation, and to focus on the real cause of disability, i.e. discrimination and prejudice. To mention biology, to admit pain, to confront our impairments, has been to risk the oppressors seizing on evidence that disability is ‘really’ about physical limitation after all. (Shakespeare, 1992: 40) Along these lines of thought, Oliver stresses that ‘the denial of the pain of impairment has not, in reality, been a denial at all. Rather it has been a pragmatic attempt to identify and address issues that can be changed

4

Rethinking Disability

through collective action rather than medical or other professional treatment’ (Oliver, 1996: 38). For Oliver, the power of the social model is its political position and agency that is gained by the very separation from techno-scientific models that individualize disability as a matter of physiological or psychological impairment that causes the experiences of disability. For the social model personal experiences of disability are very important as well but do not cause disability; rather, they are the effects of a disabling society. This, as explained by Oliver, does not lead to a social theory that ‘can explain disability in totality’ but demands the very separation of two models of disability: a social model of impairment and a social model of disability. Neither of the two though can be and should be seen as a substitute for a social theory of disability, according to Oliver (ibid. 42). The social modelling of disability has led to a broad and diverse, critical and reflective research agenda focusing on disability as originating from society and not from individual impairments or being enacted by medical views. In summary, one may say that the politics of a social model of disability is conceptualized as a discourse of opposition, directed primarily against societal oppression, most notably against: 1. disabling barriers stemming from societal organization, disabling mobility and communication, enforcing dependencies, restricting access to resources of knowledge and practices, producing discrimination, disadvantages and marginalization concerning private, public and work life etc., 2. prejudices and negative attitudes about and against disability, 3. all other discourses—for instance the so-called ‘medical model of disability’—which are criticized and often rejected for enacting the complex personal and social lives of disabled people as a mere individualized, negative and ‘non-normal’ matter of human fate and (nonsocial, i.e. biological) facts. Thus, the social model started its practice-oriented campaigns and writings by locating disability within the ‘social’ or ‘society’ in which somehow the body was both part and not part. As an impaired body the body is outside society and as a disabled body it is inside the society. This rather artificial split between a social and a non-social body was meant as a strong political tool and conceptual remedy against oppression, exclusion and discrimination enforced by society. Saying that disability is enacted by society and not caused by the impaired body inaugurated a counter-discourse that is fighting, questioning and neglecting the normalizing practices of technoscientific and medical discourses that primarily were concerned with ‘fi xing’ the (impaired) individual body. Although it seemed a proper tool to set social bodies against non-social bodies in the fi rst place, it seems as if this movement lost its power when it sought to address disability beyond a mere critique of given social realities.

Introduction

5

Critically put: Such an exclusivist and highly asymmetrical dualism between impairment and disability can be read as a rather limited and consequently a more or less counter-productive3 political ‘either/or’ strategy to fully address the contingent, situated and thus highly complex experiences and practices of disability. Positively put: It was the experiences of disabled people as well as diverse disability research agendas and the related efforts to conceptualize disability that were facing the limits of the social model and fostered personal and public disputes about the very understandings of disability. Due to the social model, disability became a public controversy that not only demanded and affected practical action against disabling experiences. Ever since the very riddles concerning the understandings of disability unravelled a rich and intensive field of socio-political controversies that have spawned practice-oriented and innovative research agendas and theoretical reflection. As a result, the distinction between impairment and disability has been supported, criticized and refi ned not only within disability studies but also by the so-called medical model of disability (cf. Corker & French, 1999a; Corker & Shakespeare, 2002; Forster, 2004; Hughes & Paterson, 1997; Marks, 1999; Paterson & Huges, 2000; Tremain, 2002; Thomas, 1999, 2007; Shakespeare, 2006; WHO, 2001).

BEYOND IMPAIRMENT, BEYOND DISABILITY— VISUAL CULTURES AND BLINDNESS Rethinking Disability will argue that we should leave the distinction impairment/disability aside in order make the social of disability traceable. This seems rather difficult to attempt since it mandates a thorough rethinking of ‘the social’. It appears so complicated because the classical understanding of the social as the realm of society that is separated from nature has a long tradition: It has been the most vital and successful effect of the history of visual (and rational) cultures. In visual cultures the social is very much about relations that link light, sight and insight. This powerful assemblage provides a strong normative line of demarcation between humans and nonhumans, the living and the dead, the normal and abnormal, and last but not least the division between the disabled and non-disabled. It provokes strategies of the either/or, of inclusion/exclusion that can be traced back to the ancient Greeks. Our modern cultures are visual cultures as well and have been radicalizing the either/or strategies by bifurcating nature and society. The latter I call ‘the religion of modernity’. Rethinking Disability will argue that the history of the dominant but outdated social understanding of disability is very much embedded in the history of visual cultures. However, and this seems to be obvious, the ‘realm’ of blindness names a major phenomenon and condition that may evoke hardship and disabilities in visual cultures. Indeed, the history of blindness brings us much closer to rethinking the social of disability in

6

Rethinking Disability

visual cultures. Moreover, Rethinking Disability will provide the history of the social of disability that radically differs from a visually affected understanding of it. If we trace the history of blindness, I argue, we will be able to radically rethink the social of disability beyond the religion of modernity, i.e. the model of the either/or. Instead of separating off society from nature, the individual from the collective, the social will be understandable as the very changing relations that are configured by and (re-)configure bodies, minds, senses and things. Part I is dedicated to this task. It will re-tell the history of blindness in visual cultures—modern and ancient alike. These narrations will show the limits of the classical social understanding of disability. In the following intermediary chapter I will provide a manifesto for a new social understanding of disability. The social, so my argument goes, neither appears as the line of demarcation that separates itself off from the medical, the biological or mental and physiological. Nor does it function as the divisional border that carves up society and nature, humans and non-humans, humans and technologies, or splits the collective from the individual. Rather, the social remains to be explained by the very everyday practices that link and thus configure and reconfigure bodies, senses, minds and things. In Part III Rethinking Disability focuses on everyday acts that, wittingly and unwittingly, fabricate people as disabled or enabled (dis/abled) unravelling the experience of dis/ability. It provides a practice-oriented, conceptual discussion of how bodies, senses and things are linked in everyday life and shape the material experience of enabling and disabling scenarios. Linking social sciences, ideas from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and philosophy, it supports Rethinking Disability with the aim of cutting through the growing conceptual and methodological barriers between social and medical models of disability. Rethinking Disability does not attempt to provide a comprehensive account of dis/ability. Rather, I’d like to open up disability studies ‘which have sometimes become inward-looking and sectarian’ (Shakespeare, 2006: 1) to a new empiricism that gains its knowledge from the very specificities of everyday practices of dis/ablement. The slash between dis and abling shall highlight that these practices can be disabling and enabling. Whereas Part I of Rethinking Disability offers a fi rst conceptual discussion of the sociality of dis/ability, Part III of the book will try to trace some of the empirical complexities of dis/ability and translate them into the conceptual Neuland of Part I in order to contribute to an alternative understanding of ‘the social’ of dis/ability. Again, in Part III, the world of blind people plays a major role since through my research I have gained most interesting insights from the dis/abling everyday practices of blind people.4 Part II offers intermediated reflections that outline a dis/ability manifesto that conceptually links Part I and Part III.

Part I

‘The Social’ in Question Rethinking Modern Di/visions

1

The Social and the Religion of Modernity

I very much endorse the counter-politics of the social model of disability that is primarily concerned with fighting the negative effects of everyday practices of disablement of impaired people. No doubt, it is has been politically and strategically necessary to delimit ‘society’ or ‘the social’ as a domain where personal, collective, and scientific interests could meet. It is also extremely important to give the experiences of dis/abled people their own voice(s) through a public discourse. Yet, if we want to ensure an adequate understanding of dis/ability at the beginning of the 21st century that is very much embedded in and performed by the normalizing and individualizing ‘bio-power’ (Foucault, 2003) of technoscientific and biomedical innovations and practices, it is also very important to critically research and reflect upon related understandings and controversies of dis/ability. If one is willing to diagnose a crisis of the social model of disability, then, it is primarily a crisis of distinctions upon which the description of ‘disability’, and its relevant re-presentations as a social matter of fact, rests. The predicament of the social model, then, denotes the dilemma of ‘either/or’ distinctions and names what I like to call the limits of the religion of modernity. The religion of modernity is rooted in what A. N. Whitehead has called the ‘bifurcation of nature’ that separates off different realities given by culture on the one hand and nature on the other. This is a correspondent with the bifurcation of subjects and objects, as well as the bifurcation between ‘the social/society’ and the ‘individual’ or that of ‘disability’ and ‘impairment’. Within modernity it is left open as to which side is given superior reality. This indecision is the very force that fosters the conceptual and ideological controversies concerning dis/ability nowadays. Still, the religion of modernity demands a decision as to which reality you are part of. You belong to either the one or the other. This is precisely what governs the discourse of and about the social model of disability and articulates a certain dominance of the religion of modernity over what I like to call the religiousness of human dis/abling relations. The notion of ‘religiousness’ circumscribes highly abstractly the very concrete, everyday (re-)configurations of the socialness of human conduct.

10

Rethinking Disability The German sociologist Ulrich Beck (2008) stresses: religion is treated as a noun, which implies a clearly demarcated social set of symbols and practices that constitute an either/or. You have only the choice of believing or not believing them, and, as a member of a faith community, you cannot belong to another such community at the same time. This background understanding of ‘religion’ is doubtless monotheistic, i.e. it is based on the tacit premise that each person can choose one God and one God alone, and must exclude all others. . . . As a noun, ‘religion’ organizes the religious field according to an either/or logic. The adjective ‘religious’, by contrast, organizes it according to a ‘both-and’ logic. To be religious does not presuppose membership (or non-membership for that matter) of a specific group or organization; it signifies a specific attitude towards the existential questions of man in the world.

If we consider the religiousness of humans in its most general sense, it refers to the experience of humans depending on others (human and non-human), whereas the religion of humans (and things) refers to that dependency as seen from a single perspective. Through the single perspective, given by a single religion, the complex religiousness of existence is normalized by one perspective. The better a single perspective, a set of practices is normalized, the more it is ‘black-boxed’ and seen as a natural relation, and treated as a matter of fact that explains the given reality. The distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘religious’ (or ‘religiousness’) is vital for the following discussion, since it is closely related to new ways of understanding ‘the social’ of dis/ability that I am interested in. In order to rethink disability it is necessary to reconsider ‘the social’ as advocated by the social model of disability. And it is precisely the relationship between ‘religious(ness)’ and ‘religion’ that is able to do so. In this way, (monotheistic) religions are strictly delimited (and explained) by social practices initiated by humans constituting not only the clear and distinctive difference between those who believe and those who don’t, but they also distinguish for their membership what is to be believed and what cannot be believed. Religiousness, on the other hand, is about a specific attitude concerning existential questions of human beings. As I said earlier, that attitude expresses the acknowledgement of the fundamental principle of depending on others. In its concrete practices it refers to the very (re-)configurations of the socialness of human beings. When seen in this light, the notion of dependency is not merely negative, nor is the notion of dis/ability. Rather, it brings to the fore the fundamental constituency of practices that relate, and by doing so, configure differences, heterogeneities or ‘otherness’ that make up humans as social beings and may create short or long term, enabling as well as disabling existing realities and future possibilities.

The Social and the Religion of Modernity

11

With this in mind the experience of dis/ability and in effect dis/ability studies can have a great impact on researching and conceptualizing social life—its good as well as bad effects. Dis/ability matters! It matters precisely since it opens up the black boxes of highly normalized, veiled, and most powerful social orders. Dis/ability turns our attention to the different ways the bifurcation of nature is practiced. Moreover, it highlights the socialness of that bifurcation, which points to the very assemblages of differences, of all the elements, that is, human and non-human alike, that are necessary to make up the conditions of possible bifurcations in the fi rst place. Additionally, the experience of dis/ability not only brings to the fore the way in which ‘the social’ is created, stabilized, normalized, and black-boxed, but also how it is disrupted, questioned, and altered. Dis/ability, one may argue, makes the socialness of human beings traceable precisely since it disrupts, questions, and alters ‘the social’. Thus, dis/ability renders the social questionable and it has to be explained, rather than being explained by a reality of ‘the social’ (disability) that differs from the reality of ‘the individual’ (impairment). In this sense dis/ability studies becomes an ontological project that not only is interested in how we live but also engages in ontological politics of how we want to live (cf. Law & Benschop, 1997; Mol, 1999, 2002). Hence, Rethinking Disability is trying to bring back the attitude of ‘religiousness’ of human relations inasmuch as it values existing and possible relations with others. This does not mean, however, that we need a religion to do so. On the contrary, it is the very socialness of dis/ability that questions any religion that values dis/ability in either this or that way. Neither does it mean that Rethinking Disability wants to get rid of the different models or ‘religions’ of disability; to exclude existing differences would only nurture the ‘either/or’ strategy of modernity. Rather, Rethinking Disability refers to the controversies that make up our dependencies on others and with it our dis/abilities. Rethinking Disability adds another controversy of understanding the very socialness of dis/ability that cannot be separated off in either (social) disability or (individual) impairment and then be explained from one side only. In that sense, to draw on the religiousness as an attitude that is interested in the socialness of dis/ability articulates an anti-religion. We remember (and in due course we will see more explicitly) that it has been the legacy of monotheistic forms of religion and their ‘either/or’ strategies that brought a specific way of seeing and practicing religiousness and in effect enunciates a very specific understanding of the social that Rethinking Disability questions.

RELIGIOUSNESS AND RELIGION If we refer to ‘religion’, to be religious demands a decision to believe in one God, in one belief system, from which the relationship between self and others is interpreted. Religiousness, on the other hand, is not a question

12

Rethinking Disability

of to be or not to be; one always already is religious in the different ways one has relations with others. The socialness of the latter then refers to the constant re-assembling of these relations—in our daily practices and in our ways of conceptualizing them. A brief look at the etymology of ‘religion’ is helpful to retrace the religiousness, viz. socialness, of human being. Etymologically, ‘religion’ is derived from a fourfold trajectory: (a) relegere (re + lego) which means a re-reading, and to (b) religare (re + ligare) which means re-ligation, re-connection, re-ligament, re-association, re-assemblage, (c) from res + legere which means a gathering, or binding a thing, and (d) religiens ‘careful,’ opposite of negligens. But one may ask what is actually (re-)assembled? The etymology of religion refers to the ‘bond between humans (the world) and gods’ and ‘it introduce[s] the note of interpretation’, as the philosopher A. N. Whitehead says (Whitehead, 1978: 341). The etymology of religion then provides an indication of how to re-read the social discourse of disability and to rethink the ‘the social’ of dis/ability as a matter of re-assembling collectives. In that sense, Rethinking Disability is part of the modern religion inasmuch as it suggests a re-reading of the socialness of dis/ability. This is typical for modern affairs since it is precisely the socialness of human affairs that appears contingent, i.e. not fi xed by tradition (a religious system, God, nature, etc.) but dependent on the perspective with which it is seen (cf. Luhmann, 1998; Weber, 1951). Hence, what is understood as dis/ability remains contingent and controversial; there is no single understanding of disability but only polycontextual practices, experiences, and descriptions of dis/ability.1 As we have seen when outlining the differences of the social model and the medical model of disability, different perspectives enact different natures of dis/ability. Thus, in order to consider ‘the social’ of dis/ability, we are enmeshed in a process of re-reading what dis/ability means, we are interested in the ‘religiousness’ of human conduct and so we are part of the ontological politics of dis/ability that is able to ask how we want to live. Bearing this in mind, it is important how we talk and write publicly about dis/ability as researchers—be it scientifically or/and philosophically— since we co-produce dis/ability and the ways the collectives of dis/ability are re-assembled. Thus, to speak about, study, research, and conceptualize dis/ability is not an innocent practice as Ingunn Moser rightly points out: Words matter. The way we describe and thus constitute both ability and disability affects the frames of possibilities for disabled people, including the conditions on which membership is granted. ( . . . ) Descriptions of reality constitute, order and mobilise reality, discursively. (Moser, 2000: 210) The different ways we understand dis/ability enact the different realities of dis/ability and how these realities change in time, i.e. in the ways dis/ability

The Social and the Religion of Modernity

13

is practiced, experienced, and described. What is changing, one may say, are the very assemblages, the ‘collectives’ (Latour, 2005) that configure the shifting ‘religiousness’, as these assemblages come into being and make up the different ontologies of dis/ability. In that sense (and here lies my interest), religiousness is similar and not in confl ict with science, as Georg Simmel argued so convincingly; it is ‘a form according to which the human soul experiences life and comprehends its existence’ (Simmel, 1997: 5; cf. Simmel, 1992c). For my concerns, it offers a possibility to rethink the socialness of dis/ability. Religiousness, Simmel adds, refers to ‘religion before it becomes religion’ (Simmel, 1997: 103). According to Simmel, religion is a secondary derivative of religiousness of (inter-)mediated relations. Simmel argues that ‘these social ties, irrespective of the religious data, arise as a purely interindividual, psychological relationship, which later exhibits itself abstractly in religious faith’ (Simmel, 1997: 110). For Simmel religiousness is not bound to religion but is found with the very psychology and sociality of human beings, that is, the affects and effects of relations of (inter-)intermediation between humans which—in modernity—are very much mediated by nonhuman technologies, tools, and things (cf. Simmel, 1990). The socialness unravels the abstract idea of the religiousness of human being; it brings to the fore the concrete relations—the content—of the abstract form of religiousness. Hence, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the etymology of ‘religion’ closely links with the etymology of ‘social’: ‘Social’ as ‘characterized by friendliness,’ and ‘allied, associated,’ from M.Fr. social (14c.), and from L. socialis ‘united, living with others,’ from socius ‘companion,’ probably originally ‘follower,’ and related to sequi ‘to follow’, meaning ‘living or liking to live with others, disposed to friendly intercourse’. (cf. http://www.etymonline.com) Thus, ‘social’ refers like ‘religious’ to the assemblage of opposites that desire each other in order to become what they are; they are different because they relate and they relate because they are different. 2 Strictly speaking, the desire for the other names the very metaphysical principle of order that connects the known with the unknown; it is the very belief in another who or which that cannot be properly be known that names the condition of possibility of existence. Existence is the inclusion of the other. ‘Existing means differing’ as Gabriel Tarde summed up the metaphysics of existence as a social, viz. religious, moment (Tarde, 1999b). It is precisely this double process of relating and non-relating that defi nes the ‘double bind’ being of existence. Hence, all beings are religious and social in their process of becoming actual as the ‘creative origination’ of binding heterogeneous things. Simmel made this point very clear:

14

Rethinking Disability Creative life constantly produces something which is not itself life, something on which it somehow peters out, something which raises its own opposing legal claim. It cannot express itself except in forms that are, and signify, something from themselves independently of life. (Simmel, 2006a: 103)

Both religiousness and sociality are not something added to entities— humans or non-humans alike. Understood in a cosmological sense, all things are religious and social, in order to become what they are, they desire the other. As Tarde has put it in his cosmology of the social, ‘Au fond de chaque chose, il y a toute chose réelle ou possible. Mais cela suppose d’abord, que toute chose est une societié, que tout phénomène est un fait social’ (Tarde, 1999b: 58). In other words: Actual entities are real since they are religious/social and they are religious/social since they are real; this concrete relation composes the possibility of things. Societies do not consist of actual entities—human and non-human alike—but actual entities are societies, a gathering, togetherness, a collective of heterogeneous entities becoming a unity. It teaches, according to Gabriel Tarde, the ‘symbolic character of truths’—human and non-human alike (Tarde, 1999b: 55; cf. Whitehead, 1978, 1985). Hence, what we fi nd if we look at the etymology of religion without any exclusivist reference to existing religions is—and this what I would like to propose—that religion is all about the relation of how heterogeneous elements bind together, come into being anew and how it names its value. It is this affi rmation, the caring (religiens, care) of and for the desire of others that make up the possibilities of a unity (a belief, un croyance) as the ‘association of two directions of relations’ [eine einheitliche, aus zwei Beziehungsrichtungen zusammengesetzte Tatsache]. It marks the ‘metaphysical event’ [metaphysische Geschehen], the ‘religious’ moment (Simmel, 1957: 105) that assembles and creates unified collectivities. As I will argue, precisely this ‘religious’ moment refers to the re-reading and re-assembling of the notion of ‘the social’ that I am advocating here. Religiousness, as the bond between the world and God, is a supplement for the (meaningful, valid, friendly) association of heterogeneous elements such as matter (extensio) and mind (cogitatio), 3 the physical and conceptual, one and many, fluency and permanence, self and other, humans and non-humans, etc. However, to treat ‘the association of two directions of relations’ (e.g. abled/disabled) as a maximum difference refers to ‘the fallacy of misplaced concreteness’ (Whitehead, 1968), which conflates the abstract with the concrete, explaining and fi xing the latter by the former. The abstract prescinds the concrete. It was (and is) the strategy of we moderns to turn this fallacy into a most successful strategy by purifying the constant re-assembling of the socialness of things into a religion: the religion of modernity, the religion of the either/or (cf. Beck, 2007, 2008; Latour, 1993, 2005).

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BEYOND THE GE-STELL OF DISABILITY For the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, the religion of modernity gained its most powerful tool through modern technology understood as ‘Ge-stell’. The Ge-stell refers to the very forgetfulness of the religiousness of things. Religiousness, in the Heideggerian sense, articulates the very event of how the world comes into being [das Welten der Welt] as the relation of human and non-human heterogeneities,4 of how things gather the world. Thus, the essence of the Ge-stell [Wesen] is the forgetfulness of this relation which is never merely good or bad, human or non-human or divine, material or ideal. For Heidegger the essence of technology is similar to the essence of world. But they are not the same [das Gleiche]. On the contrary their essences contrast for the most part. Similarity [das Selbe] is not the undifferentiated conflation of the identical (of beings), but the relation of difference. Differences, however, are not given by fi xed entities but come into being as events. Differences are events (cf. Heidegger, 2005). Such an ‘eventful’ reading of differences as they come into being through dis/abilities is what I have in mind in Rethinking Disability. Enabling and disabling practices, situations, and conditions are not the effect of given differences but the eventful mediation of bodies, senses, minds, and things. These eventful mediations make up the similarity between for instance abled and disabled bodies. At the same time these bodies are not the same; they span the broadest range of contrasts. Rethinking Disability argues that the social model of disability turns into a religion when it demands a decision about what is and what makes disability. This decision is given by the very parlance of a ‘social model’ of disability that sees disability as an additional, oppressive effect of society on top of impairments. My point is: Paradoxically, it is precisely ‘the social’ understood as ‘society’ that turns the very understanding of ‘the social’ and ‘disability’ into a religion. ‘The social’ as ‘society’ becomes the sole origin of explaining dis/ability: ‘The social’ turns into the Ge-stell of disability. This is what can be called the modern religion of the social model of disability. Rethinking Disability suggests ‘to socialize’ the social model, that is, to question the common understanding of ‘the social’ as ‘society’. Rethinking Disability interrogates the sacredness of the social model: the social as the realm of ‘society’. Paraphrasing Bruno Latour’s parlance, Rethinking Dis/ability is ‘re-assembling the social’ of dis/ability and disability studies (cf. Latour, 2005). The movement from the modern religion of the social model of disability to a different reading concerning the sociality of dis/ability needs careful handling in order to avoid any possible misreading of my argument; specifically where the notion of ‘religion’ and ‘religiousness’ is concerned, which often produces ‘knee-jerk misunderstandings’ as Bateson and Bateson (1988) have outlined. Moreover, it is also important to be more than cautious not to fall back into old controversies and misplaced clashes of ‘religions of disability’ that exclude each other (cf. Thomas, 2007). 5

16

Rethinking Disability

To do so, it is necessary to carefully specify why I call it the religion of modernity. Firstly, as already noted, I am not referring to ‘religion’ as it is practiced by a specifi c religious denomination. I will use the notion of ‘religion (of modernity)’ as a specifi c way of talking about how modern reality and with it how the modernity of disability becomes visible. The ‘religious’ or ‘religiousness’ in its etymological roots highlights ‘the theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions’ (Whitehead, 1978: 349). Thus, to speak of ‘religion of modernity’ addresses the specifi cally modern way(s) of how the modern cosmos is ordered, viz. gains or articulates its cosmo-logic. With this in mind, the notion of ‘religion’ draws attention to a faith, a validating judgement of how this modern cosmos is interpreted by and makes sense for us moderns. Thus, the religion of modernity is about the modern confi guration of collectives, i.e. about the order, the cosmos of the modern world, and about how we moderns traditionally interpret or frame these ideas. The religion of modernity refers to the mediation of ideas, practices, belief systems, values, attitudes, and concepts that try to attribute and create sense for a specifi cally modern reality. If this reality, and how it is practiced and ordered, refl ected, described, and interpreted, is to be understood in a religious way, then it is about the recognition that our life is not a mere succession of given facts but the reality of mediated relations of value, i.e. as it comes into being by relating differences (cf. Simmel, 1990; Whitehead, 1978). Hence, Rethinking Disability is not thought of as a part or an outcome of an analysis of a practiced religion. A practiced religion presupposes unquestionable facts: Either you believe or not; either you believe in this or that. For Christians for instance you have to be baptised to be part of the Christian religion. To practice a religion demands a decision: You are either Catholic or Jewish or Muslim or Protestant, etc. On the contrary, this study questions any attempt to reduce dis/ability to any specific existing religion or monotheistic belief system. Following from that, the given nature of dis/ability cannot be explained by any religion: be it biophysical nature, human nature (mind, rationality), or a social nature. Rethinking Disability interrogates any understanding of dis/ability that naturalizes disability into given matter of facts, be they natural, human, or social. Hence, Rethinking Disability is an attempt to employ the etymological roots of the notion of ‘religion’ in order to (1) rethink ‘the social’ and thus provide (2) an innovative account of the sociality of dis/ability that is (3) about the principle of inclusive differences, questioning any attempt to defi ne dis/ability as matter of fact of exclusive perspectives (cf. Schillmeier, 2008c; see also Part II). It tries to unravel the religiousness of ‘the social’ as a metaphysical principle that refers to the creation of emerging orders by relating6 heterogeneous entities. To stay close to the etymology of ‘religion’ without any reference to existing religions has the advantage of carving out the metaphysics of dis/ability which points to the different ways of how

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collectives come into being as a mode of relating heterogeneous entities.7 It follows an ‘empiricist attitude’ as William James has argued, which turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fi xed principles, closed systems and pretended absolutes and origins. [It] turns towards concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action and towards power. That means the empiricist temper regnant and the rationalist temper sincerely given up. It means the open air and possibilities of nature, as against dogma, artificiality, and the pretence of finality of truth ( . . . ) At the same time it does not stand for any special results. It is a method only. But the general triumph of that method would mean an enormous change in what I called in my last lecture the ‘temperament’ of philosophy. Teachers of the ultra-rationalistic type would be frozen out, much as the courtier type is frozen out in republics, as the ultramontane type of priest is frozen out in protestant lands. Science and metaphysics would come much nearer together, would in fact work absolutely hand in hand. (W. James, 1961 [1907]: 45–46) In this way the question concerning ‘religion’ is, as briefly noted earlier, an ontological question of collective being. Moreover, it is a political question as well, inasmuch as it addresses the question concerning the value of collective being as a matter of how it is enacted. It is about ontological politics that give rise to the question of what the collective being (dis/ability in my case) should be like. Thus it is about the potential of creation that all ontologies refer to, and not an ontology of mere facts. Hence, a sociological reading of the religiousness of our being refers to the different ways of how the world is created, constructed, and becomes real by (re-)assembling collectives or ‘binding things’. It is about the different ontologies of ‘eventful being’ and it is about the potentiality of being instead of the mere presenceat-hand of matters of facts (cf. Harman, 2002; Heidegger, 1971, 1996, 1998b; Whitehead, 1979). Thus, to treat ‘the religious’ in a ‘social’ way unravels the realities of dis/ability as an open ontological question which then is also immanently political, since it is about the potentiality of sensing, acting with, and doing things differently. With this in mind, the crisis of the classical social model of disability visualizes the questionability and the limits of the default practices of modern social scientific thought, the religion of the either/or. Within the social model of disability ‘the social’ is understood as if it is a matter of fact that explains disability. In order to gain that power of such an explanatory reality, the social model of disability separates off ‘the social’ as a powerful domain that acts upon individual impairments. Although the impaired body is doubtlessly part of disabled people’s lives, it does not explain disability. Disability cannot be reduced to impairment and its effects, which are seen as outside ‘the social’ realm. Rather, it is ‘the social’ that is placed

18 Rethinking Disability within society and not within human bodies that explains disability. Obviously, the social model does not neglect the importance of individual impairments. However the latter refer to either mere individual experiences of impairment or to the biomedical enactment of disability that—like the individual experience of impairment—renders disability as a mere individual problem.

BEYOND THE SOCIAL MODEL No doubt, it has been extremely important to free disability from being a mere private matter and draw attention to the everyday societal fabrication of disability. Moreover, it has been important to question the hegemony of medical discourse that played a major institutionalized role in individualizing disability. Doing so, thanks to the disability movement and disability studies, the very individual impairment became a contested and contestable societal disability. Not only was it able to gain a feeling for belonging to a (disabled) community that freed itself from its medical oppressor, it marked the possibility of a defi ned and single membership. It singled out ‘society’ as the realm of ‘the social’ as the primordial explanation of disability. Doing so, it set clear borders between able and disabled collectives as well as between impaired bodies and disabled collectives. These clear and distinctive boundaries have been positioned by the very modernist religion of the social model of disability in order to define disability. However, the religion of the social models places ‘the social’ or ‘society’ as a matter of fact next to impairments. Understood as a fundamental critique of the medical system, viz. the individualistic model of disability, the latter is neglected and with it the possibility that the medical model offers itself contested and is made up of contestable realities of disability. This becomes very clear in the very way ‘the social’ is understood. The social model sets the reality of ‘society’ against the reality of ‘the individual’ or the reality of ‘nature’ (of disability). The origin of disability is social and the social is to be found in society and not within the medical, individual, or natural. Consequently, the social model separates off the individual reality of bodily/mental, learning, or sensory impairment from the reality of social disability in order to explain the former by the latter. The social is rooted in ‘society’, which for the social model plays a manifold and seemingly contradictory role. Within society we find different realities of disability: individual impairments, biomedical impairments, and social disabilities (Abberley, 1987; Barnes et al., 2003; Barton, 1996; Gleeson, 1999; Krieger, 1994; Länger, 2002; Oliver, 1996; Pfeiffer, 2001; Shakespeare, 2006; Swain et. al., 1994; Swain et al., 2003; Thomas, 1999, 2007). All three realities are part of society and obviously are also seen as part of ‘the social’. Otherwise there would be no critical perception of the

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very socio-historical specific forms of collective experiences of disability possible whatsoever. At the same time, the social model claims that in order to see the real and that is social dimension of disability, we have to focus on the realities of ‘society’ that differ from the individual experience or the biomedical reality of impairment. Thus, although the social model acknowledges that disability translates into many realities (individual, biomedical, natural, social), it defi nes ‘the social’ reality of disability and its explanation—more or less explicitly or implicitly—as clearly and distinctively different from the individual experiences, from natural or biomedical explanations. Hence, my point is that the social model can indeed be read as a key actor that is interested in the religiousness/socialness of disabling orders, precisely since it tries to tackle the contested/ing collective experiences of disability and not the individual matter of facts of disability. This does not mean that the social model excludes individual impairment. On the contrary, it is the social model that highlights the fact that it is modern societal practices in which the medical model dominates the understanding of disability as an individual impairment. It is necessarily included (otherwise it would not make any sense to talk about disability). Paradoxically, on the other hand, impairment is included only to be excluded as a key actor of disability: The social model of disability defi nes the collective reality of disability in a highly modernist, i.e. self-explicatory way, inasmuch as it is the social realm which is the collective, located within society and explaining individual impairment. The reality of the social/society is meant to explain disability and impairment; this is the consequent logic of the social model of disability (Oliver, 1996). Such an understanding gives the social, societal or the collective experience of disability all explanatory power in including and excluding impairment. At the same time it neglects the medical model of disability and defines the social disability as other than individual impairment. This is what makes the social model of disability such a highly attractive perspective: It includes impairment (and the medical model) by excluding it. This is granted precisely since it imitates most convincingly the religion of modernity: the either/or. Either you are within the social model and you include impairment by excluding the medical model or you are outside the realm of the social explanation of disability. As I argue, however, this very successful strategy of the social model is running out of steam. This thriving modern story of disability is in trouble. It is in difficulties since it became rigid like all religions do when they become powerful: They forget both the abstract religiousness of human conduct and its concrete social realizations that refer to the inclusion of differences, others, otherness, heterogeneity and not its exclusion. As the German philosopher Martin Heidegger has argued throughout his oeuvre, it is precisely this forgetfulness of Being—or in my words the forgetfulness of the very religiousness and socialness of human conduct—that the social (Being) turns into a matter of facts (beings) and becomes unquestioned (cf. e.g. Heidegger, 1971, 1977b, 1996). Its unquestionability though is the

20 Rethinking Disability biggest danger and shows its limits since it is ‘the social’ understanding of disability that is meant to differ—clare et distincte—from mere matters of facts as given by biomedical models of disability. Rethinking Disability tries to question precisely the very forgetfulness of the socialness of the social as advocated implicitly or explicitly by the social model of disability. This means, following the etymology of ‘religion’, the ‘social’ is embedded in a process of being re-read and re-assembled [re-legere and re-ligare]. By doing so it brings to the fore ‘the social’ as a process of associating and gathering and binding heterogeneous things. Rather than defining the social in separation to the non-social (individual, biological, etc.), the social gathers the non-social into dis/abling ‘things’. The notion of thing is important here. Following the reading of such diverse thinkers as Martin Heidegger and Bruno Latour, the ‘thing’ refers to the process of gathering that brings into being a collective. Such gathering makes up a thing and does not refer to a presupposed thing in itself to which meaning has been attached (Heidegger, 1971, 1997a). This is the religiousness or socialness of dis/ability that I am referring to: It draws attention to a collective, an event of gathering heterogeneous entities—as the old German word thing suggests— and not a fixed and framed entity (e.g. an impaired body) upon which ‘the social’ or ‘society’ or ‘culture’ acts as advocated by the social model.8 To summarize: Obviously, the social model of disability is very much about the socialness of disability. No doubt. It underlines the highly normative relatedness that makes up the collective experience of disability that cannot be explained fully from only one side—be it the individual body, the medical view that centers (around) that body and normalizes it, etc. However, it became a religion when it separated off the social from the individual and explained the latter through the former. 1. This created not so much a social theory of dis/ability but a set of beliefs—a religion—that defi nes disability as either a social or an individual matter of fact and nurtured the separation of different realities to which one may belong. With this in mind, it remains quite difficult to argue from within a social model of disability and from within the medical model of impairment. 2. The bifurcation of the nature of disability fostered a ‘them or us’ strategy not only between those who are involved in disability issues, but in general between able and disabled people. 3. In neglecting the medical model as a matter of defi ning one’s own identity, the social model is highly reluctant, critical and in confl ict with technoscientific and biomedical discourses. In doing so, the politics of the social model follow the religion of modernity which explains the religiousness of things (which it is constantly re-assembling anew, as we will see later) by its own religion of bifurcation the nature of things into subjective and objective ones that belong to different ontological spheres: culture and nature.

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ITIO IN PARTES AND ITS LIMITS Such ‘either/or’, viz. ‘them or us’, strategies may help in war-like situations to make sure who is friend or enemy, but is not very beneficial to address dis/ability. It refers back to the idea of itio in partes9 that was seen as a model of how to deal politically peacefully and democratically with matter of facts of religion. Throughout history and up to the present we have experienced, very dramatically, how religions provoke cultural conflicts, wars and often install a politics of oppression, discrimination, marginalization and even exclusion of minority groups—that believe, think and act differently—from societal life (cf. Beck, 2008). Such was the experience of Europe in the fi rst half of the 17th century when it was facing a devastating political and religious war, which also provoked dreadful dearth and epidemics. Itio in partes was practiced as a way of making peace with violently fighting antagonistic groups of religions. It tried to give the different religious groups their own voice within political gatherings. This was meant to enable political decisions between rivalling perspectives of religion, decisions that are not based on war and not on a majority of votes that would re-constitute a hierarchy between the different groups. To do so, the different faiths (Catholic and Protestant) were separated into two equal and independent bodies, the Corpus Catholicorum and the Corpus Evangelicorum, which could then vote in an equal way since they gained a community voice. Obviously, this was a very clever move to deal politically with religion inasmuch as politics was imitating the politics of religion itself. Matters of facts of religion are matters of belief: Either you believe or you don’t, and if one believes in this, then one does not believe in that. So for instance you are Catholic and due to that you are not Protestant and vice versa.10 In that sense, itio in partes translates the ‘either/or’ principle of religion into political forms of governance. It regulates the confl icting viewpoints by translating religion into politics: What counts is not the majority of votes but being either Catholic or Protestant. This is modern societal body politic; and if we follow the discourse of the social model of disability, it is very much part of such body politic that tries to address disability itio in partes. Itio in partes is not an exception; rather it was the main method of dealing with societal confl icts. It is deeply rooted in social sciences as well in the way ‘the social’ (human society) is conceived of as being clearly and distinctively separated from the realm of the non-social (nature, individual bodies and concerns), the former explaining the latter. Social sciences and the concept of ‘the social’ or ‘society’ are very much the effect of enlightenment and related scientism, which highlight what I have called the religion of modernity. Thus, we fi nd itio in partes as the prime politics of philosophical thought—modern and ‘pre-modern’ (Parmedian/Platonic either/or). This is important to carve out, since the concept of ‘the social’ as advocated by the social model is—wittingly or unwittingly—deeply embedded in the politics

22

Rethinking Disability

of itio in partes, so much so that it seems all too natural to adopt it. Hence, it seems much easier to go with it instead of offering an alternative reading of ‘the social’ as Rethinking Disability is trying to achieve. With this in mind, it is more than necessary to reflect upon the silent or black-boxed conceptual traces that have led to the modernist concept of ‘the social’ as modelled by the social studies of disability.

MODERNISM AND BEYOND According to the German sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel, the Kantian and the Cartesian model are the modernist concepts that draw upon the possibilities of dealing with the other. The Cartesian view perceives what does not belong to the subject as ‘object’ (cf. Simmel, 1994, 1997). As different from the subject, we imagine the existence of objects to be independent from our own, and only because we perceive them as ‘objects’ can they have an effect upon us. Against this mechanistic idea, a Kantian tradition has centered the world on the subject. An object becomes an object not thanks to the distance to the subject, but on the contrary, through being perceived by the subject. The object is included as a moment of subjective perception regulated by human rational minds. The subjective realm is dependent on an outside world, a Ding an sich that offers the possibility to sense something in the first place. However, it remains a dark object, an unknown Ding an sich as long as it is not thought. According to Simmel, neither the Cartesian nor the Kantian strategy are particularly useful, since they are based upon a clear divide between objects and subjects, which leave the change of cultural forms—as it becomes visible in modern practices—highly unexplained. Such exclusivist distinctions have reached their limits if we want to understand modern culture, says Simmel (1993a). Simmel was struck by the ambivalence of modern ‘change of cultural forms’ (Simmel, 2006a). In modern cultures it is not so much things that are cultivated by men but human beings are cultivated by virtue of their interaction with objects (money, technoscientific innovations, etc.) (cf. Simmel, 2006a, 2006b). In that sense, Simmel—unlike Max Weber—can be described as ‘religiously very musical’ (Hammond, 1997: vii) inasmuch as he was very sensitive to the relations of humans and non-humans, bodies and technologies, etc. Simmel argued that the cultural specificities and complexities of human subjective life depend very much on the ways they relate to their non-related other, the world of non-human objects (Simmel, 1971). Thus the association of human and non-human entities is characterized by the double bind of relatedness and non-relatedness. As objects of association they have their own meaning, rules and values beyond social and human life (Simmel, 1957). For Simmel it is precisely ‘human culture’ that becomes visible when it relates objects to ‘human nature’. Objects, one may say, object (to) the very idea that human nature is self-explicatory. The

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more an object differs from a subject, the more an object actualizes its own order, the more it gains cultural specificity—and paradoxically the more it may gain connectivity to humans (Simmel, 1957: 92). This not only opens up the notion of ‘culture’ or ‘society’ as an inclusive mode of relating otherness instead of being either a self-explicatory realm or being a bifurcated reality next to nature. Moreover, it shows Simmel as being ‘religiously very musical’ since his sociological attitude towards human existence addresses the association—and with it the emergence—of heterogeneous entities that (re-)configure social and cultural forms of human conduct. To be sure, this does not mean that humans are always able to relate to the cultural specificity of objects (or subjects) with their subjective cultural forms. For Simmel there is a growing gap between the highly developed objective culture and the less developed subjective cultural forms. This asymmetry marks the ‘tragedy of modern culture’ (Simmel 2006c: 55ff). Simmel diagnoses conspicuously adverse side effects that come along with modernization: Subjects and objects remain unrelated and the differences between subjects and objects are levelled: Subjects become objects and objects become subjects. Moreover, it is a process that creates the ambiguities of inclusion and exclusion that constitute abilities and disabilities in highly diverse forms, that cannot be understood and conceptualized neither from a merely subjective (human, rational) point of view nor from a point of view that draws upon the dualistic relationship of subjective and objective realms: It foreshadows the end of the conceptual structure itio in partes that has been dominating philosophy since the Greeks and has been radicalized by the ‘religion of modernity’. Simmel stresses, It seems to me ( . . . ) that their [subjects and objects] seamless integration has begun to crumble and that, out of the rupture, a demand or a vague intuition arises—it is no more than that yet—namely, that the essential form of our will is something beyond both necessity and freedom, and is some third entity that does not submit to this alternative. ( . . . ) The difficulty lies in the fact that the accentuated rejection of duality logically seems to leave only unity as an alternative, but that in so doing this does not conform to the actual picture. For we do not really gain anything if we proclaim the human being to be the unity of the mental and physical. ( . . . ) I would therefore like to maintain that neither duality nor unity adequately expresses their relationship and thus that we still possess no conceptual formulation at all for this relationship. And this notable because unity and duality logically contradict one another so strongly that each relationship of elements must necessarily succumb to the one if the other is negated by it. Nonetheless, even this alternative is now precarious for us; it has done its duty, as it were, and we demand for the nature of life, as it is both physical and mental, an expression of form of which we have so far been unable

24

Rethinking Disability to say anything other than that it will be a third entity beyond the apparent and hitherto compelling alternative. (Simmel, 2006a: 106–107; accentuation by MS)

For Simmel, although human life affairs are made up of heterogeneous entities (mental, physical) and visualize subject-object relations, they cannot be conceptualized itio in partes. Rather, it refers to a form that demands conceptual expressions ‘beyond this Either-Or’ (Simmel, 2006a: 105). This means, that the relation between subjects and objects cannot be understood either as merely subjectively or as merely objectively (duality), nor as merely subjectively (unity). According to Simmel, it remains open as to how to understand these interactions with objects since the development of subjective culture is far behind the development of the culture of objects. This brings Simmel to the conclusion that the very processes of modern societal life cannot be properly understood if we see them as the unity of such modernist, exclusivist and binary differences that divide—itio in partes (Simmel, 1957: 102)—either between freedom and necessity (as Kant did) or between subjects and objects (as Descartes did) or between bodies, senses, things on the one hand and society on the other (Frisby & Featherstone, 2006). For Simmel those scientific practices that see in the micro- and molecular relations the complexity of life are a role model of how to describe ‘culture’ as forms of societal events [Vergesellschaftungsformen] that (re-)assemble heterogeneous elements: The real life of society, provided in experience, could certainly not be constructed from ( . . . ) large objectified structures that constitute the traditional objects of social science. It would break into a number of different systems, just as if a person consisted only of the large, differentiated and immediately recognizable organs and all the innumerable, diverse and complicated cellular processes, which have only been revealed by the microscope, were missing. (Simmel, 1997: 110) Simmel has not touched the issue of dis/ability although he was very much aware of the ambiguities of inclusion and exclusion. This is not surprising since dis/ability wasn’t on the agenda of classical sociologists. Fortunately this has changed, although disability research remains a highly specialized discipline within general sociological claims. Yet, it is not difficult to imagine Simmel’s sociological attitude towards understanding dis/ability, which is ‘religiously very musical’. He would be interested in the very (inter-)mediating relations that configure the situatedness and with it the socialness of dis/ability that cannot be divided itio in partes, i.e. in disability and impairment, ability and disability, individuals and society. Rather, Simmel would endorse a process-oriented account that would focus on the forms of dis/ability that cannot be described simply as the relationship between subjective impairments and objective structures of disability, nor as a mere

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subjectivist rationale concerning objective issues. What counts, though, are the (inter-)mediating e(a)ffects [Dazwischenwirkung]11 between bodies, senses, minds and things that make up the specificities of enabling or/and disabling practices, situations and relations, which again are nothing but (inter-)mediated bodies, senses, minds and things. Hence, the unifying act that makes up abilities or/and disabilities appears as a social process since it is not a mere linkage of matter of facts. Rather, it is the process of associating heterogeneous entities that unravel the concretion of a unity, re-assembling anew the elements involved (cf. Tarde, 1999a, 2008, 2009; Whitehead, 1978, 2000). The unity is always a collective becoming, a conjunctural event ‘that has grown out of social realities and necessities’ (Simmel, 1997: 111). The concrete socialness and/or abstract religiousness of things refers to an (inter-)mediation of heterogeneities. And it was Gabriel Tarde (cf. Tarde, 1999a)—another religiously very musical sociologist—who made this very clear. According to Tarde, heterogeneity is erroneously conceived ( . . . ) as the maximum degree of difference. In reality, it is a very special kind of repetition, namely, of two similar things that are mutually destructive by virtue of their very similarity. In other words, opposites or contraries [heterogeneities] always constitute a couple or duality; they are not opposed to each other as beings or groups of beings, for these are always dissimilar and, in some respect, sui generis; nor yet as states of a single being or different beings, but rather as tendencies or forces. (Tarde, 1969: 165) These bipolar tendencies and forces make all entities—human and nonhuman alike—different and similar at the same time; this articulated ‘double bind’ (Bateson, 1981; cf. Bateson & Bateson, 1988) unravels their concrete socialness and their abstract religiousness. Yet, whenever the socialness/ religiousness of a unity, understood as the assemblage of heterogeneous entities, is explained by a single unity that abstracts from being assembled, the (concrete) socialness and (abstract) religiousness of things has been purified and thus translated into what I like to call the religion of things. It unravels self-explicatory unities from which the relation is explained. The religion of things abstracts not only from the concrete relations that make up the social but also from the abstract religiousness that refers to the general idea of dependency on others, i.e. the relatedness of differences. This idea of self-explication of unities has grown out of a long tradition of monotheistic religions, as Simmel argues. Simmel stresses that The unity of things and interests with which we fi rst become acquainted in the social realm fi nds its highest representation—and one separated, as it were, from all material considerations—in the idea of the divine; it

26

Rethinking Disability occurs most completely, of course, in the monotheistic religions, but to a certain extent also in the lower religions. (Simmel, 1997: 112)

The ‘religion of modernity’ as the religion of things itio in partes refers to all the practices that divide (inter-)mediated relations into relationships of self-explicatory entities. It is about ‘strategies of purification’ that bifurcate the nature of associated things in clear and distinctive domains of reality that—although they are related—are thought to be explained by one reality only—for instance that of rational humans, nature, society, God, etc. (cf. Latour, 1993; Haraway, 1995). According to Martin Heidegger, The Modern Age has, as a consequence of the liberation of man, introduced subjectivism and individualism. But it remains just as certain that no age before has produced a comparable objectivism and that in no age before this has the non-individual, in the form of the collective, come to acceptance as having worth. Essential here is the necessary interplay between subjectivism and objectivism. (Heidegger, 1977b: 128)

SUBJECTS, OBJECTS, SOCIETY AND OTHER DIVINITIES With this in mind, we will see in detail later that the idea of God that unites the manifold and the opposite into one God, is imagined in different shapes and forms: as subjects, objects and—as we will see in its most global form—as society (the collective in opposition to the individual). The interplay between subjectivism and objectivism lead to the bifurcation of nature into subjective culture and objective nature, performing the most basic differentiation, which enacts the very religion of modernity wherein the disability discourse is very much embedded when it appears as a discourse framed by the discussion between impairment and disability. According to Heidegger, the value of the interplay between modern divinities such as subjects, objects, and society (as the non-individual collective) is the effect of a radical change of the essence of man, inasmuch as the human being became subject: What is decisive is not that man frees himself to himself from previous obligations [bisherigen Bindungen], but that the very essence of man itself changes, in that man becomes subject. We must understand this word subjectum, however, as the translation of the Greek hypokeimenon. The word names that-which-lies-before, which, as ground, gathers everything onto itself. ( . . . ) Man becomes that being upon which all that is, is grounded as regards the manner of its Being and its truth. Man becomes the relational center of that which is at such. (Heidegger, 1977b: 128)

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As we will see later, what we fi nd as modern religion is a de-deification [Entgötterung] of a God outside the world that creates and leads the world by a re-deification of Gods [Vergötterung] inside the world—as the effect of the human becoming subject. Objects and society as the sacred, i.e. as self-explicatory unities, are the effect of the modern religion of the subject.12 Émile Durkheim has argued that the sacred is ‘that which is set apart, that which is separated. ( . . . ) Any mixture, or even contact, profanes it, that is to say, destroys its essential attributes’ (Durkheim, 1953: 70). In that sense modernity became its own God worshipping its invented sacred beings (Gods): The human/humanity, the world, society which—although linked to nature—is (a) understood as different to nature and (b) thought of in self-explicatory realities. The same may be said about nature; it turned into a self-explicatory reality that although it may be linked to human perception has to be explained in its own right. ‘There is religion where there is transcendence, vertical being, imperial state in heaven or on earth’, as Deleuze and Guattari (2000: 52) said. Under the umbrella of modernity’s self-description that distinguishes itself—clare et distincte—from non-modernity, we moderns have cultivated a multiplicity of religions of ‘either/or’ strategies that were thought to describe reality along functional units: natural and social sciences, economy, politics, law, religion, etc. Each of them is organized around clear and distinct either/ordivision that divides itself from its Umwelt according to its own means of differentiation (cf. Luhmann, 1996, 1998). Under the umbrella of modernity ‘the imperial state in heaven or on earth’ multiplies into self-organized systems of secular and non-secular religions that constitute the realm of society. Social sciences that focus on humans and society worship ‘the social’ or ‘society’ as the self-explicatory reality that—although it relates to nature (as bodies, human and non-human alike)—delimits its own reality, defi ning, interpreting, and explaining the nature of things along its own causalities that differ from those of nature (cf. Nassehi, 2003). Hence, the social model of disability follows the bifurcation of the nature of the world into a realm of society and nature by advocating an understanding of ‘the social’ whenever it argues that it is society that is disabling and not human impairments. Like social sciences the social model of disability is part of the religion of modernity inasmuch as it sets up a domain of the social called ‘society’ that explains the world next to other domains such as nature; it also treats ‘the social’ as a matter of fact next to the ‘biological’, the ‘physical’, the ‘mental’, etc. As we will see later, such an understanding simultaneously underdetermines and overdetermines ‘the social’ (of disability).

SCRUPULOUS AND EXACT—OR BEING RELIGIOUSLY MODERN We saw how the religion of modernity appears in its different ‘non-religious’ forms of the sacred—as subjects, objects, and society (with its own functional

28 Rethinking Disability differentiated realms). We will see—although very briefly—that the religion of modernity (a European invention as it were) is very much a specific translation of the history of world religions such as Christianity, Judaism and other monotheisms as well as the impact of Greek philosophy. These played a crucial role in the constitution of a monotheistic sacred and the idea of a transcendent but most real foundation and enactment of the world as we find it advocated by the ‘religion of modernity’. Such non-religious forms of monotheistic belief systems produce new forms of the sacred: man, nature, and society. As we will see shortly, what is specifically modern is that all three forms of the sacred are themselves part of one sacred realm: the world or society. All these forms appear sacred inasmuch as they are self-explicatory realms of the sacred one: the world. There happens to be no God outside the world anymore, except as it is decided from within the world that there is an outside God. Roughly speaking, these different sacred forms of modernity have found their disciplinary and professional space in philosophy (man), sciences (nature), and social sciences (society). Accordingly it seems quite natural to differentiate an understanding of dis/ability along these very units of interpretation. Thus, in order to highlight the ‘social’ aspect of disability, ‘society’ is conceived as the self-explanatory realm of experiencing and conceptualizing disability that differs—clare et distincte— from an understanding given by philosophy or sciences by separating the social nature of disability from the ‘nature’ of human minds or bodies and their impairments. This act of separation is a good example of the very modernist ‘strategy of purification’ that stabilizes such bifurcation into self-explicatory unities (cf. Haraway, 1995; Latour, 1993). ‘Purification’ is modern religion’s self-fulfi lling prayer. It grants modernity’s durability by setting a clear boundary between what is understood as modern and what is not. Purification, then, is a mode of validating and stabilizing the politics of modern identity. It is a clever strategy to delimit closed, self-explicatory unities by black-boxing the complex dependencies on others as they emerge out of modernity’s re-reading and re-assembling of heterogeneous elements. As mentioned earlier these self-explicatory modern black boxes come in different sacred forms. Thus when we talk about the religion of modernity we fi nd multiple sacred forms: the aforementioned man as the rational subject, nature as object, and society as the nation-state. What is most interesting, however, is that it is precisely modernity, which has been unravelling practices, which has been constantly re-assembling and re-linking man, nature, and society in highly complex and close ways. Modern urban life, modern monetary economies, as well as modern sciences and technology have radically reshaped what we understand as, what and how we defi ne man, nature, and society. None of these three forms could be thought in isolation anymore; still, to appear as modern sacred forms they have been purified into selfexplicatory unities.

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At a fi rst glance, it is quite surprising that modern practices, which constantly re-assemble man, nature, and society, appear—in order to be called modern—as purified, self-explicatory unities. But—as outlined previously—it has been the tradition of monotheistic religions that has been radicalized by the religion of modernity, translating the one divinity into a multiplicity of self-explicatory unities that give modernity its durable identity. The success of modernity, then, refers to highly complex, concrete practices of re-reading and re-assembling of man, nature, and society and its purification into a multiplicity of self-explicatory realms which on their own terms describe—clare et distincte—its respective other (man, nature, or society). Within modernity, then, we fi nd radical and most conspicuous forms of religiousness and socialness that are governed by a multiplicity of self-explicatory (non-religious) religions (see later). In such a reading, it is the very paradox that modern religion fosters, the religiousness/socialness of man, nature, and society, by excluding its religiousness/socialness, purifying it into the religion of man or nature or society. It is ‘inclusion by exclusion’ that normalizes, norms, validates, delimits, and divides modern time-spaces from the non-modern world and so defi nes what is meant to be normal or abnormal, social or natural, able and disabled, what are human bodies and non-human things, etc. (cf. Foucault, 2003). The very modern idea of functional differentiation of societal subsystems such as economy, law, politics, religion, science, art, etc., or the professionalization of modern scientific disciplines into sciences, human and life sciences, or social sciences is very much an example of the politics of modern religions. For us moderns to be religious means a re-reading and re-assembling of the bond between the World and God as it has been conveyed by the legacy of monotheistic religions such as the Greek and Christian religion: The notion of God as the ‘unmoved mover’ is derived from Aristotle; at least as far as Western thought is concerned. The notion of God as ‘eminent real’ is a favourite doctrine of Christian theology. The combination of the two into the doctrine of an aboriginal, eminently real, transcendent creator, at whose fiat the world came into being, and whose imposed will it obeys, is the fallacy which has infused tragedy into the histories of Christianity and of Mahometanism ( . . . ) This vicious separation of the flux from the permanence leads to concept of the entirely static God, with eminent reality, in relation to an entirely fluent world, with deficient reality. (Whitehead, 1978: 342, 346) We moderns are very much embedded within such monotheistic religions that advocate such dualism, distinguishing between ‘this’ empirical world (re-reading and re-assembling of heterogeneous entities) and a transcendent reality (purification into self-explicatory unities) understood to exist ‘above’ it, which always more or less involves a turning away, an abstraction from

30

Rethinking Disability

the empirical world. As argued earlier, it brings to the fore the translation of the religiousness of modernity into the religion of modernity as a mode of purification. What made and continues to make us moderns so powerful in prolonging and propagating our politics of identity is that dual structure, the twofold practices of translating (re-assembling world and God, humans and non-humans) and purifying the (inter-)mediations [Dazwischenwirkung] (Simmel, 1957: 213) of the World and God into a relationship that separates off the World from God, humans from non-humans. Typically for modern religion, we moderns have been translating, that is re-assembling, the relation between the bond of the World and God as an act of the either/or: either the World or God. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche writes at the end of the 19th century: God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? (Nietzsche, 1978: The Gay Science, 125) Declaring that ‘God is dead’ we moderns did not fi nd God dead; God didn’t die a natural death. No, we have killed God, says Nietzsche. But, as Bruno Latour has argued recently, it was a ‘soft’ killing: We are acting as if13 God is dead (Latour, 1993). We have not fi nally excluded God from our world. On the contrary: We have been normalizing God as well (like all other otherness), inasmuch as God, as the external, most real unmoved mover, has been included by and into the human world: The World is God and produces its own Gods. To refer to an external God became an inner worldly affair—the ex-creator turned into a self-creation of human conduct. Thus ‘the world’ became God—’the unmoved mover’ as it were— precisely because it is multiple, fluent, and the self-made Gods may change: From now on the modern world can be seen as a hybrid linking ‘opposed elements’ that ‘stand to each other in mutual requirement’: God as ‘the infi nite ground of all mentality, the unity of vision seeking physical multiplicity’ and the World ‘as the multiplicity of fi nites, seeking a perfect unity’ (Whitehead, 1978: 348) is united as the World. This double process of hybridization leads to the Apotheosis of the World. Whitehead stresses: God and the World stand opposed to each other, expressing the fi nal metaphysical truth that appetitive vision [God] and physical enjoyment [world] have equal claim to priority in creation. But no two actualities can be torn apart; each is all in all. Thus each temporal occasion embodies God, and is embodied in God. In God’s nature, permanence is

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primordial and permanence is derivative from the World: in the World’s nature, flux is primordial and permanence is derivative from God; and God’s nature is a primordial datum for the World. Creation achieves the reconciliation of permanence and flux when it has reached its fi nal term which is everlastingness—the Apotheosis of the World. (Whitehead, 1978: 348) With Nietzsche we moderns started to become aware of the Apotheosis of the World precisely as an act of killing God. It opens up the possibilities that affi rming life activates thinking and that thinking affi rms life rather than being governed by abstract idea(l)s, divine orders, dualistic principles [nihilism]. It unravels space for translating [Umwertung] the ‘either/or’ that negates life into an affi rmative thinking that says yes [bejahen] to life and generates new possibilities of life: The translation of the ‘negation principle’ of the ‘either/or’, of nihilism into the ‘principle of affi rmation’ of the ‘and . . . and . . . and’ (cf. Deleuze, 2001) centers embodied living as the affi rmation of being as multiple and becoming, being translates into multiple becomings. But how to deal with such a killing, how to deal with the affi rmation of life that poses the risk of losing the value of the permanence and universality of a divine order that creates and stabilizes our lives? For Nietzsche the words ‘God is dead’ mean that the idea(l) of a transcendental, supra-sensory order has lost its effective power. God refers to the Christian and any other set of belief systems that argue for a transcendent, suprasensory normative explanation of a divine and universal order of the sensory world. With the killing of God we are facing the self-devaluation of our highest values. We are encountering (the effects) of nihilism, which according to Nietzsche is not only the devaluation of these highest values but also names the creation of such highest values. In that sense, the Apotheosis of the World that leads to the modern valuation of the devaluation of the highest values is in itself a nihilistic practice. In his reading of Nietzsche’s ‘God is dead’ Martin Heidegger says: Into the position of the vanishing authority of God and of the teaching office of the Church steps the authority of conscience, obtrudes the authority of reason. Against these the social instinct rises up. The flight from the world into the suprasensory is replaced by historical progress. The otherworldly goal of everlasting bliss is transformed into the earthly happiness of the greatest number. The careful maintenance of the cult of religion is relaxed through enthusiasm for the creating of a culture or the spreading of civilization. Creativity, previously the unique property of the biblical God, becomes the distinctive mark of human activity. Human creativity finally passes over into business enterprise. Accordingly, that which must take the place of the suprasensory world will be variations on the Christian-ecclesiastical and theological interpretation of the world, which took over its schema of the

32

Rethinking Disability ordo of the hierarchy of beings from the Jewish-Hellenistic world, and whose fundamental structure was established and given its ground through Plato at the beginning of western metaphysics. ( . . . ) Metaphysics is history’s open space wherein it becomes a destining that the suprasensory world, the Ideas, God, the moral law, the authority of reason, progress, the happiness of the greatest number, culture, civilization, suffer the loss of their constructive force and become void. (Heidegger, 1977c: 64–65)

What Nietzsche saw so perfectly well was that the experience of the religiousness of the world, the modern awareness of the Apotheosis of the world, that re-reads and re-assembles the world and God anew, could (at the end of 19th century) only be understood by and as a religion again: the religion of modernity, the religion of the earthly, sensory world that decides upon the existence of supra-sensory Gods. We moderns became aware of the world as a new, say modern set of ideas and belief systems, a new religion of the ‘Either/Or’: With this, Nietzsche recognizes that despite the devaluing of the world of the highest values hitherto, the world itself remains; and he recognizes that, above all, the world becomes value-less, presses inevitably on toward a new positing of values. After the former values have become untenable, the new positing of values changes, in respect to these former values, into a ‘revaluing of all values’. The ‘no’ to the values hitherto comes out of a ‘yes’ to the new positing of values. Because in this ‘yes’, according to Nietzsche’s view, there is no accommodation to or compromise with the former values, the absolute ‘no’ belongs within this ‘yes’ to the new value positing. (Heidegger, 1977c: 67, translation altered by author). Accordingly, the world emerges as a self-validating cosmology of the either/ or where the human is the self-conscious subjectum (man as the I of ego cogito) of all order and objectivity. The suprasensory is dead since it is seen as the most secure value-setting will of power of subjectivity (this amounts to the killing of God as a rational act). It posits man as subjectum securing him/herself as subject and object by a (self-assured) certitude that is given by a self-consciousness and self-knowing act. Heidegger says: The metaphysics of the modern age begins with and has its essence in the fact that it seeks the unconditionally indubitable, that certain and assured [Gewissen], certainty. It is a matter, according to the words of Descartes, of firmum et mensurum quid stabilire, of bringing to a stand something that is fi rmly fi xed and that remains. This standing established as object is adequate to the essence, ruling from the old,

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of what is as the constantly presencing, which everywhere already lies before (hypokeimenon, subjectum). The killing means the act of doing away with suprasensory world that is in itself—an act accomplished through man. It speaks of the event wherein that which is as such does not simply come to nothing, but does indeed become different in its Being. But above all, in this event man also becomes different. He becomes the one who does away with that which is, in the sense of what that which is in itself. The uprising of man into subjectivity transforms that which is into object. But that which is objective is that which is brought to a stand through representing. The doing away with that which is in itself, i.e., the killing of God, is accomplished in the making secure of the constant reserve by means of which man makes secure for himself material, bodily, psychic, and spiritual resources, and this for the sake of his own security, which wills dominion over whatever is—as the potentially objective— in order to correspond to the Being of whatever is, to the will to power. (Heidegger, 1977c: 82–83, 107). The empty place left after the killing of God is filled with man as subject that configures its other as object by an act of reason. Hence the other in itself—like God—the not known through which we are enacted as human beings, is translated into a man of reason. Thus, the thing itself that names the un-nameable, the unknown, insecure that nevertheless co-constitutes and secures human being in the fi rst place is brought to a stand, i.e. is made knowable by reason. Thereby, the risky relation with heterogeneous things that marks and configures the abstract religiousness and concrete socialness of human is ‘forgotten’, i.e. rationalized and secured as a selfconstituted matter of rational facts [Gegenstand]. Hence, although we have been soft killing the monotheistic God we moderns became aware of being in medias res. It has been precisely the processes of modernization, constantly re-reading and re-assembling humans and non-humans, which brought us closer to an understanding that we live in medias res: in the middle of religious bodies and things.14 The production of modern material culture unravels a myriad of objects that not only brings to the fore that we are what we are only due to the dependence on others (human and non-human alike). It also introduces an openness of what it means to be a social human being. This uncertainty of ‘the social’ not only makes us adopt a religious attitude, it may also turn into religion. Facing the co-presence of the religiousness and socialness of things that configure human relations, religion became a way of dealing with it. Religion in its monotheistic attitude is a way to secure the riskiness of the religiousness and socialness of human relations by the invention of selfexplicatory unities. And it doesn’t come as a surprise that the religion(s) of modernity appear as utterly self-explicatory, non-religious, and non-social. However, this is simultaneously what made modern religions so successful

34

Rethinking Disability

precisely because they make us forget about the religiousness and socialness of things, adopting the strategies of purification: the modern religion of the either/or that relates the dependence on others as a self-generated effect. With the soft killing of God we became aware that our abstract understanding of religiousness is the very effect of concrete practices that configure man as a social being. At the same time, the very awareness that the religiousness of humans and things is a social act brought about an understanding of human existence that is ontologically insecure and risky since humanity depends on its other. Social relations, then, by defi nition, relate what we know with what we do not know—human with other humans and humans with non-humans. Thus, social relations are ontologically insecure and gain or lose their stability and durability in the way they relate differences (heterogeneities, others). The social becomes social in the way it relates the non-social, i.e. of how bodies, senses, and things are related (Latimer, 2000; Latimer and Schillmeier, 2009). Nietzsche seemed to be highly aware of that when he asks who will invoke what kind of ‘strategies of purification’ that are needed to deal with the deed of killing that made us ware of the ontological insecurity of social relations. This is why he asks again and again throughout his oeuvre: ‘Who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?’ As I have argued, modern practices constantly re-read and re-assemble social relations and by doing so make us aware of the demand to include the other which/who is permanently related and re-assembled as well. Thus we appreciate the immanence of the not known, the other, the transcendent that is/are part and parcel of social relations. However, modernity invented ‘festivals of atonement’ and ‘sacred games’ that were thought to promise security in the midst of such ‘immanence of transcendence’ by the ‘strategies of purification’. Nietzsche’s realist narration of killing can be thought as to make us sensitive for the riskiness of social relations. It also points out that we may not be ready to properly think and understand the social. For us moderns, Nietzsche insinuates, it seems to great of a deed to live without God, to live without religion, without the sacred. Thus we imitate the monotheistic God according to our own (all too human) terms: We become our own Gods and invent our own religion(s) with it. Moreover, there is another emerging risk Nietzsche’s realist narration tells of: It is the risk of mistaking God for a personal, material object that— by killing—has been merely substituted by another objective reality, i.e. that of the rationalist human being. It misses out on dealing adequately with objects that are other than human. The only way to tackle the ‘greatness of the deed’ is to become Gods ourselves; we humans and in its sociologized form ‘the social’ as ‘society’ transmute into the sacred and consequently forget about the sacredness of the other.

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From then on it has been the sacred World that decided if God plays a role or not. And since the enlightened world was considered a human affair and in accordance allowed processes of rationalization and individualization, the bond between ‘the world and God’ became a solitary affair of man (cf. Weber, 1965; Whitehead, 2007). In effect, we became our own Gods and so we became modern. The God of mankind [Menschheit] is man; due to that we moderns are very keen to defi ne ourselves in difference to the non-human (cf. Agamben, 2002). And again, God is excluded, not due to its Otherness, but according to our world that is becoming human, i.e. our worldly understanding of it. We moderns are defi ning God; God is worldly, i.e. individually fabricated; we moderns multiply God and thereby name the modern (non-religious) religion. This is why the death of God was a killing and not a natural death. God became an epistemic object, an object of (subjective) knowledge; God lost its prime being: being non-knowable, outside of (human) knowledge.15 This means that God is not the external, unmoved mover of the world of humans anymore, but he is individually made to become God. The creator from outside the human world turns into a creation from the inside of our human world. For modern philosophy—cumulating in Kant’s critical work—the key actor of religion, the key mediator who re-reads, reassociates, and binds things is not given by God, but by rational human beings, by the human mind. God, then, is not a reference point from outside that mediates and steers the way we humans think, act and feel. Rather, from a modern point of view, when we communicate with or about God we are always confronted with ourselves: The modern God is an inner-worldly construction. A thought, a mind’s act, as Kant would say. In consequence, religion is humanized and we humans become our own religion so that it is us (and our practices) that we have to observe to get a view of God (cf. Durkheim, 2008). Enlightenment, secularization, the idea of progress, human sciences, technoscientific innovations—just to name a few—are seen as clear markers for such a process of becoming modern, for modern religions. For social sciences the key intermediary of religion is not the isolated human being, it is not the psychic system, but it is ‘society’ where associated humans produce their own Gods, ontologies, and natures. Thus, the individual that is produced by society and not by nature itself enforces every seemingly ‘given’ nature of things. ‘Society’ is understood as a transcendent reality that exists ‘above’ the individual, which according to classical sociology—following Durkheim’s line of thought—does not involve a turning away from the empirical world but circumscribes another empirical reality sui generis that exists ‘above and beyond’ the reality of individual concerns structuring and framing the latter. Following from the ‘death of God’, whatever happens in the world is nothing but the effect of our own decisions, experiences, and practices: inner references that are not given by external entities (cf. Luhmann, 1998). With this in mind, there is no single reference point that is responsible for

36

Rethinking Disability

being the sole source of explaining ‘disability’. Obviously, this has been one main motivation to criticize the medical model of disability that naturalizes, ontologizes, and individualizes disability as the mere effect of individual impairments. This idea, then, became the structural basis of the social model of disability that argues that disabilities are produced by ‘society’ above and beyond the individual impairment. Undoubtedly, to redirect disability away from the individual and highlight the power of an oppressive and disabling ‘society’ has been the strongest argument of the social model of disability. At the same time, as I argue, it is precisely the bifurcation of the nature of disability into the power of disabling ‘society’ on the one hand and the impairment of the individual body on the other which is most problematic to understand ‘the social’ of disability. Thus, it is imperative to argue against any naturalizing understanding of disability, but this argument has to include ‘the social’. This is precisely what the social model of disability has forgotten to do. The ‘philosophy’ of the social model of disability refers to a set of ideas that I have already tried to outline briefly earlier: oppression, exclusion, collective experience of disabilities that is given by ‘ultimate ideals’ that distinguish the individual and society, impairment and disability. These ideals separate off the social model from any individualistic, biomedical, and technoscientific model of impairment. The medical model is thought to have its own set of ideas that not only focuses exclusively on the embodied individual concerns but in turn is part of the negative social experience of disability as enforced by society. Thus the medical model, as seen from the social model, is part of oppressive societal structures. However, to fight the effects of the production and dealings with mere impaired bodies and senses, these bodies and senses are not considered to be part of ‘the social’ that tries to overcome oppression and exclusion. Neither is the medical discourse of disability. Thus, bodies, senses, and the medical discourse play an ambivalent role in the social model of disability. They do play a major role in the social experience of dis/ability but are politically, theoretically, and conceptually marginalized in order to delimit the very social understanding of disability. The same may be said about things such as (assistive) technologies. The wheelchair is very much part of how to live with e.g. a bodily impairment, whereas the built environment and many assistive technologies are part of society whenever they disable. These ambivalences make very clear that it seems rather artificial to divide between impairment and disability on the one hand or ‘the individual’ and ‘society’ on the other. Unwittingly, the exclusion of the individual, biological, and medical from ‘the social’ has the unfortunate effect of leading to the idealization, simplification, homogenization, and fi xation of disability into two spheres of reality: the social and non-social reality of dis/ability. In consequence, such a movement is in danger of narrowing down the understanding of dis/ability against the background of ‘ultimate ideals’ or ‘ideal opposites’ (individual vs. society, social vs. medical) instead of leaving the question

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concerning dis/ability open to the contingency of empirical experience. Such an either/or strategy set up by these ideal opposites not only overrates ‘the social’ inasmuch as ‘the social’ is granted an explanatory domain on its own; it also underrates ‘the social’ inasmuch as it is set next to the biological, physical, etc. (cf. also Latour, 2005).16 In this sense, ‘the social’, which is meant to question any fi xed, natural, and static matter of facts, becomes itself a static and ‘spatialized’ category whereby the temporal character, i.e. the becoming of the social itself, is left aside. As Shakespeare (2006) has shown very lucidly, it is the ‘spatialization’ of the social model and its ‘rivals’, i.e. the creation of clear and distinct boundaries between them, that is ‘the shortest route to a clear-cut philosophy expressed in reasonable familiar language’ (Whitehead, 1978: 209). It is the clear-cut ‘spatialization’ of ‘the social’ realm of disability that refers to a separable domain of structural forces—called ‘society’—that acts on top of individual impairments. Indeed, in a fi rst and most important attempt the ‘simple location’ (Whitehead, 1967: 49ff) of disability helped to make clear and strengthen the oppositional standpoint, the frame of reference of critique against the hegemony of mere individual concerns that have been fostered by medical discourse in the fi rst place. However, in the long run it hinders a thoroughly ‘social’ understanding of disability whenever it sets itself against the non-socialness of bodies, senses, and things. Moreover, it reifies either/or categories (impaired/disabled, able/ disabled, individual/society) that the social model was meant to overcome in the fi rst place. Additionally, this may lead to the danger that all thought systems and philosophies are prone to be afflicted, as A. N. Whitehead argues: The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence. This narrowness arises from the idiosyncrasies and timidities of particular authors, of particular social groups, of particular epochs in the history of civilization. The evidence relied upon is arbitrarily biased by the temperaments of individuals, by the provincialities of groups, and by the limitations of schemes of thought. The evil, resulting from this distortion of evidence, is ( . . . ) ultimate ideals. (Whitehead, 1978: 337) The deep concern of Whitehead is that of ‘vicious bifurcation ( . . . ) so deeply embedded in modern [philosophical (and scientific)] thought’ (Whitehead, 1995: 185, 187) that places separate ultimate opposites whereby each on its own becomes self-explicatory. ‘The false idea which we have to get rid of is’, as Whitehead stresses, ‘that of nature as mere aggregate of independent entities, each capable of isolation’ leading the observation of objects that ‘are an accidental product of the relations between nature and mind’ (Whitehead, 1995: 141). What Whitehead is protesting is deeply rooted in modern philosophy, science and social sciences: the bifurcation of nature.

38 Rethinking Disability Thus, the reader needs a little patience to allow space for reflecting upon the default practices of common argumentation. But I think it is worthwhile, especially for considering a novel account of the ‘the social’ and with it, an innovative proposal of Rethinking Disability. Whitehead argued: What I am essentially protesting against is the bifurcation of nature into two systems of reality, which, in so far they are real, are real in different senses. ( . . . ) Another way of phrasing this theory which I am arguing against is to bifurcate nature into two divisions, namely onto the nature apprehended in awareness and the nature which is the cause of awareness. (Whitehead, 1995: 30) And indeed, it is this either/or division that still plays a crucial role in contemporary disability research when individual and social models of disability are opposed. This is precisely what the social and the medical model of disability have in common when they both adhere to the division between impairment and disability, arguing that each side has its own reality and demands its own ‘model’. Obviously, both accounts acknowledge the respective other side. The social model has done much to include ‘impairment’ as much as the medical model has given ‘disability’ a bigger role in classifying troubled health issues.17 However, both accounts can be read as ‘theories of addition’ that add different realities: Whereas the social models fi rst added the reality of ‘society’ to the reality of impairment, current accounts add impairment to the social model. On the other hand, the medical model adds ‘social reality’ to the impaired body to get the whole picture. Still, for both accounts, the respective side lies outside one’s own frame of reference. For the medical model ‘disability’ is not curable, since it has no means to diagnose, treat, and rehabilitate ‘society’ and the social model has no means to cure impaired bodies. Again, it is the history of religion that allows space for such strategies of bifurcation and the way the binary opposition ‘disability-impairment’ as well the dualism ‘society-individual’ is explained by merely one side of the dualism. Szerszynski (2005: 17–18) argues—picking up Karl Jaspers’ study on the ‘axial age’ (Jaspers, 1953)—that the understanding of the sacred underwent a radical change by the emergence of monist cosmologies. The history of monotheistic religions fostered the practice of and the belief in the ‘vicious separation’ of explicating and interpreting the assemblage of heterogeneous entities (what I have called ‘religiousness’ or ‘socialness’ of the world and God, human and non-human, social and individual, subject and object) as a ‘dualistic distinction between “this” world and a transcendent reality understood to “exist” above it. The historic religions are all in some way religions of dualism and world-rejection, involving a turning away from the empirical world ( . . . ) and ( . . . ) salvation becomes the great preoccupation of religions’. This process fosters ‘a number of key ideas characteristic of subsequent orderings of the sacred: a single truth, “nature” and “society”’:

The Social and the Religion of Modernity

39

Firstly, the breaching of the immanent sacral order and the idea of a transcendent foundation or source for all reality brings for the first time the possibility of philosophical thought about Being—of ‘thinking the “One”’ (Gauchet, 1997: 48). But also religious plurality, which had been easily accommodated within the archaic sacred, comes to be seen in a different way—as deviations from truth, in Christian terms as heresy. Secondly, with divinity and agency progressively eradicated from the world of empirical phenomena, nature as a separate principle starts to emerge. With this withdrawal of divinity, nature starts increasingly to be seen as something which humans can and should master—to be shaped in a systematic, technological way, as part of the task of realizing their divine role on earth. Thirdly, with the monotheistic sacred, with its starker separation between human beings and the divine and a clearer sense of the empirical human individual, we begin to see the emergence of the idea of society as a self-organizing association between human beings and their own projects and opinions (Szerszynski, 2005: 18). This process of dualist distinctions gained its climax with the introduction of what I have called ‘the religion of modernity’. The dualist religion has been translated into the prime defi nition of delimiting the modern collective that confi nes its boundaries—clare et distincte—from tradition: Either you are modern or you are not. The religion of modernity can be understood as a re-reading of tradition that refers to a constant process of re-connecting, gathering, and binding things/collectives in a non-traditional way. Since the late 16th century the etymology of religion suggests this as well: The non-traditional way of re-assembling things is done in a ‘scrupulous and exact’ sense, and names a method of disciplining and norm-giving through boundary setting18: It relegates objectification by exclusivist, i.e. either/or, divisions. This, as we will see, is going to be highly important for understanding how bodies, senses, and things relate and configure dis/abilities. This seems to be the very paradox of religiously modern, ‘scrupulous and exact’ practices: It is the constant urge of the ‘tradition’ of moderns to defi ne themselves—clare et distincte—apart from tradition. With this process comes a highly normative attitude of being modern, i.e. normalizing practices of modern religion that ‘govern’, as Michel Foucault would say, the production of the modern ethos (Foucault, 2003).19 To be religiously modern then is the very belief in and the idea of modern practices that are constructed, articulated, and stabilized by a critical, that is a delimiting, attitude: It defi nes modernity and its parts by their difference towards the non-modern other. Thus, modernity identifies itself by an ethos of commitment, the engagement (re-ligare) of distinguishing itself from what it is not, e.g. from ‘tradition’, which is seen highly artificially as ‘pre-modernity’ (cf. Foucault, 1984; Latour, 1993). However, as Latour pointed out so convincingly, this religiously modern ethos of either/or divisions left the other half of modernity untackled:

40 Rethinking Disability its socialness. The latter refers to all (the new emerging) hybrid entities that cannot be dealt properly along either/or divisions. This is why Bruno Latour can rightly say that we have never been modern, since the religion of modern only valued the ‘bifurcation of nature’, the either/or strategies that separated off—clare et distincte—ontological realms of differing, existing entities; it had little to say about the religiousness or socialness of its conduct, i.e. the very reality, translation, and production of these (new) collectives that transcend modern either/or strategies. The difficulties of focusing on both may be found in the complex institutionalized ways that these either/or strategies weren’t performed by exclusion of the non-modern, the non-normal, but by inclusion. For modern religion ‘exclusion’ is performed as the effect of inclusion that enacts and is enacted by the process of normalization of what is thought as ‘ab-normal’ (cf. Foucault, 2003). The following story offers some important insights as to the way in which modernity radically re-assembles dis/ability. Obviously, this book cannot offer the whole picture of dis/ability’s history. Consequently, I will provide insights into one theme of dis/ability that I have researched for many years: It is the history of blindness. Within a Western context, the history of blindness—so goes my argument—can be read as a (non-modern) story of ‘blindness’ as it was understood by Greek culture and how it turned into a modern story of visual disability. Firstly, then, my narration begins with the ‘light’ culture of ancient Greece and the way Greek culture and philosophy understood and dealt with blindness. Secondly, I will show how blindness was thematized by two prominent modern philosophical accounts—Bishop Berkeley’s New Theory of Vision and John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. This trajectory from blindness in ancient Greek culture to its modern treatment is strongly linked. Moreover, I will argue that the beginnings of modern thought are very much rooted in ancient Greek culture of light. The history of blindness to visual disability can be read as a long process of rationalizing the religion of the either/or as it was invented by ancient Greek philosophy. With respect to blindness and visual disability, the rationalization of the religion of the either/or is strongly associated with the rationalization of a culture of light as invoked by the ancient Greeks. This very culture of light not only favored vision as the most noble and important sense in everyday life. It also connected most conspicuously sight with insight, i.e. sensing with thinking and knowing the truth. Seeing, thinking and knowing made up the powerful entanglement to implement a religion of the ‘either/or’ that has been radicalized most conspicuously by modern thought and constitutes what I called ‘modern religion’. It doesn’t come as a surprise that for cultures sanctifying light and vision by closely linking it with insight and knowledge, the world of blindness plays a prominent and delicate—if not to say an awkward and endangering—role. Generally speaking, cultures of blindness put at risk cultures of vision and light and how they order and make sense of the world they enact. In the next chapter I will show how non-modern and modern cultures of

The Social and the Religion of Modernity

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light and vision—though in different ways—have been dealing with and thereby reconfiguring the realities of blindness. For the ancient Greeks blindness constituted the radical Other, that which constantly transgresses the limits of Greek culture: Whereas light and vision delimits human and socio-cultural practices, blindness introduces nothing by difference as a mode of transgression of the boundaries set by light and (in-)sight. In modern culture of vision blindness lost its transgressive agency. Still, blindness remained the Other of light and (in-)sight, but in a metaphorical sense. By modernity, the complex transgressive nature of blindness has been divided into (a) a metaphorical meaning and (b) a privation of the hegemony of vision; blindness became a visual impairment and a social disability. By modern technoscientific innovations linked with the epistemological rigor of modern philosophy and the politics of fighting scholastic thought-systems the very ambivalent character of modern practices becomes apparent. Obviously, we moderns take care of the Other, but only under conditions of modern thought that treat blindness both metaphorically and as a visual impairment/disability. Blindness is excluded by inclusion into the realm of the culture of light and vision as non- or low-vision. To think and deal with blindness in a modern way is to cure it (Zasloff, 1996), to efface it; however by trying to do so we moderns haven’t eradicated blindness but reconfigured and re-read the reality, i.e. our experiences and understandings of blindness.

2

Othering Blindness in the Light of Vision and Di/vision

We moderns owe much to the Greek culture of light and the dominance of vision (Bernidaki-Aldous, 1990; Levin, 1993; Jenks, 1995). What connects such different cultures as the ancient Greeks with modern cultures is precisely the supremacy of visual practices and technologies of vision (Buck-Morss, 1989; Crary, 1991; Allert, 1996; Lalvani, 1996; MacPhee, 2002; Lindberg, 1976; Simon, 1992; Weinstein & Weinstein, 1984; Zajonc, 1993). Hence, it does not seem surprising that the history of blindness is very much linked to visual cultures and their attempts to understand blindness with scopic regimes of knowledge. Unsurprisingly, it is precisely in cultures of light and vision such as ancient Greek and modern societies where blindness is considered as an awkward, troublesome, and ambiguous phenomenon. As a consequence, ancient and modern cultures of vision have invoked different strategies of the ‘either/or’ in order to deal with the unsettlement of blindness. Hence, the religion of modernity as we have outlined previously is very much an invention of the ancient Greek culture of light and vision and has been radicalized in modern times. As we will see in more detail later, for Greek philosophy, blindness is deeply equated with non-knowledge, ignorance, and ambiguity since blindness disrupts the idealized and hegemonic relation between light, sight, and insight. Moreover, blind people escape the practices of face-to-face relations so important for cultures of light and vision. In consequence, blindness marks the transgression of the limits of common social orderings and cultural life (Bernidaki-Aldous, 1990; Bremer, 1976; Buxton, 1980; Esser, 1961; Musurillo, 1967). The radical ambiguity of blindness is very much the theme of ancient Greek art, literature, and mythology. Blindness appears in the complex and contradictory Gestalt of the blind figure. It names what the sighted and with it the culture light and insight cannot name properly; blindness visualizes the catachresis of visual cultures and it is the blind figure that corrupts and pollutes the literality of visual cultures. In visual cultures we have no proper idea about blindness except that it remains real in its multiplicity and possibility of what this reality is. Thus, within visual culture blindness is utterly detached and at the same time closely attached. Blindness reminds us of the very limits of visual cultures

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to be able to address and see/know its reality. Not to forget, the very possibility of physiological blindness—as a congenital condition or something that happens during the course of one’s life—is very much a most real risk that might affect us humans; there is no way to do away with blindness—neither figuratively nor literally. Facing blindness, the sighted become social beings that have to take care about its other, otherness, and heterogeneity, difference. This is my point: If we look at the blind we become enabled to trace the social. More precisely, facing blindness and the history of the blind we are able to re-trace and re-assemble the social beyond the religion of modernity that is very much the religion of sight, light, and insight. The study of blindness, then, makes the social present that transgresses the realm of vision and its mode of di/visioning reality: the either/or. Obviously, as we have already seen and as we will see later, the history of blindness that brings to the fore the relations with otherness has been also the history of othering, so much so that the blind appear as excluded, marginal, disfigured, non-human, non-social. The ways in which visual cultures have re-introduced modes of de-socializing, of othering in order to deal with the heterogeneities, differences, uncertainties, and fragilities of the socialness of human being have changed through history. So we constantly meet the blind figure and blindness throughout the dis/continuities of the history of visual cultures. It is the history of the socialness of visual cultures that is constantly put into question by the blind figure, and/or generally by the concerns of blindness. Blindness enacts questioning. Blindness enacts relations of knowledge that question the common knowledge in place. By questioning visual modes of knowledge, the sociality of the latter becomes traceable (and vice versa). Rather than being a mere disability, then, blindness brings to the fore the ability to question the taken-for-granted reality and its modes of ordering: Blindness displaces knowledge and knowledge practices. It riddles what we know and how we know. Being blind means getting in touch with the invisible, moving within a rather complex set of practices, objects, and relations that make the materiality of social relations traceable. Blindness brings back the multiple dis/abling practices of how bodies, senses, and things relate. Through the history of blindness, the history of the ‘social’ becomes visible and constantly remains to be explained by the ways different bodies, senses, and things associate. These relations then are more than visual: Blind practices relate to vision but are not exhausted in it. In this point Rethinking Disability is adamant: Blindness is not a mere lack of vision, as much as dis/ability is not a mere composite of disabilities. Blindness questions the practices of seeing, it blurs clear vision and, accordingly, puzzles visual relations and the visibility of things; it blends clear and distinct di/visions. Blindness enacts troubled visual knowledge, because it cannot be apprehended by the clearcut categories of sight and insight, which are most powerful in performing the either/or, i.e. in differentiating what is from what is not. Blindness

44

Rethinking Disability

overflows distinct di/visions, remaining an ambivalent, ambiguous, and vague object that refers to more than what one is able to see. In ancient Greece, we meet the self-blinded and former king Oedipus, who unbearably suffers and is pitied for his defaced appearance, wrecked condition, and misfortunes. At the same the blind figure becomes visible as the noble blind seer Tiresias, who sees more than any other mortal can see and has supra-human power of doing and knowing things. If among the Greeks blindness remains ambiguous and was induced by mortals and immortals, in the Christian world it was only Jesus who was able to heal the blind from their personal and social sufferings induced by blindness. By curing the blind into light, God relieves the blind figure from darkness and ignorance. What has changed with Christian thought is the focus of the temporary character of the merely negative condition of blindness (Barasch, 2001; Roth, 1997). Modernity1 begins with the blind man, his cane, and his dog, as pictured by Cartesian rationalism (cf. Descartes, 1637/1902). The Cartesian blind figure questions the importance of the senses and tries to settle the geometrization and mechanics of vision and thought (Appelbaum, 1995, 1996). Much has been written on the effects that new practices of seeing had upon the world and the modern production of knowledge. 2 Since Bacon, new observation technologies entailed the systematic extension of vision and sight; pieces of ground and polished glass were employed as lenses, extending and pluralizing the ways of micro- and telescopic seeing. 3 These, together with geometric optics and linear or projective perspective, contributed to the ‘rationalization of sight’ (Ivins, 1975) linking empirical seeing and truth. The spreading of visible and readable technologies ensured not only the optical consistency; it also created the circulation necessary of visual technologies for those with sight problems, for the elderly and the young—as Kepler had already anticipated in his Dioptrik which was concerned with the effects the invention of the telescope has for seeing and for visible things (Kepler, 1611/1904: 33). All these inventions and practices of ‘new sight’ have fundamentally restructured and recombined our modern world along the circulation of materials that render visible and readable visual inscriptions durable and connectable (Latour, 1986). The new technologies of vision, the practices and materials with which knowledge has become movable, have had tremendous effects upon our ways of seeing and have created a multiplicity of visually related objects. Nevertheless, these new possibilities, discourses, and distributions have affected not only vision, but also the dealing with and understanding of blindness. The modern discourses on vision have not only implemented the stability and normalcy of visual relations and practices; they have also normalized ‘blindness’ by institutionalizing clearly distinguished perspectives and practices that regard the puzzle of blindness primarily as a lack

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of sight. Accordingly, in our modern societies blindness is predominantly understood as a function of visual practices: Blindness is non-sight. Blindness, under the condition of modern technoscientific practices turned into a ‘privation’ of sight, to use a Heideggerian notion (cf. Heidegger, 1987a: 58f).4 Not only is blindness defi ned negatively, but also it is affi rmed only in relation to something which is missing. Blindness, then, as a privation of sight means an individual suffering from a lack or a loss of vision. The modern understanding of blindness as a dysfunction of vision is powerfully made present in the medical discourse. Blindness understood as a medical condition is equated with an individual visual impairment or disability. Moreover, the medical discourse demystifies the miraculous and ambiguous presence of the blind inasmuch as blindness is individualized and objectified by the medical gaze (Foucault, 1997b). To be sure, the relation between medicine and blindness does not date from modern times. For more than 5,000 years blindness has been a medical problem and an issue of special scrutiny. Ancient Egyptians started exploring a possible cure for blindness, and the prospect of eye surgery has been discussed ever since. However, the medical understanding of blindness has gained importance since the 17th century when curing the blind by restoring their sight through cataract surgery was thought to become reality. The prospect of curing blindness not only extended the power over understanding and treating blindness as a mere medical and individual condition, it also changed the social understanding of blindness (cf. Paulson, 1987). With the possible cure of the blind the mysteries surrounding the blind transformed the sphere of non-knowledge, ambiguity, and supra-humanity of blindness into the possibilities of a comprehensive understanding of vision and human knowledge (Berkeley, 2005 [1709]; Locke, 1991 [1706]). Hence, my argument is that the very history of blindness is very much the history of how visual cultures try to deal with blindness. Moreover, the very strategies of ancient and modern forms of the ‘either/or’ are inextricably intertwined with the history of blindness in visual cultures. This is precisely what constitutes the strong connection between ancient Greek and modern cultures, philosophies, religions, and the way they organize their di/visions. Cultures of vision and light advocate the metaphysics of di/visioning the supra-sensory from the sensory-world and explaining the latter by the former in order to deal with blindness. It is also a way to make their own blindness forgotten which refuses to be organized along such either/or strategies. However, the experiences of blindness do not allow themselves to be organized along such either/or strategies. On the contrary, it is precisely the socialness of blindness that will bring to fore that blindness questions, disrupts, transgresses, and alters the strategies of the visually cultured and their either/or di/visions. In that sense, cultures of light and vision (and most conspicuously modern cultures) are very much ‘blind’ concerning blindness itself. This very blindness

46

Rethinking Disability

of vision has to be understood—and can be made visible and problematized by the very socialness of blindness itself—in at least a fivefold sense: 1. Visual cultures appear utterly impaired when addressing blindness as a phenomenon, i.e. a set of practices that are both related and non-related to vision. This means that visual cultures (predominantly modern ones) fail to understand blindness itself which is always more than just a privation of vision. With such an inability comes a devaluation of all the other senses—conceptually and empirically. The socialness of blind practices, on the other, brings to the fore the connection of visual with non-visual practices, norms, values, bodies, senses, and things. 2. By trying to clearly delimit spaces of knowledge and human reality, visual cultures systematically exclude—wittingly or unwittingly— spaces that (a) transgress the realm of vision and light, and (b) configure spaces of knowledge that include its other. Such ‘blind’ knowledge practices are (re-)configured by the linkages between knowledge and its other (non-knowledge) and the human with its other (non-human), and not by its separation from its other that merely relate self-explaining entities. The socialness of blind practices transgresses the realm of selfsufficient orders; it questions the self-sufficiency of either/or strategies. 3. Paradoxically, the most radical exclusion of blindness happens in the way blindness is included by modern visual cultures and their related religion of modernity. This inclusion implicates that the difference between vision and blindness vanishes and blindness appears functional to modern vision and di/vision. First of all the religion of modernity sees blindness as a mere privation of sight, which—understood as ‘impairment’—is a negative and abnormal matter of fact that has to be treated and cured. Being translated into a mere physiological problem, then, blindness turns into a visual impairment. As a visual impairment, ‘blindness’ is made connectable to and can be addressed with and by visual cultures and their di/visions of societal systems, organizations, and institutions. However, the social dimension of experiencing blindness is more than the causal effects of visual impairment. It is a societal effect as much as it has physiological causes. Moreover, to affirm the socialness of blindness and related knowledge practices means to address both the abilities and disabilities of blindness and how these dis/abilities come about. To affirm the socialness of blindness is to affirm blindness that is more than a negative physiological condition, more than a societal effect, and more than a mere disability. 4. At the same time we moderns explicitly differentiate between ‘blindness’ as a physiological impairment and ‘blindness’ as a metaphor. The metaphorization of blindness—as an image, in language, as a representation—refers to something else than visual impairment and functions as a generic term for ‘ignorance’. Obviously, the social reality of experiencing blindness constantly links blindness as a visual impairment with ignorance.5

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5. The most controversial effect of cultures of vision and their own blindness towards ‘blindness’ appears, I suppose, when disability studies’ social understanding of blindness iterates the very strategies of purification as performed by visual cultures. Unwittingly, disability studies is performing along means of visual cultures, whenever it separates off the ‘social’ as something being located within society6 that differs from something in nature. This difference, then, marks the dividing line, the di/vision between blindness as ‘disability’ and blindness as ‘impairment’. In effect, the social model of disability sustains the basic distinction of modern visual cultures, the basic either/ or that performs and stabilizes the religion of modernity: the bifurcation of nature. As argued earlier, modern visual cultures foster and value practices of clear and distinct boundaries, which in turn sustain and radicalize the Greek system of the ‘either/or’. These strategies not only purify and clarify the world into self-explicating realms of culture and nature. As the reader will see later, they also do forget what the history of blindness is able to tell: the mixing, blending and thus composing and re-assembling of culture and nature, knowledge and non-knowledge, humans and non-humans in the fi rst place. This seems surprising since it is the core idea of the social model of disability to oppose these hegemonic powers that treat blindness as a mere effect of visual impairment and fight against the negative effects the metaphorization of blindness (or disability) has on the life of blind (or disabled) people. It is precisely the socialness of blindness that makes us aware that the very bifurcation of blindness into either disability or impairment is an invention of visual cultures in order to organize and deal with their own ‘blindness’. Hence, Rethinking Disability means bringing back the socialness of blindness and gives blindness its own voice that is more than the privation of sight and all its effects. As the reader will see throughout this book, the history, the experiences, and the everyday practices of blindness are mixing and blending the clearcut limits of the hegemony of idealistic thought and (self-)description that describe the religion of the modern ‘either/or’ which accompanies and organizes visual cultures. The latter can be traced back at least as far as the ancient Greeks. The latter seems highly important to understanding the modernity of blindness and the different ways blindness is made visible.

NON-MODERN BLINDNESS

Platonism Although the origins of modern visual culture as a dominant mode of modern religion can be traced back to the Greek culture of light (Levin, 1993), such a trajectory is accompanied by a radical difference between

48 Rethinking Disability non-modern and modern visual culture that can be shown by Platonic reasoning and how the ancient Greeks deal with and understand blindness. For Plato neither philosophers nor politicians should be blind since the blind are not able to grasp the One, the idea of things, but ‘wander in the region of the many and variable’ (Plato, 2000b: 484).7 Greek philosophy and thought was strongly influenced by the Parmenidean ‘either/or’ schema of Being and Non-Being, so powerfully set in place by a Platonic rationality of knowing. The latter addresses the unity of the world (cosmos) by separating inner ideas/forms (noetic world) from outer phenomena (perceptual world). In Greek thought, the unity of being appears as a unity of division, as a unity of the difference between the perceptual and intellectual realm. I call it di/vision precisely since both worlds are modes of ‘vision’ (outer and inner sight, sight and insight). It reflects the Greek preference for ‘vision’, and this legacy is inherited by modern practice. The clear and distinctive presence, identity, and delimiting shape of entities is enabled, in the light of vision, in both practice (perception) and thought (the cognitive schema of yes/no, the basic mode of the ‘either/or’). For ancient Greeks, relations of proper knowledge appear as relations of similarity. It is the form-giving world of inner ideas by which the stability of recognizing empirical phenomena is grounded. The empirical view (physiological sight) on the other hand is most effective in abstracting forms from matter. Hence ‘vision’ marks the condition of possibility to be able to describe the world as a unity of distinctions (i.e. di/visions) precisely due to the similarity between inner and outer vision. This similarity between insight and sight stabilizes the power of thinking, seeing, and knowing. Freed from the deceptive character of empirical vision, the power of ‘real’ inner vision dominates over the ‘unreal’ outer vision; it separates off Being from Non-Being, the one from the many. The Platonic discourse, so goes my argument, performs the circulation of vision and division, that I call non-modern di/vision. Thereby the stability and oneness of intelligible and visible forms is obtained by abstracting from the empirical diversity of perceptual visibility. Thus, it is precisely such an abstraction from perceptual seeing that makes up the clarity, distinctiveness, and durability of intellectual vision (i.e. proper knowledge). If this relationship between the empirical world and the abstraction from it (its disregard) goes unreflected and unnoticed, then one faces Platonism, which as the father of nihilism, Nietzsche was still fighting against at the end of 19th century. Platonism marks the beginning of nihilism which Nietzsche was trying to erase with his concept of ‘reversed Platonism’. The history of blindness, as I argue, already tells the story of reversed Platonism inasmuch as it not only turns away from the One, the idea, the form that governs and orders the empirical world but brings to the fore the transgressive power of the empirical world instead. Moreover, it addresses the need to imagine a third way of reasoning that—by setting ‘becoming’ (many) as being, by setting

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the empirical (many) as the one—it reveals the socialness of human dis/ abled condition that is more than one and less than many.

Culture of Light For our non-modern relatives, proper knowledge (episteme) distinguishes itself from mere opinion, non-knowledge (doxa) as it were, by an act of intellectual vision. This intellectual vision detaches from empirical vision and appears to be para-doxical. The etymological context of ‘abstraction’ and ‘paradox’ lend support for my reading. ‘Abstraction’ refers to the moment of generalization out of the individual and accidental. It means ‘to disregard’, that is to disregard the contingency of empirical (sensory) vision by an act of intellectual vision. Thereby intellectual vision is grasping the true, unconcealed form. In such a reading, ‘abstraction’ itself is—as an act of vision—paradoxical. Although depending on empirical (sensory) vision, abstraction silences empirical vision in order to become knowledgeable. To abstract means to sustain the specificities of empirical vision and to be different from it. But how is this possible? So far we have omitted the specificity of vision that grants its assumed nobility in the fi rst place. Moreover, for Platonic reasoning, vision appears as the only sense that is strongly connected to ‘a third’ in order to see—to visualize. This third is light (and color) and is powerfully associated—as a matter of similarity—with the truth, visibility, and the unconcealment of seeing and being seen (that marks the identity of being mortal on the one hand and allows differences to be gained between mortals on the other). The similarity between vision (eye-rays) and light (color) is what makes things visible: Seeing is lightening and lightening is seeing (Lindberg, 1976; Simon, 1992). Through such similarity we encounter the noble power of sun-like vision that makes things visible and hence unconcealed—true, as it were. The effortless, traceless, and immaterial relation with a third (light) is precisely what designates vision’s nobility compared to the other senses. This is precisely what makes empirical vision prone to be generalized as intelligible vision.8 The relation between both realms of vision is possible due to their similarity, but a clear difference appears by abstracting from that very similarity. Such an act is paradoxical, as we have seen, since it separates from doxa gained by empirical vision and refers to a ‘nonsensical’, a reflective act, which is ontologically different from the former. The perceptual world offers ‘knowledge still to come’, ready to abstract from and to be made knowledgeable. Via abstraction, ‘vision’ is rendered durable. If this mode of abstraction is left unnoticed, we again face Platonism! Properly separating off outer from inner vision, the Platonic discourse abstracts from any form of empirical vision. This is nihilism! No matter how well or poorly you see, Platonic vision is able to see the reality of things precisely because it is able to dis-regard (to abstract from) the physical performance of sight! To dis-regard the sensible/sensory sphere does not mean

50 Rethinking Disability to neglect it, but to draw upon a different and higher order. In short, the practice of abstraction as well as the strategies of the ‘either/or’ are rooted in and sustained by a culture of vision and light. For the Greeks seeing (idein) equates to knowing (eidenai). Both verbal forms stem from eidos that translates as ‘appearance’ and ‘idea’ and means a form that describes knowledge that is understood and expressed by seeing, how things appear and look like [Aussehen]. The appearance [Aus-sehen], as we have seen previously, is strongly related to public standing [An-sehen], both of which emerge, are tested and maintained or lost in see-seen relations.9 Seeing is knowing and knowing is seeing. The Greek idea is the seen look, the faced face of present beings. Moreover seeing refers to life; losing sight is losing life, that is, losing the possibility of seeing and be seen. Seeing is living in the light of the sun—seeing is illuminating (Vernant, 1993: 21). For Plato the philosophers are the onlookers of truth, ‘[t]hose whose passion is it to see the truth’ (The Republic 475e). Philosophers are not only curious seers and listeners. What distinguishes the true philosophers from those that only resemble philosophers is their curiosity to see the truth. But what did Plato understand by that? In the conversation between Socrates and Glaucon, the former explains the difference: Socrates: That since beauty and ugliness are opposite, they are two things; and consequently each of them is one. The same holds of justice and injustice, good and bad, all the essential Forms: each in itself is one; but they manifest themselves in a great variety of combinations, with actions, with material things, and with one another, and so each seems to be many. ( . . . ) Socrates: On the strength of this premise, then, I can distinguish your amateurs of the arts and men of action from the philosophers we are concerned with, who are alone worthy the name. Glaucon: What is your distinction? Socrates: Your lovers of sights and sounds delight in beautiful tones and colours and shapes and in all the works of art which these enter; but they have not the power of thought to behold and to take delight in nature of Beauty itself. ( . . . ) Now if a man believes in the existence of beautiful things, but not of Beauty itself, and cannot follow a guide who would lead him to a knowledge of it, is he not living in a dream? Consider: does not dreaming, whether one is awake or asleep, consist in mistaking a semblance for the reality it resembles? Glaucon: I should certainly call that dreaming. Socrates: Contrast with him the man who holds that there is such a thing as Beauty itself and can discern that essence as well as the things that partake of its character, without ever confusing the one with the other—is he a dreamer or living in a waking state?

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Glaucon: He is very much awake. Socrates: So may we say he knows, while the other has only a belief in appearances; and might we call their states of mind knowledge and belief? (The Republic 476a–d). In order to see the truth of things, one should not be satisfied with seeing beautiful things, but needs to see the beauty of things. In other words, one should not be distracted by the multiplicity of things, but needs to be able to see the idea concealed behind this multiplicity; the truth must be unconcealed, unveiled. The difference between the one (idea) and the multiplicity of things (many) through which the idea expresses itself is a complex relation that should not be confused—as Heidegger warns us— with the differentiation between Being [Sein] and appearance [Schein, Scheinbares] (Heidegger, 1998a: 180f). Both ideas and things are present but in different ways. In the following communication between Socrates, Adeimantus and Glaucon—that we fi nd again in Plato’s Republic—much is being said about vision and about blindness (Plato, 1955). It is worthwhile to present this extensive quote since it is not only a beautiful dialogue of Platonic reasoning, it gathers the philosophical roots of the trajectory of the religion of modernity that, although it cannot do without blindness, has been trying to silence blindness ever since: the religion of the either/or of visual cultures. The quote refers again to the sixth book of the Republic (506–510), discussing the idea of the good.10 At the beginning of the quote we fi nd Socrates and Glaucon discussing true knowledge (the idea of the good, the beautiful) on the one hand and mere opinion on the other. Socrates: Well, but has any one a right to say positively what he does not know? Adeimantus: Not, he said, with the assurance of positive certainty; he has no right to do that: but he may say what he thinks, as a matter of opinion. Socrates: And do you not know, I said, that all mere opinions are bad, and the best of them blind? You would not deny that those who have any true notion without intelligence are only like blind men who feel their way along the road? Adeimantus: Very true. Socrates: And do you wish to behold what is blind and crooked and base, when others will tell you of brightness and beauty? (...) Glaucon—Socrates Glaucon: What? Socrates: The old story, that there is a many beautiful and a many good, and so of other things which we describe and defi ne; to all of them ‘many’ is applied.

52 Rethinking Disability Glaucon: True, he said. Socrates: And there is an absolute beauty and an absolute good, and of other things to which the term ‘many’ is applied there is an absolute; for they may be brought under a single idea, which is called the essence of each. Glaucon: Very true. Socrates: The many, as we say, are seen but not known, and the ideas are known but not seen. Glaucon: Exactly. Socrates: And what is the organ with which we see the visible things? Glaucon: The sight, he said. Socrates: And with the hearing, I said, we hear, and with the other senses perceive the other objects of sense? Glaucon: True. Socrates: But have you remarked that sight is by far the most costly and complex piece of workmanship which the artificer of the senses ever contrived? Glaucon: No, I never have, he said. [No, not precisely, nicht genau] Socrates: Then reflect; has the ear or voice need of any third or additional nature in order that the one may be able to hear and the other to be heard? Glaucon: Nothing of the sort. Socrates: No, indeed, I replied; and the same is true of most, if not all, the other senses—you would not say that any of them requires such an addition? Glaucon: Certainly not. Socrates: But you see that without the addition of some other nature there is no seeing or being seen? Glaucon: How do you mean? Socrates: Sight being, as I conceive, in the eyes, and he who has eyes wanting to see; colour being also present in them, still unless there be a third nature specially adapted to the purpose, the owner of the eyes will see nothing and the colours will be invisible. Glaucon: Of what nature [third] are you speaking? Socrates: Of that which you term light, I replied. Glaucon: True, he said. Socrates: Noble, then, is the bond which links together sight and visibility, and great beyond other bonds by no small difference of nature; for light is their bond, and light is no ignoble thing? Glaucon: Nay, he said, the reverse of ignoble. Socrates: And which, I said, of the gods in heaven would you say was the lord of this element? Whose is that light which makes the eye to see perfectly and the visible to appear? Glaucon: You mean the sun, as you and all mankind say. [Accentuation by author]

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Socrates: May not the relation of sight to this deity be described as follows? Glaucon: How? Socrates: Neither sight nor the eye in which sight resides is the sun? Glaucon: No. Socrates: Yet of all the organs of sense the eye is the most like the sun? Glaucon: By far the most like. Socrates: And the power which the eye possesses is a sort of effluence which is dispensed from the sun? Glaucon: Exactly. Socrates: Then the sun is not sight, but the author of sight who is recognised by sight. Glaucon: True, he said. Socrates: And this is he whom I call the child of the good, whom the good begat in his own likeness, to be in the visible world, in relation to sight and the things of sight, what the good is in the intellectual world in relation to mind and the things of mind. Glaucon: Will you be a little more explicit? he said. Socrates: Why, you know, I said, that the eyes, when a person directs them towards objects on which the light of day is no longer shining, but the moon and stars only, see dimly, and are nearly blind; they seem to have no clearness of vision in them? Glaucon: Very true. Socrates: But when they are directed towards objects on which the sun shines, they see clearly and there is sight in them? Glaucon: Certainly. Socrates: And the soul is like the eye: when resting upon that on which truth and being shine, the soul perceives and understands and is radiant with intelligence; but when turned towards the twilight of becoming and perishing, then she has opinion only, and goes blinking about, and is fi rst of one opinion and then of another, and seems to have no intelligence? Glaucon: Just so [Ocularly; Augenscheinlich]. Socrates: Now, that which imparts truth to the known and the power of knowing to the knower is what I would have you term the idea of good, and this you will deem to be the cause of science, and of truth in so far as the latter becomes the subject of knowledge; beautiful too, as are both truth and knowledge, you will be right in esteeming this other nature as more beautiful than either; and, as in the previous instance, light and sight may be truly said to be like the sun, and yet not to be the sun, so in this other sphere, science and truth may be deemed to be like the good, but not the good; the good has a place of honour yet higher. Glaucon: What a wonder of beauty that must be, he said, which is the author of science and truth, and yet surpasses them in beauty; for you surely cannot mean to say that pleasure is the good?

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Socrates: God forbid, I replied; but may I ask you to consider the image in another point of view? Glaucon: In what point of view? Socrates: You would say, would you not, that the sun is only the author of visibility in all visible things, but of generation and nourishment and growth, though he himself is not generation? Glaucon: Certainly. Socrates: In like manner the good may be said to be not only the author of knowledge to all things known, but of their being and essence, and yet the good is not essence, but far exceeds essence in dignity and power. (...) Glaucon: ( . . . ) let us hear if there is anything more to be said about the similitude of the sun. Socrates: You have to imagine, then, that there are two ruling powers, and that one of them is set over the intellectual world, the other over the visible. I do not say heaven, lest you should fancy that I am playing upon the name (‘ourhanoz, orhatoz’). May I suppose that you have this distinction of the visible and intelligible fi xed in your mind? Glaucon: I have. Socrates: Now take a line which has been cut into two unequal parts, and divide each of them again in the same proportion, and suppose the two main divisions to answer, one to the visible and the other to the intelligible, and then compare the subdivisions in respect of their clearness and want of clearness, and you will fi nd that the fi rst section in the sphere of the visible consists of images. And by images I mean, in the fi rst place, shadows, and in the second place, reflections in water and in solid, smooth and polished bodies and the like: Do you understand? In this rich quote we are told that there is a clear and distinct difference between the one and the many. The many can be seen but not thought whereas the one can only be thought and not seen. However there is a metaphorical connection between the two as well. In the world seen it is the sun that makes eyes see and things seen. It is the sun that mediates eyes and things into seeing eyes and seen objects. Thus, the sun is ‘the author of sight and is recognized by sight’. Neither sight nor the eyes are the sun but they are most sun-like. The truth and reality of things is, according to the Greeks, the visible. The visibility of things can be seen as a process of mediation enacted by the sun. Whenever eyes look at things that lack visibility (due to the lack of sun) they almost turn blind; they appear as if they lack sight. Very similar is the relation between a visible thing thought; it founds the relation between sight and insight. The visibility of things can only be thought as a process of mediation of the soul. When the soul is

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directed to the truth and reality of things, only then can one speak of thinking and knowing. But the truth [visibility] and reality [visibility] of intelligible things can be achieved when the soul is directed towards the idea of the things. Whenever it is directed to the ‘many’, the empirical, the things seen, it loses its ‘sight’ and turns into mere opinions which lack reason [Vernunft]. Within the realm of ‘becoming and perishing’, where opinion goes ‘blinking about’, reason turns blind. One sees beautiful things differently than one sees Beauty itself. A beautiful thing may appear in some instance ugly, big or small, light or heavy as well. The multiplicity of things is ambivalent, volatile, and moves between what is and what it is not; the many appears—one may say with Plato—as the ‘in-between wanderer caught by the power between’ what is and what isn’t (The Republic 479e). For Plato the many cannot be thought of neither as proper being nor as proper non-being; it is neither real nor not real. Being in-between, the many can be grasped by the senses of hearing and seeing, but they are too fuzzy to be relevant for true knowledge. The opposite is the case with the ideas of things. Such ones cannot be grasped with the senses but with intuition and contemplation; this is why they are knowable and deserve to be called forms of knowledge. This difference between the many and the one correspond with the difference between sensory and supra-sensory seeing. As Plato says, ‘[T]he manys are visible but not intelligible; the shapes [ideas, forms] intelligible but not visible’ (ibid. 507c). Thus the idea and the empirical relate as the one and the many. The idea (one) shows itself in a multiplicity of different modes of becoming present; thus, the many are a kind of expression of the idea. The idea is real, whereas the many only approximate reality. Consequently, there are different kinds or different degrees of how the one becomes present as many. These differences constitute a hierarchy whereby some are closer to reality than others. Below real ideas, which are made by God, we fi nd the things made by craftsmen, for instance. A craftsman makes things after an idea (things crafted imitate an idea). Artists, in turn, make artistic things (e.g. paintings, poetry) from things (that is, they are things which imitate things which imitate ideas). Thus, things show themselves by mimesis: They imitate the idea; they are made present after the idea, but are not the eidos itself. Such mimetic practices darken or dim the shining thingness of things [idea]; they are deterioration in comparison with the completeness of the idea. This is illustrated with the comparison between a table and the picture of a table. The crafted table can be looked at from different perspectives, and the different looks or perspectives do not change the presence of the table; it is still defi ned by its use: A table is that table and only that table when it is used. The painting of a table cannot be used as a table, and it captures only a perspective of the thing. Thus, the painting of a table is less real than a crafted table, which in turn is less real than the idea of a

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table. The differentiation between the one and the many is thought of as an ontological opposition and implies a hierarchy: The idea has the upper hand.11 Since ideas are real, to see the ideas is more valuable than to see the multiplicity of things. Socrates (The Republic 596a) ironically says, ‘[D]im eyes often see things before sharp ones’. Dim or dull eyes see the multiplicity of things quite fast; whereas the sharp eyes see few but more important things (ideas) even if they need more time for it. Whereas philosophers appropriate the universal ones (the thingness of things), all others may stumble in the multiplicity of ever-changing things. Proper philosophers who love seeing the truth and the true being of things must detach from the sensory world of multiplicities: Only so can they be proper philosophers, lovers of wisdom. Those who love the flux of things and their ambivalences, on the contrary, have sense only for opinions but not for knowledge; for the visible but not for the intelligible. They are mere philodoxical (ibid. 480a), lovers of non-knowledge. The latter are those who endlessly wander around and follow the things how and where they go, whereas the former stay with the oneness, the thingness of things. With a philodoxical attitude you may look like a proper philosopher who sees the truth, but you are actually only partially sighted, because you can see only the visible but not the intelligible. For Plato, the division between the visible and the intelligible denotes a normative difference, since he advocates the prevalence of ‘seeing as thinking’ over ‘seeing as sensing’, or theory over practice. This hierarchical differentiation entails the separation of the many from the one, the sensible from the supra-sensible. Thus, the proper philosophical attitude presupposes the purification of things (state, human dispositions, human souls, etc.); to reach the truth, philosophers have to dismiss the empirical, empty themselves from superficial sensory information in order to make place for the supra-sensory wisdom, just like one cleans the blackboard fi rst in order to write on it clearly and understandably (ibid. 501a). After the purification rites philosophers sketch an outline of the regime and then fi ll it in, constantly looking back and forth to that which by nature is the just, the beautiful, the temperate, ( . . . ), and on to that which they’re trying to paint into the men, mixing and blending from all pursuits to get the true complexion of man, basing their judgement on what Homer too called divine and godcomplexioned whenever it appeared in a human (ibid. 501b). For Plato only philosophers are competent cleaners and mixers, only philosophers are watchers over the cleaned and the mixed; in particular they watch over the institutional settings (laws, etc.) and pursuits of the city. Plato’s religion, I may say, pre-supposes a clear and distinct division between the one and the many. Only those with a clear view of the form, the idea, the intelligibility of things are able to govern the many, i.e. the multiplicity of sensory differences and mixtures. The truth is the suprasensorial, and it governs and measures the sensorial. Platonism founds the difference between the top and the bottom, whereby the bottom is governed

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by the top. The sighted govern the blind; form reigns matter, precisely since the sighted cannot properly understand the blind. Platonism is a long journey to silence the practices of the blind by governing them along visual and rational means of di/vision. As we can see, Plato’s epistemological and ontological politics encapsulates a way of institutional thinking that sees better, given leaders’ capacity to outline an arrangement of essential forms and their progressive deterioration into appearances. For Plato these institutions rule and order the multiplicity of things—the many is not organized by the many. So, for instance, as Plato says, doctors, as members of the medical institution, should not go to the ill people; instead, the ill have to go to the doors of the doctors. Those that have to be led must go to those who know about leading and steering. We can see that Plato’s difference implies a normative distinction as well. Plato opts for those who see better than the others since they know—and they know because they have appropriated theoretical knowledge (ibid., 488ae–489a). Plato’s knowers know since they have the ability to cut off from the mess of the masses. Plato’s knowers stand out from the mess of masses, as do the institutions they create and maintain. These institutions, which transcend the sensory realm, are detached from the swarm of individuals and their affairs. Only then is true knowledge achieved. The existence of such leading institutions is dependent on the differentiation between leaders and masses in the fi rst place—without a mass to control, there would be no leaders. This differentiation supposes a clear cut, a distancing: a distanced perspective that draws a clear and distinct shape and outline that orders, controls, and orientates the affairs of the mass. This, however, presupposes that the one and many are two: The one and the many appear as cut off clearly and distinctly from each other. This is where we enter Platonism in its socially adapted version! The purification or dismissal of the multiplicity of the mass into oneness is what for Plato sustains the continuity and durability of social arrangements. Philosophers, then, need to have a good eye in order to distinguish the institutional and constitutional ordering from the mess of the mass. They need a particular type of look; one that is not distracted by the sensorial but can contemplate. Between ‘seeing as contemplating’ and ‘seeing as sensing/practicing’ there is a hierarchical difference. Seeing like star gazing, seeing at a distance, is theoretical seeing. Theoretical seeing is concerned with the shape, the outline, the ideas of things. By doing so it transforms ‘sensory seeing’ of visible things into a ‘thought seeing’ of the invisible. Even though Plato makes this hierarchical distinction between sensing and thinking, it is the parlance of sight that dominates both contemplation and praxis. While Plato distrusts the senses, it is nevertheless the sense of sight that achieves a prominent status in the Platonic discourse and his legacy. Accordingly, blindness appears as the extreme possibility that allows neither ‘seeing as thinking’ nor ‘seeing and sensing’. ‘Well’, says Socrates

58

Rethinking Disability there can be no question whether a guardian who is to keep watch over anything needs to be keen-sighted or blind. And is not blindness precisely the condition of men who are entirely cut off from knowledge of any reality, and have in their soul no clear pattern of perfect truth, which they might study in every detail and constantly refer to, as a painter looks at his model, before they proceed to embody notions of justice, honour, and goodness in earthly institutions or, in their character of Guardians, to preserve such institutions as already exist? Certainly such a condition is very like blindness. (ibid. 484cd)

Socrates: Neither, I said, can there be any question that the guardian who is to keep anything should have eyes rather than no eyes? Glaucon: There can be no question of that. Socrates: And are not those who are verily and indeed wanting in the knowledge of the true being of each thing, and who have in their souls no clear pattern [ideal image; Idealbild], and are unable as with a painter’s eye to look at the absolute truth and to that original to repair, and having perfect vision of the other world to order the laws about beauty, goodness, justice in this, if not already ordered, and to guard and preserve the order of them— are not such persons, I ask, simply blind? For Plato the notion of blindness is used both as a metaphor for ignorance as well as a reference to physiological blindness. Both are related and it is the latter that that leads to former. Thus, the blind are not able to gain and watch over true, good, and just knowledge and concepts, laws, and institutions since they lack reality. They lack reality because they are not able to see the ideas of things due to their physiological blindness. This seems odd but foreshadows the different ways blindness has been understood and dealt with in visual cultures. It also makes evident why blindness itself has been forgotten by visual cultures: not only because it imposes the risk of losing sight. Blindness escapes the metaphorical construction that is idiosyncratic for visual cultures. Blindness itself resists metaphorization since it constantly disrupts, questions, and endangers the very idea of blindness itself. Also blindness is less real than sight. I suspect that the lack of epistemic reality goes back to a very simple thought of Plato. He may have seen just a few blind people and the majority of people around him were sighted. Also Plato needed empirical evidence to draw conceptual or systematic conclusions! However being sighted he—contrary to the blind—may have an idea that the empirical evidence refers to a deeper and obviously highly normative understanding of the empirical distribution of blindness itself: It is less normal since it is less real. It is precisely this simplicity, this realism of Plato that has to be blackboxed, has to be made forgotten. At the same time the very reality of blindness disappears, it is forgotten as well. This is Platonism! Platonic

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dialectics! It erases bodies, senses, and things and how they make up multiple realities. Rather, it idealizes the complexities of the world as a mere matter of sight and insight, vision and division. There is a triple move to be remembered if we speak of Platonism: (a) The empirical world is important to draw conceptual conclusion; (b) the empirical world is highly selectively and asymmetrically perceived in order to draw any conceptual conclusion; and (c) when drawing conceptual conclusions the empirical is forgotten. The conceptual substitutes the empirical and explains it. The conceptual, the idea, the form differs in a normative way from the empirical, the material, the content; the former is more real than the latter. Platonism, I will argue, makes us forget about the socialness of human being as it becomes apparent with blindness itself! It makes us forget about the understanding of the social that constantly has to be explained by the relations of different bodies, senses, and things. Instead, Platonism introduces the social based on a given and normalized fact of visual, rational (and healthy) systems of ideas, abstract universals. The social in the Platonic world is idealized as something valued in itself and in effect for itself as well (in its consequences). One can read in Plato’s Republic (357): Glaucon: How would you arrange goods—are there not some which we welcome for their own sakes, and independently of their consequences, as, for example, harmless pleasures and enjoyments, which delight us at the time, although nothing follows from them? Socrates: I agree in thinking that there is such a class, I replied. Glaucon: Is there not also a second class of goods, such as knowledge, sight, health, which are desirable not only in themselves, but also for their results? Socrates: Certainly, I said. Glaucon: And would you not recognize a third class, such as gymnastic, and the care of the sick, and the physician’s art; also the various ways of money-making—these do us good but we regard them as disagreeable; and no one would choose them for their own sakes, but only for the sake of some reward or result which flows from them? What makes—for the Platonic discourse and for visual cultures—knowledge [rational knowledge; Verstand], sight and health belong to a specific class of goods is, that they are not only good in themselves and good for their consequences, that they are also good metaphors since they translate the ‘normative package’ of Platonism into well travelling semantics and systems of thought. Accordingly, non-rational knowledge, non-sight and non-healthiness must not only be bads, they must be bad metaphors as well. This brings me directly to the importance of blindness. For Platonic discourse, blindness and blind practices not only must refer to a class of ‘bads’ since they lack sight. Blindness also ruins the normative practice of

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metaphorization that translates the ‘selective real’ into an ideal and explains the former by the latter. Blindness is the risk and danger of Platonism if it escapes (and it does) the Platonic realm of heliotropism.12 Being blind, Platonism would travel very badly. Being blind, Platonism would ‘wander in the region of the many and variable’. More precisely, it would come to a halt. It would stop travelling, precisely since it is confronted with something it cannot think properly: the many, blindness itself. In Platonism the sighted world has no idea about blindness! This marks the risk and danger of blindness. Blindness cannot be thought of by ancient Greek philosophy precisely since ‘thinking’ cannot be thought without images which are gained from the visual world (Plato, 2000: 509). Unlike geometers, mathematicians, and many others, the blind lack the ability to metaphorize and thus produce reality. They lack heliotropic abilities—the ability to do ‘as if’: Socrates: ( . . . ) There are two subdivisions, in the lower or which the soul uses the figures given by the former division as images; the enquiry can only be hypothetical, and instead of going upwards to a principle descends to the other end; in the higher of the two, the soul passes out of hypotheses, and goes up to a principle which is above hypotheses, making no use of images as in the former case, but proceeding only in and through the ideas themselves. Glaucon: I do not quite understand your meaning. Socrates: Then I will try again; you will understand me better when I have made some preliminary remarks. You are aware that students of geometry, arithmetic, and the kindred sciences assume the odd and the even and the figures and three kinds of angles and the like in their several branches of science; these are their hypotheses, which they and everybody are supposed to know, and therefore they do not deign to give any account of them either to themselves or others; but they begin with them, and go on until they arrive at last, and in a consistent manner, at their conclusion? Socrates: And do you not know also that although they make use of the visible forms and reason about them, they are thinking not of these, but of the ideals which they resemble; not of the figures which they draw, but of the absolute square and the absolute diameter, and so on—the forms which they draw or make, and which have shadows and reflections in water of their own, are converted by them into images, but they are really seeking to behold the things themselves, which can only be seen with the eye of the mind? Glaucon: That is true. Socrates: And of this kind I spoke as the intelligible, although in the search after it the soul is compelled to use hypotheses; not ascending to a fi rst principle, because she is unable to rise above the region of hypothesis, but employing the objects of which the shadows

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below are resemblances in their turn as images, they having in relation to the shadows and reflections of them a greater distinctness, and therefore a higher value. Since the blind have no proper access to ‘visible forms and reason about them’ they are outside the production of the real, the ideal, the One, the State, philosophy, politics, law, science, logic, ethics, art, etc. They are excluded from the realities of society. Platonism includes blindness, but only to exclude it from the true regimes of knowledge, only to draw a clear distinction between the valorized (visible, intelligible, and rational) One and its many (blind and ignorant) others. In turn, blindness and the knowledge practices of the blind are silenced, condemned to play a metaphorical role that performs the other side of knowledge: ignorance. Obviously, the metaphorical role of blindness is the biggest ‘victory’ over blindness itself. Not only does it refer to a mere visual construction of blindness, it also translates blindness into a lack of rationality and knowledge. Thus, Platonism denies that physiological blindness can have a proper reality. This is, though, a major problem for Platonism: The truth and reality of entities is given by their intelligibility that is enacted by the sun that grants the visibility of things and the possibility to see these visibilities in the fi rst place. The sun does not mediate blindness and blind practices. Accordingly the blind miss all sun-like qualities. Blindness, although visible, is indifferent to the mediation of the sun and sun-like qualities. This, however, refers not so much to the metaphorization of blindness as ignorance, as Platonism suggests, but to a different set of mediations to which light and vision have no access. Moreover, it marks the very inability of Platonism itself to properly think ‘the empirical’ and thus to grant the many or becoming its being—if one wishes to remain within the Platonic parlance. It darkens and disregards, according to my argument, the very processes of mixing and blending, the multiple associations that mediate seeing and knowing rather differently than the sun and the eyes do for the sighted. Visual cultures, on the other hand, have been interested ever since in putting forward their own abilities; i.e. to draw upon clear vision and clear-cut di/visions, they fostered the strategies of delimiting self-referential spaces of knowledge, of human(ity), and of society. Consequently, these practices nurtured strategies of purification that see the world in ‘either/or’ categories highlighting the limits as modes of separation that fix boundaries and their constitutional powers. These strategies of delimiting and purification are very much at the heart of visual cultures, their abilities, philosophies, and politics. Thereby, visual cultures tend to black-box or even try to overcome the very processes that connect heterogeneous entities. If one wishes to metaphorize blindness at all, then, blindness is the metaphor for transgression, association, and connectivity. As we can see in Plato’s dialogue, the most sophisticated observation and reflection concerning human beings dwelling in visual cultures cannot do without the blind

62 Rethinking Disability figure. Socrates needs the blind other, Glaucon. It seems to be not by chance that in Plato’s dialogues Parmenides, Symposium, and Republic Glaucon appears as Socrates’ conversant. ‘Glaucon’ is derived from the adjective glaukommatos (γλαυκόμματος) which refers to blindness and the ambiguities of the blind figure, who sees without having sight, who has Godlike virtues and at the same time appears as rather dim-witted. The dialogues of Socrates need Glaucon as much as visual cultures need blindness and the blind figure to manifest and strengthen their own (visual-led) abilities and to make blindness absent. Socrates needs Glaucon, the one who confesses his ignorance. Glaucon, the interested conversant functions as the one asking the improper questions which Socrates turns into proper answers. He functions as the mediator between the un-known and the known. Glaucon ‘lends a hand’ to draw a clear-cut division between justice and injustice. It is obvious that by doing so, Glaucon, the proper mediator between the unknown and the known, between blindness, ignorance, sight, and insight, has already been swallowed by the Platonic world of ideas that advocates the logics of vision and di/vision and proposes to be able to clearly divide between injustice and justice. Glaucon, on the other hand, the blind figure, has no vision and therefore no proper ideas of that di/vision. Rather, being blind it is his social role to mediate between knowledge and non-knowledge, justice and injustice, and thus keep open what justice and injustice is and means. If Glaucon got a lead in the Platonic discourse, the latter two opposing ideas (knowledge/ non-knowledge, justice/injustice) would not be universal ideas but would have to be questioned by the empirical itself. These universals have to be explained and do not explain. This would be the very socialness performed by Glaucon in the Platonic discourse. However, as we can see in the discourse of The Republic, peu à peu, Glaucon appears as a mere receptive, passive, and blank figure who adopts the ‘religion’ of Socrates reasoning that clearly and distinctively envisions and divisions between the sensible and intelligible, the one and the many, knowledge and ignorance, reality and its less real imitations. This seems the only way the blind may survive in visual cultures; they have to be educated to follow the sighted and their institutions, practices, strategies, and ideals. The ideal of vision is reigning the empirical world of blindness, and visual knowledge as a matter of division is black-boxing blind knowledge as a matter of mediation. Obviously, as we have seen previously, sight and visibility is mediated as well: The sun mediates it. However, this mediation mediates similarities whereas blindness is mediated by and mediates heterogeneities. In visual cultures the blind other is mediated by means that grant vision and visibility and thus is able to clearly divide between vision and blindness. This is the promise of security given by Platonism to allow for proper self-assurance, self-knowledge, self-identity, and self-consciousness. Socrates discusses with Glaucon, but only under

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Socrates’ conditions which have already been settled. Socrates’ rhetoric of blindness is what it is, mere rhetoric. And as we know from the point of view of Platonic discourse, this is not seen or thought as a matter of injustice or unfair politics. On the contrary, Socrates and with it Platonism speaks in the name of the idea of the good, of justice, of beauty, and in the name of true human knowledge. Glaucon, then, like blindness doesn’t fit the scheme and obviously has to disappear: as a proper conversant, as well as epistemologically and ontologically. This is the moment where the medical systems of care become powerful. It is the third class of the good, according to Plato: It is, as we quoted earlier, ‘the care of the sick, and the physician’s art; also the various ways of moneymaking—these do us good but we regard them as disagree-able; and no one would choose them for their own sakes, but only for the sake of some reward or result which flows from them . . . ’.

Face-to-Face For the ancient Greeks13 the ability of seeing and being seen, hearing and being heard14 is not only of philosophical interest but constitutes the grounds of the societal recognition of face-to-face communication. It dominates the rituals of socio-cultural practices, of public life that performs in the light of homogeneity and equality (seeing/being seen) the politics of identity and differences. As the French historian Jean-Pierre Vernant notes: In a face-to-face society, a culture of shame and honor where competition for glory leaves little room for the sense of duty and does not know that of sin, everyone’s existence is continually placed under the regard of someone else. It is in the eyes of the one who faces you; in the mirror it presents you that the image of the self is constructed. There is no consciousness of one’s identity without this other who, in facing you, reflects you and yet is opposed to you. Self and other, identity and alterity go together, are reciprocally constructed. (Vernant, 1991: 20) The public sphere, as the space of meeting face-to-face, grants the visibility and similitude of Greek people as being human. One is recognized as an equal through sight—sight creates a field of homogeneity and egalitarianism. On the grounds of looking and being looked at, the looks, standing, prestige, etc., are made present. Through face-to-face relations the very political activity of seeing and telling is accomplished. Gathering allows for political power (Arendt, 1998). Public face-to-face practices reveal the truth of collective being, that is, the unconcealment of being, that stands in opposition to the private sphere, the space of concealment. In other words, match, i.e. face-to-face, eye-to-eye, measures the public sphere. The agora of the Greek polis offers a space where

64 Rethinking Disability public performance is evaluated under competition: conversations, physical appearance, contests, discussions, etc.—all is visible and accountable to the eye of the other.15 This matching of the eyes, of seeing and telling that requires the openness to the look of the other, allows comparisons and rankings, a scaling.16 The capacity of the similitude of seeing and visibility makes present the practices of scaling prestige, honor, physical appearance, and public standing. Prestige is revealed as a public truth, a public unconcealment. It is the equation of capacity and prestige that maintains the identity of Greek culture. And it is the face that plays the most important role. Dying is losing face. The dead are faceless—as are the blind: disfigured. The faceto-face relation of those who can stand gives man his identity as a human being, as the Greek ancient philosopher Aristotle states: ‘In man the part included between the head and the neck is called prosōpon, a name owed, as it seems, to its function. For because man is the only animal who stands upright, he is also the only one who looks you in the face and who speaks to you face to face’ (Aristotle, 1995: 3.2.662b19). Blindness, on the other hand, blends and pollutes the purity of light [phos], disrupts the public [phos], and disfigures the life [phos] of Greek culture. It pollutes the pure daylight; it disrupts the homogeneity of faceto-face relations; it is also a public shame and public deprivation: Blindness belongs to the space of privacy and to the realm of darkness. Since life, light, and the public are interchangeable notions that highlight the values and practices of Greek culture, it is not difficult to conceive what unclassifiable disturbance blindness was! As we could see, in the Platonic discourse, blindness is instrumentalized in order to create, maintain, and institutionalize the hierarchies of the great di/vision between being and becoming. It functions as a useful metaphor for the bad, for becoming, for ignorance. The blind are neither epistemic nor ontological beings. Being entirely cut off from knowledge of any reality is what refers to a condition that is very like blindness. But—according to the Platonic discourse—we do not even know this for sure. The blind remain unmediated by the gift of light so powerful and noble for the sighted and the visibility of things. Dispossessed from the ability to see visible things, deprived of sight and knowledge of what things are like, the blind are lacking any idea of reality. They have no stable point of reference that allows (re-)producing, fi xing, and maintaining true forms of knowledge. The blind figure is totally deprived of ideas. Does he know that he is blind? We assume that for Plato the blind person does not have any awareness of an idea of his blindness since his wandering around and stumbling against things bars him from having a stable idea. Driven by the multiplicity of ambivalences of this and that, which may change as he moves, the blind figure seems to be unable to gain any secure and stable knowledge, neither through sensing nor through contemplation. The blind person may have an opinion of his blindness but he does not know his blindness. And

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we know from Socrates that all opinions without knowledge are not only ugly and hideous, but also blind. For the blind zigzag wandering happens to be the right way to walk along the road. The blind man stumbles between conjectures and without intelligence—but he cannot do it better, this is as good as it gets (Plato, 2000b: 506c). Guessing without knowing is the way the blind fi nd their way. The blind man is not only a bad navigator; he is also a bad imitator. Even copying or imitating things seems too difficult for him. The blind man is unable to look at a model and fi x it as a point of reference. Since he does not see, he cannot conceive any model or memory of the thing; he has no model after which to paint the thing. His sensing performance is too restless, unsettled, and too much oriented towards the insecurity of the next step as to frame and memorize a model. So much so that Plato will claim that in order to deal with the next step and new information, the blind person is forced to forget! However, Plato and the rest of the sighted and acute-minded people can observe a blind person and recognize what a blind person is—they (visual cultures) may gain proper knowledge on blindness. If they can have an idea of blindness it is only because they are not blind! Since the blind cannot see—and the unconcealment of ideas is so much sight-dependent—the blind cannot have ideas, not even an idea about blindness! The decision about what blindness is is in the hands (or should I say in the minds) of the sighted. The blind figure is separated from knowledge—he can be watched, but he cannot watch. As I have said, the blind person can have an opinion on his blindness. But since he is caught in the sensory world, he can never access the real world of knowledge. His body is entangled within the multiplicity of materialities, textures, and smells, tastes, and sounds. He is dependent on the low-grade specificities of practices that cannot be transformed into high-grade forms of sensing and knowing about blindness. The blind figure is merely enacted by the multiplicity of dark things, dull eyes, and dim sight. The blind cannot write their own history, because they are utterly unable to grasp and fi x properly what they are doing in a general and durable sense. They might be doing this and/or that—the blind are caught in a circle of hesitation, living in a conjectural zigzag. Ontologically, then, blindness ‘is’ vague, undisciplined, we may say. Blindness is placed in-between the indecision of what is and what is not, it is the blind man—a third—that defers his own history on being endlessly caught up with a fuzzy and ever-changing world of non-seeing. By separating him from knowledge, the latter is effectively placed on the other side of (in-)sight. The blind person remains in the world of sensory sensations and opinions. Still, Platonism needs the blind in order to draw a dividing line, a di/vision between the self and the other. It is precisely through the enactment of blindness that the noble difference of (in-)sight is delimited. It allows one to step back from the multiplicity and attachment of things. The division between the sensory and the supra-sensory, that latter enables

66 Rethinking Disability a detachment by sharpening and clearing the view on what is and what should be seen as well. We should not forget: Platonism is also politics! Fulfilling the presence of the blind that are absent from epistemological discourse and ontology, the blind stabilize the Platonic discourse on the di/ vision between being and becoming.

The Quasi-Being of Blindness For Platonic reasoning, the inherent ambiguity of blindness is crisscrossing the clear vision and di/vision that make the world present. Blindness, one may say, is indifferent to Platonic thought since it withdraws from the di/ visional mode of making things visible and present, i.e. naming the truth of things. Blindness resembles a quasi-appearance, a quasi-object, as Michel Serres (1991b) would call it. On the one hand it lacks all the sun-like similarities of vision that inform the ancient Greek culture of light. On the other hand, blindness is not only alive in Greek literature and myth but blind people are empirically visible in the conduct of everyday life. This is a real dilemma for Greek thought, which draws so heavily on the similarity of the visible and the envisioned (sight/insight) that we have encountered previously. If people and practices that refer to blindness are seen and named as ‘blind’ people and ‘blind’ practices, blindness should be able to be made knowable as well. This means that one should have an idea of what blindness is relative to the many different practices that configure blindness. However, the effortless, traceless, and immaterial relation that makes sight so closely related to insight is broken if we look at blindness precisely since blind people cannot see and thus cannot look back: They lack the mediation of light and insight nor can they reciprocate the sun-like qualities in everyday practices and thus are unable to be good imitators17 of the powers of the sun. Thus, fi rst of all it seems that only the sighted may obtain knowledge about blindness. At the same time however the sighted see that blind people ‘see’ without seeing; they use sticks to see, see with help of others—human and non-human alike. The unconcealment of things that for the Greeks names the truth of things is concealed in the very moment it shows itself to the blind. Consequently, the blind have no sense for the truth and for human knowledge. They know, but this knowledge transgresses the human forms of it. Blindness addresses something totally different from the knowledge practices gained by vision and light, and lacks any potential to become knowledgeable precisely because it bears no resemblance to these knowledge practices. In the way the sighted see blind people and their practices, the way the ‘proper’ seers, thinkers, and knowers see blindness, the truth of blindness is thought to become apparent. At the same time we know that the blind do not ‘see’ and thus cannot have the very relation between sight and insight. Thus, for the blind, according to the sighted, there is neither truth nor

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knowledge, but merely the endless manifold of things. For the sighted, blind people are lost in the empirical; they fail to make things visible, knowable: The blind have no idea about what they do! This is why they are simultaneously pitied and praised for their supra-human agency. The blind don’t fit but instead transgress the world of the sighted and with it crisscross the world of humans and humanity. Blindness, therefore, escapes the ontological di/vision between proper knowledge (intelligible) and proper non-knowledge (opinion) that is—as we have shown previously—ontologically different precisely because both (inner/outer) ‘visions’ are similar to each other. Blindness smuggles into the culture of light non-visual, non-enlightened difference; it blurs the Greek either/or between being and becoming, and thus disrupts and corrupts understanding as the process that links light with insight and in effect favors vision as the sense that makes us become aware of our human being (our mortality). Blindness ‘pollutes’ the clear di/visional logic of Greek thought (Bernidaki-Aldous, 1990). Looking at blindness makes apparent that the very abstraction from the sun-like light that allows sight and insight is not only a perfect fallacy of misplaced concreteness, it appears as impossible. With this in mind, it is the embodied practices and the empirical many that are not only more than just sight practices but disrupt, question, as well as alter the idealization of the human and its world given by the linkage between light, sight, and insight. Blindness also questions mere analogical thinking inasmuch as it introduces visibilities, differences, and truths that corrupt the basic analogy that configure mortality, between light, sight, and insight. The blind are Nietzsche’s Übermenschen long before he thought of them as overcoming human nihilism at the end of 19th century. For Platonic reasoning as well as for ancient Greek everyday life, blindness remains a quasibeing that mixes and blends (as the etymological roots already suggest) visual culture. Instead of di/visioning the world into different ontological spheres of the ‘empirical many’ and ‘the intellectual one’ to become knowledgeable, blindness is neither only one, nor only many; but one and many. The meaning of ‘and’ as being both one and many signifies the ambiguous relation between blindness and vision, which isn’t based on similarity as is light, sight, and insight which makes the distinction between the one and the many possible in the fi rst place. If we look at blindness we are always in the midst of heterogeneous things that are more than just a human affair. Face-to-face-interactions are so important in Greek public culture since they constitute and stabilize human relations and constitute both the similarity and the differences of being human. Blindness escapes face-to-face relations: Blind people see with wooden sticks; they look into the future, have seen Gods, etc. These practices all escape the similarities and differences of human relations based on see/seen relations; they question a mere humanist understanding of knowledge that is based on the analogy of light and insight. Rather, the

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relation between sight and blindness relates difference, heterogeneity, and otherness with difference, heterogeneity, and otherness. It is a radical difference because it differs from the nobility of the differences given by the truth of light and vision. For Platonism, the difference between light and vision is forgotten in the process of idealization light as the effortless transport that translates light into sight and sight into insight. Blindness, on the other hand, visualizes not only that the idealization of the intermediated relation between light, sight, and insight is just one of many processes of mediating heterogeneous entities. It also shows that the imagined effortless transport of light that translates into sight and insight is a highly specific mode of strenuous translation that changes and transforms the meaning of things. Thus, with blindness, the nobility of light becomes visible not so much as an innocent, neutral, and effortless intermediary between seeing and knowing, between the humans and the non-humans but as a hegemonic and highly normative mediator that relates and configures the elements involved in very specific ways. With blindness we all become aware that the mediation of light is just one of many forms of mediating the world. Blindness multiplies the realities of the world by multiplying the mediators of human/non-human relations that link bodies, senses, and things in ways quite different from the ways the sighted do. Differently put, the ambiguity of blindness becomes visible as being more than one and less than many: It is more than the sighted can see and think and it less than many since it cannot be thought without the relation to light, vision and sight. Moreover, it makes present the quasi-being of blindness as a series of connectors of differences, multiple material ‘ands’ highly different from the common cultural representations of the either/or, so powerfully set in place by the culture of di/vision that separates off the material from the immaterial and explains the former by the latter. Blindness blurs the hegemony of such metaphysics of di/vision that is based on similarities and analogies. Consequently, it makes another one visible instead: the metaphysics of connectivity that relates the non-related: Blindness relates and produces differences. It shatters the very understanding of truth as unconcealment given by its mere visibility. Rather, it conceals the universal, idealistic, and abstract production of such a truth. Blindness becomes true by politicizing the cosmos of truth gained merely by light, sight, and insight. As the reader will see later, it is precisely art and aesthetics that was able to address the reality of blindness. Following Nietzsche, it is blindness that made us aware that it is art that makes us bear the truth precisely since truth is more than one and less than many (Nietzsche, 1954). Hence, for the Greeks, blindness cannot be thought of without vision and light. But at the same time it refers to more than the di/visional logic of Greek culture of light, sight, and insight is able to ‘see’ (Schillmeier, 2005). Blindness points at practices that are more than seeing and more than thinking; it brings to the fore the embodied, affectual, and non-rational

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practices of knowing that also configure human beings. In that sense, it unravels non-knowledge, non-specific knowledge: Blindness becomes visible through a set of heterogeneous practices, which relate contradictory and often vague bodily or mental states; it connects the human and the non-human, it assembles life and death, which question and transgress the limits of Greek knowledge practices that configure human knowing. Blind practices ruin clear and distinct a priori boundaries that configure ‘the human’ since blind people are similar and different, connected and disconnected to visual cultures. To affi rm blindness in Greek culture is to acknowledge the individual and social sufferings, disabilities, and defacements it produces, but it also means to take into account the agency of blindness as well. Blindness—as the etymology of blindness already suggests—is mixing and blending the clearly visible and knowable. As Nietzsche would say, it adds to the ‘Apollonian flush’, which celebrates the truth as a festival of the light and sight, and that performs the sacredness of the ‘idea’, the ‘Dionysian flush’ that does without the realm of light and sight. This is precisely what makes blindness for the ancient Greeks so important, so contradictorily meaningful, so multiple, so dangerous and utterly complicated: While relating to the dominant culture of vision and light (becoming visible), it questions the one-ness of the idea and the many-ness of the empirical. To summarize: The unlikely aesthetics of blind truth, the menacing presence of blindness was detached, dis/connected, absent, and hidden from the truth established by di/vision, precisely by being a mode of relating heterogeneous entities and differences. Both the presence and absence of blindness from the power of cognitive, social, and human knowledge of visual cultures unfold the ambiguous recognition of blindness in non-modern cultures. Blindness mirrors the very limits of common ancient Greek socio-cultural practices and thought. It is indeed a reflection, but more like a blind mirror that blurs the frame and identity of self-recognition; it shatters the homogeneity and similarity given and performed by face-to-face relations. Accordingly, blindness was the primary figure of non-knowledge, precisely because it had more knowledge and less knowledge than di/visional cultures (like the Greeks) can address as proper knowledge or proper non-knowledge. To understand that relation toward what blindness hints at, the Greeks needed art.

The Myth of the Blind Figure Oedipus In a culture so much based on light and sight, the figure of the blind person is necessarily problematic. The politics of public recognition through the mutual gaze is in danger of failing, because the blind cannot reciprocate:

70 Rethinking Disability They do not look back to reveal the clairvoyance of social relations. The blind do not have faces; they come into view defaced, disfigured. The blind figure is conspicuous for his inability to take part in face-to-face orderings. They awake pity and compassion for their unfortunate and dreadful appearance. ‘Hiding’ from face-to-face relations, from the publicity of contestation, blindness conceals its unconcealment, it hides its appearance (though visible for the sighted!), and it veils the truth! What is apparent for Greek culture is that blindness seems to have its own hidden reality—this is probably why it is meant to signify everything. Indeed, blindness is given (m)any meaning(s): ‘[T]he blind are at once feared, pitied and admired, endowed with special gifts (e.g. prophecy and poetry), with which they can influence society’ (Bernidaki-Aldous, 1990: 116). Whereas blindness is often considered miserable, it is also noble, given its ‘special relationship with the divine, with nature, with the world’ (ibid. 57). Blindness was seen not only as a natural disaster, but also as a way of punishment. A punishment for the transgression of boundaries that should not be overstepped: a person was punished for seeing what mortals are not supposed to see and to know. Unlike light and (in-)sight that was thought to bring closer to the One, the Good, the Beautiful, and the Truth, blindness has been understood as an inherently complex, multiple, and ambiguous phenomenon. So much so that blindness remained a blurred and often highly contradictory notion. Unlike modern practices the ancient Greek practices did not differentiate between blindness as a metaphor and the physical condition of blindness (Barasch, 2001; Monbeck, 1973). In Greek plays and mythology, blindness became visible as the heterogeneous and different Gestalt of the blind figure. It has been the inherent meaning of blindness—which can take on any material and non-material form or appearance, gender, values, and different forms of knowledge— that baffled ancient Greek culture so markedly (Barasch, 2001; Schillmeier, 2005). In Sophocles’ Theban Plays the blind figure is known for his unbearable sufferings and pitied for his misfortune, utter helplessness, and alienated condition. Famously, the former king Oedipus in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, who blinded himself for his horrible deeds, appears disgraceful and stigmatized for his feeble and ignorant Dasein (Shields, 1961). Living without eyes, defaced, devastated, and estranged, Oedipus is a broken old man, utterly dependent on others. He is living a life in blindness that means total detachment from personal and cultural recognition, causing unbearable suffering—bodily, socially, and culturally. His defaced appearance is shocking to the eyes of others and goes hand in hand with the ruin of his former standing as a noble king. Instead of reigning within his kingdom, he lives like an old beggar wandering expelled in a foreign country. Oedipus is socially and culturally a nonperson, a persona non grata. Unable to know himself and be known by others, he wanders in a nowhere land. As an old and weak man, Oedipus is always in danger of ‘falling’ (cf. Derrida, 1993), of losing his humanity,

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his sincerity and truthfulness.18 Oedipus, the former proud and discreet king, cannot even walk on his own anymore. He walks with the help of a wooden stick and assisted by his daughter Antigone who he leans on to rest his fragile body. Defaced, Oedipus isn’t able to engage in the politics of recognition stemming from the face-to-face practices so important for Greek social life (Vernant, 1984, 1989, 1991, 1993, 2000). It is the visibility and the practicing of becoming visible that defi ne one’s individual appearance, standing, reputation, and visual nature (identity). Face-to-face relations also defi ne the collective identity, the very belonging to the culture of mortals. It is the similarity that is gained by the very practices of seeing and being seen that constitute the truth of Greek culture. Being blind, Oedipus’ personal, social, and cultural standing is shattered. Oedipus at Colonus becomes visible as the anti-figure that doesn’t fit the modes of socio-cultural ordering in Greek life. His embodied being overflows the common cultural frames of living, so much so that his life is viewed by the sighted as being worse than dead—he is the living dead (cf. Bernidaki-Aldous, 1990; Buxton, 1980). In turn, Oedipus appears as a transgressive figure introducing mere difference that questions the limits of Greek life and philosophy and its culture of light and vision. Tiresias Quite contrary to the defaced appearance of Oedipus, but no less important for ancient Greek mythology and tragedy, we meet the blind seer Tiresias (cf. Loraux, 1995; Ugolini, 1995). Tiresias is praised and worshipped for his supra-human qualities of clairvoyance and his powers of communication with the Gods thus mediating between the mortals and non-mortals. Although the different stories comply with the ‘fact’ that Tiresias is not congenitally blind, but that he was blinded (e.g. because he had been violating norms), the Greeks also have a variety of narrations why he became blind. His blindness isn’t a natural defect; it isn’t a negative matter of fact of nature or a mere impairment. Rather, blindness turns into a ‘matter of concern’ that reveals contested and disputed practices; it names Tiresias as a liminal figure disrupting common orderings and norms, being a figure of punishment for his transgressions and violations and being a figure of compensation (rehabilitation, we moderns would say). He appears as the noble mediator but also as the tragic figure that addresses the disruption, failure, and inability to enable the possibility of mediation (cf. Ugolini, 1995). The causes and effects of blindness remain contingent and multiple. Still, although the different forms of blindness have their multiple histories that unravel multiple good and bad effects and thus stay ontologically uncertain, these histories have a ‘name’ (e.g. Oedipus and Tiresias). These names function as generic terms(!),19 precisely for framing the liminal, multiple, and uncertain ontology of blindness itself. In Hesiod’s narration the Goddess

72 Rethinking Disability of Hera blinded Tiresias. As a priest of Zeus, he saw snakes copulating and he killed the female snake. In turn, he became a woman; she, then, became priest of Hera. A couple of years later Tiresias saw some copulating snakes again. This time, she killed the male snake. In effect, Tiresias became male again. Having had the experience of both man and woman, Tiresias was asked by Zeus and Hera who has more desire when loving— man or woman. Zeus opted for woman and Hera for man. Tiresias agreed with Zeus and in turn was blinded by a furious Hera. For compensation, Zeus gave Tiresias the ability of clairvoyance. Though aphoristic, Tiresias’ foresight is always meant to be true. Another story says that Tiresias was blinded because he had seen the Goddess Athena bathing naked. Since his view of Athena could not be undone (which was the wish of Tiresias’ mother), Athena gave Tiresias the ability to understand birds. Tiresias became an augur, who was able to understand animals, in particular the flight and singing of birds that gave hints to future truths; in order to walk wherever he wishes to, he was given a stick; he also lived much longer than mortals can live and he still remained a wise person after his death (in Hades). Still another story tells that Tiresias’ blindness is due to the fact that he had told the mortals the sacred secrets of the immortals. It seems that the contrast between Oedipus and Tiresias is so stark that there are no similarities that defi ne their ‘being’ as well their ‘blindness’. On the contrary, blindness, as portrayed by the Greeks, seems to refer to what can be called a ‘blank figure’ (cf. Hetherington & Lee, 2000; Serres, 1991a). A blank figure is able to take on all values, like a joker in a card game. And indeed, blindness lacks a specific identity. Not having physical sight has multiple reasons and multiple effects—good and bad ones that depend on a highly divergent association of human and non-human entities. Hence, one may say: The very identity of blindness is that it has none. Rather, it names what cannot be named. Moreover it unfolds the different ways and effects of associating with the Other, difference and heterogeneity—human and non-human alike. This is important to note: All ancient tragic and mythical blind figures share the ability to know and do things that radically differ from what was commonly understood as what human beings (mortals, I should say20) can and should do. In order to ‘see’, to ‘know’, or to ‘be’, the blind figure extends his ‘sight’, ‘knowledge’, and ‘being’ by being connected to the eyes and bodies of others. Being linked to the immortals (Gods), the dead, as well as non-human, non-visual help such as the wooden cane, the blind figure perceives, knows, and is. So much so that it remains impossible to pinpoint the Wesen (essence, being) of blindness along strategies of the ‘either/ or’. Rather, as briefly outlined earlier, the blind figure of ancient Greece is human (mortal) and is not, sees and doesn’t see, is able to know and is ignorant, knows less and knows more than mortals are able to know, needs assistance and gives assistance, is defaced and isn’t, pitied and praised, etc.

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Moreover, he remains indistinguishable if the blind figure is alive or dead, has one body or more than one or even none; the blind figure also transgresses the sexes. Hence, the ancient blind figure isn’t bodily/mentally impaired and/or socially disabled by society on the other. He is ‘neither/nor’, since (s)he is always already both and the socialness of his blindness is as vague and contradictory as it is multiple. And this is precisely what makes the blind figure act as a cosmo-political agent that is questioning, disrupting, and altering common orderings and knowledge practices. One may say, the very histories and figures of blindness reveal the ambiguities and contingencies of the social itself. It gives the abstract religiousness, which tries to capture the contingent relations of heterogeneous (non-related) entities, its concrete narration; it gives the very contingent, complex, and often contradictory specificities their space, their name. In their very specific ways such (mythical) narrations of the blind figure assemble the contingent possibilities of how humans relate with others and otherness (religiousness) and by doing so these narrations name the very changing socialness of blindness. Platonism on the other hand inaugurates along the Parmenidean logics the either/or dogma and ritual of vision and di/vision performed by cultures of light, sight, and insight. 21 The socialness of blindness reveals that there is not only no given nature of things but refers to the practices that question and may reconfigure common social orders. Hence, it is the very socialness of the blind figure the myths and tragedy are telling. They point towards blindness as an assemblage of heterogeneous collectives. The complex ambiguity of the presence of blindness is made visible precisely as a set of heterogeneous attachments to Others, i.e. mortals and immortals, the living and the dead, the present and future, the human and non-human technologies, man and woman, etc. Such attachments of otherness also indicate the blending of the physical and metaphorical meaning—the bodily and mental states of blindness. Being a non-modern blank figure, then, marks a quasi-being as the very reality of blindness. The blind figure is more than one (the Godly, immortal ideas) and he/she is more than many (the life of mortals). At the same time he is less than one (not immortal) and less than many (not mortal). Adopting a notion by Donna Haraway (1995), one may say that with the blind figure of ancient Greek culture the ‘cyborg’ became visible. It names a human/ non-human relation that by attachment of differences utterly disrupts the self-sufficient—visual, rational, and humanist—understanding of being in the world ever since the ancient Greeks. This is obviously most frightening, since it disrupts all common forms of ancient Greek thought and related socio-cultural forms of ordering. In a face-to-face society such as ancient Greece, seeing and being seen enabled as well as sustained common practices of social ordering, social recognition, cultural knowledge, and identity. 22 Therefore the intrusion of blindness was not seen as a function of vision, but as a ‘mode/form of existence’

74 Rethinking Disability questioning the very power of visual functioning and visual (knowledge) practice itself. The very existence of ‘blindness’ illustrated the worst-case scenario that could happen to non-modern (Greek) visual culture: Difference is introduced by difference (blindness) and not by similitude (vision); difference is introduced by the many (the empirical), and by the very multiple appearances it enacts the one that isn’t one: blindness. The very ontological uncertainty, vagueness, and multiplicity brought to the fore the socialness of blindness as an ‘and . . . and . . . and’. It reveals blindness as neither a mere bodily/mental impairment nor as a mere societal disability, but as a ‘cosmo-political event’ (Schillmeier & Pohler, 2006; Schillmeier, 2008a) that disrupts, questions, and alters the very understanding of what is seen as human bodies and minds, expected as ‘normal’ human outlook and performed as routine, normalized social order. Thus, the practices of blindness reveal that is not the ‘One’ that orders and governs the many, but the effect of a myriad of (inter-)mediations that are always more than one and less than many. It unravels a third position that according to Plato could be thought of only via ‘bastard reasoning’ (Plato, 1991: 52a/b). It remains so difficult to think since the Greek philosophy is very much governed by the ‘either/or’ of the one (ideas) and many (the empirical), being (ideas) and becoming (empirical). To summarize: Only the artful narration and performance of blindness as it comes to the fore by ancient Greek mythology and/or tragedy, then, seems to be able to overcome the limits of a visually attuned Platonism of ideas. It unravels an alternative discourse that is capable of visualizing the liminality of blindness itself and giving all the contradictions that emerge within the course of life and within everyday life a voice of their own; it is a voice of the multiple that transgresses the ‘either/or di/visions’ between being and becoming, the sighted and the blind, the able and disabled, human and non-human, etc. Through the mythology of the blind figure the Greeks23 have found ways to include the other as the other that is more than just a metaphor for the non-sighted, the ignorant. Obviously, then, the blind figure is neither purely mortal nor immortal; he pollutes the rites of Platonic purification as much as he disrupts the socio-cultural orderings of face-to-face relations. The blind figure highlights the ambiguities and contingencies of associating heterogeneous entities, conditions, dis/ abilities and visualizes the very socialness of human affairs that has to be constantly explained by these processes of (inter-mediated/ing) heterogeneous relations. This is precisely what Rethinking Disability is trying to reenact: the very socialness of dis/ability from which the ancient myths and tragedies tell. And as I have argued and will argue throughout the book, it is the histories of blindness—non-modern and modern alike—that may function as a prime narration to do so. As we will see later, in modern times, the uncertainties of blindness, the very specificities of the different histories and multiple effects of blindness, the agency of blindness as a cosmo-political event were thought to be tamed

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and cured. For us moderns, blindness is present either as a metaphor or as the normalized ‘other’ of visual impairment/disability. Such a process of modernizing blindness made it even more difficult to re-trace the socialness of dis/ability and the history of blindness as it was portrayed by ancient myths and tragedies. The dogma of the ancient as well as modern myth of the ‘either/or’ of visual cultures has been made the myth of blindness as the very narration of the ‘and . . . and . . . and’ forgotten.

Metaphorization of Blindness Generally speaking, one may say that on the one hand the history of blindness is the tragic history of the sighted to name its other. At the same time it is the tragedy of blindness to become envisioned by the modalities of the sighted in order to name blindness as its Other. Naming its other was Othering it. The blind became ignorant or sightless. Naming its Other, the regimes of ‘the visual’ mirror their own limits of perceiving and knowing.24 Like a knife, blindness cuts into the eye of its beholder. There is a risk and danger of becoming blind when naming blindness. Hence, it enforced a clear cut, a di/vision as it were, between the sighted and the sightless. For the Greek culture of light it meant a di/vision between human and suprahuman beings; in modern times it refers either to its metaphorical reading or/and to the physiological lack of sight. In that sense the history of blindness is tragic since it is the mirroring of sight’s own blindness that made blindness become a privation of sight; a privation of vision as well of di/vision, i.e. literally as well as figuratively. Thus, by envisioning blindness as non-sight and/or non-insight, blindness is clearly and distinctively differentiated from sight and insight. Either you see or you are blind. Content and form of the difference between blindness and non-blindness is achieved along visual and cognitive means that are most capable of dividing between the one and the other. Consequently, blindness itself remains dark, is made non-existent by the motility of visual means of translating blindness into a matter of mere sight and insight. Our linguistic practices seem to reinforce the tragic history of blindness by enacting the ubiquity of visual metaphors (Jay, 1994). Apparently it is the will to ‘see and know’, to ‘see and tell’ that translates most effectively into the realm of visual metaphors. The conflation of knowing and seeing names that only through (in-)sight the outside is made visible. Our linguistic practices iterate the fear of the sighted to become blind. They install a series of clear-cut divisions between seer and seen, knower and known— precisely as a mode of visio-cognitive practices imitated by the semantics of visual cultures. It is the metaphorical use of blindness that doesn’t refer to a visual impairment but to modes of ignorance and concealment (Bolt, 2005). The power of the metaphor of blindness is precisely that it is able to abstract from the conflation between sight and insight. Still, it keeps the power to draw a

76 Rethinking Disability clear line between ‘the blind’ and ‘the sighted’. It cuts off from visual practices but sustains the visual power to make the clear cut visible in the fi rst place (di/vision). When we speak of blindness as metaphor it means more than the disability to see. The blind writer Georgina Kleege stresses: The Anglo-Saxon translators of the Gospels25 made the metaphorical leap from literal sightlessness to spiritual or cognitive incapacity. [Echoing ancient stories on blindness] ‘throughout the history of language and in common usage today, the word connotes a lack of understanding or discernment, a wilful disregard or obliviousness, a thing meant to conceal or deceive. In fact, ( . . . ) the word is far more used in its figurative than in its literal sense. And it comes up so often: blind faith, blind devotion, blind luck, blind lust, blind trust, blind chance, blind rage, blind alley, blind curve, blind-nail flooring, blind date (more dangerous than you think), duck blind, window blind, micro-mini blind (when open, they’re hard to see), blind taste test, double-blind study, flying blind, following blind, blind leading the blind, blind landing, color blind (in the racial sense, a good thing), blind submission, blind side, blind spot, blindfold, blind man’s bluff, three blind mice (have you ever see such a sight in your life?). Pick up any book or magazine and you will fi nd dozens of similes and metaphors connecting blindness and blind people with ignorance, confusion, indifference, ineptitude ( . . . ) If you want to talk about stupidity, prejudice, weakness, or narrow-mindedness, no other word will do. (Kleege, 1998: 21–22) In this sense the metaphor is a perfect motile advice of social ordering of visual cultures. Motility, as Rolland Munro convincingly has argued, refers to the ‘facility to bring the material of social spaces near or far and make matters appear present or absent’ (Munro, 1997a: 223). As a motile tool, the metaphor of blindness makes blindness present by a detachment from the very practices of blindness itself. Through the metaphor of blindness, blindness is absent present. This paradox is precisely what makes the metaphor of blindness so powerful. The literal meaning of blindness is substituted by its figural use that predominantly works as a generic term for the other side of insight. It makes present the lack of insight, something that does not refer to a lack of vision although it cannot be understood without the relation of vision, visibility, and light as outlined previously. Thus, the metaphor of blindness is the very idealistic triumph of clear vision and di/ vision and the related religion of the either/or inasmuch as it black-boxes (a) the very practices of blind people that are always more than just negative effects of a lack of sight, (b) all the processes of mediation and association of heterogeneous bodies, senses, and things that come to a fore if we look at blind practices, and (c) the very relation to vision without which blindness cannot be understood at all. The metaphorization of blindness perfectly black-boxes blindness as a construct of the sighted and man of reason. By

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metaphorization, together with a mere medical understanding of blindness as a visual impairment the very practices of blind people themselves are perfectly made absent. Following from the latter, it is in modern visual cultures that blindness is understood primarily as a source for negative experiences that stem either from a visual dysfunction or from the societal attribution that conflate blindness with its metaphorization. In this way, we moderns have successfully created a discourse of visual cultures that not only highlights vision as the noblest sense but also constantly confl ates sight with insight in order to clearly envision and di/vision blindness against the background of the normalcy of natural and socio-cultural practices. The history of blindness, that—as discussed earlier—draws attention to the different modes of association and connection between vision and non-vision, vision and the other senses, the good and bad, abilities and disabilities, beauty and ugliness, human and non-human, humans and technologies, one and many, nature and culture, etc., has been erased by the religion of modernity that addresses and enacts blindness (a) as the mere Other, the negative side of and the dividing line between sight on the hand and insight on the other and (b) as a bifurcated nature that is divided into a natural and/or social/ cultural phenomena. As we have seen throughout this chapter so far, modern religion comes in different forms and shapes and installs the di/vision between culture and nature, impairment and disability, human and non-human, social and nonsocial, etc. At the heart of the successful practices of modern religion— that have been re-developed and reshaped ever since the Greeks—lies the understanding and with it the black-boxing of blindness and blind practice along visual and rational means. We moderns have ‘successfully’ included blindness as either a visual impairment or a societal enforced disability. 26 This is the difference to ancient understandings of blindness: The portrayal of the blind figure in ancient Greek mythology and tragedy, which has been the most prominent figure of displacement and transgression of common visual knowledge practices, leaves it open if blindness is enabling or disabling. For the Greeks, blindness meant ontological vagueness and indecision. In modernity, blindness has been translated into either a mere matter of impairment or a matter of societal oppression.

MODERN BLINDNESS

Envisioning Humanity—Curing Blindness In all philosophical, scientific, medical, and pedagogical endeavors of the rise of modernity the ancient Greek culture of light and vision gained prominent influence (cf. Allert, 1996; Brennan & Jay, 1996; Buck-Morss, 1989; Crary, 1991; Jay, 1995; Levin, 1993). Moreover, since the 17th century, the

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blind figure and the ‘blind restored to light’ have become relevant epistemological figures attracting philosophical, scientific, medical, and pedagogical attention as well. The practices and technologies of visualization employed by scientific and philosophical discourse set up an ‘architecture of the visible’ (MacPhee, 2002) sustaining ‘modernity and the hegemony of vision’ (Levin, 1993). Since Bacon, new observation technologies entailed the systematic extension of vision and sight. Pieces of ground and polished glass were employed as lenses, extending and pluralizing the ways of micro- and telescopic seeing. Such innovations, together with geometric optics and linear projective perspectives, contributed to the ‘rationalization of sight’ (Ivins, 1975) by linking empirical seeing and truth (Crary, 1991). Descartes’ Dioptrics (1611) pictures the famous, though rather alien, blind figure with his (two) cane(s) and a sleeping dog, set in place to devalue the importance of sensory perception and to promote instead the geometrization and rationalization of vision and thought. Visual technologies fundamentally restructured our modern world rendering the objects observed clearly visible, readable, and divisible. Along the innovation of book print, visual inscriptions and visual practices are made durable and connectable (Latour, 1986). These ‘strategies of visualization’, being a prime effect of technoscientific innovation, envision humans by di/visioning themselves from non-humans, moderns from non-moderns, culture from nature, science from philosophy, experts from lay people, the social from individual, etc. According to Michel Foucault (1990), with modernity the human being became visible as an object of knowledge and a knowing subject. It is through the (human) sciences, medical practice, and philosophical discourse that man becomes visible as an individual bodily entity. His individuality then isn’t given by innate forces extrinsic to the individual itself but emerges as the material effect of human life, labor, and language. Hence, the nature of the visibility of individual human beings is not a naturally given but a human achievement that is made present as a collective and not individual affair. Through societal practices the nature of man becomes human nature and unfolds a historical conception of human nature as a relational process: The individual human being cannot be known by himself but for himself as a mode of collective human practices. Modern techniques of vision and envisioning entail the very bifurcation of the nature of human vision into what can be seen with vision and how this can be made sayable as vision. Accordingly, the nature of human vision becomes a matter of di/vision. Modern vision as di/vision demands a certain blindness towards the physiology of vision in order to render it sayable. The physiology of vision becomes something else the moment we name it. With vision as di/vision, the conflation of the thing seen and thing itself is undone, the nature of seeing and the cultural saying of what is seen is clearly divided. From the cultural perspective, then, it is the culture of seeing that explains the physiology of sight.

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Following Foucault (1990), it is precisely the discovery of these broken representations of reality that invented the realm of ‘man’ and with it the boundary of human being. The insight that human boundaries are self-made, i.e. social and historical relations, appears to be crucial for modernity’s selfdescription. Moreover, the moment man has been invented by enlightenment, he has necessarily been questioned as a self-reigning man since we humans become aware that what is seen and known by the human being is a collective achievement. Seeing and saying/telling, of humans and other humans and their human lives, language and labor are all collective achievements. What makes these collective achievements turn into modern religion (its religiousness/socialness one may say) is, that the collective defi nes the clear di/vision between human and non-human affairs. In modern terms the collective is human society with its own practices that differ from those that can be found in nature. Somehow, it is nature understood as a productive force that completely disappears as the Ding an sich and becomes visible as human nature, a Ding für sich, a human-made, rational nature (Kant, 2003 [1796], 1978). Radicalizing Kant’s thought, human being cannot be merely understood as a rational being but as the effect of human life, language, and work. Obviously, this marks the moment of the invention of the ‘social’. Still, somehow there is nature itself, since it is the human being that is seen as part of nature. But to know and say that does mark the difference between a cultural/human and a natural/non-human entity. This very possibility of being at same time culture and nature—depends on a clear cut between humans and non-humans.

Theories of Vision and Di/vision—With a Little Help from the Blind Through modernity, theories of perception, cognition, and knowledge have gained much by unfolding vision as di/vision: Physical vision (sensation) is made absent and becomes present as a mode of perception; in consequence, sensory perception is rendered absent as a mode of expression, knowledge or language. Bishop Berkeley’s new theory of vision (Berkeley, 1709/2005) is a stunning example, precisely because it highlights the paradoxes of naming vision (Schillmeier, 2005).27 Berkeley is interested in a precise language to explain the nature of seeing as a phenomenon of human perception, and not simply one of sensation. Indeed, the division between sensation and perception is key for his theory. Each sense receives sensory information from the world, which is translated into a sign or representation for us to be perceived. Thus, for instance, if we take the sense of sight, he distinguishes between ‘pictures’—i.e., sensations of light, shadows, and colors—and ‘images’—which are tangible projections on the retina. Whereas the former are ‘objects of sight’—that is, related to sensation through sight, the latter can be grasped only by the mind. They are ‘objects of sense’, related to perception. This differentiation between sensation and perception is valid for all senses and the senses have their own clearly divided spaces.

80 Rethinking Disability The di/vision between perception and sensation is key for Berkeley’s new theory of vision. His attempt of a new theory of vision is also directed against the dominance of Cartesian mathematization and geometrization of vision at this time. Berkeley has two main reasons for this. Firstly, with the Cartesian geometric pretension to make vision precise and clear, these models forget that our sight is not precise at all. In our everyday practices, sight does not follow the alleged distinctiveness and clarity of geometry, but is rather blurred and limited. According to Berkeley, the Cartesian perspective constructs a rather artificial understanding of vision, and moreover, our vision is much more complex than a precise construction of lines and geometric figures. It mixes up human vision with optical measurements. Secondly, by doing so, the geometry of vision conflates geometric language (figures, lines, angles) with vision itself. For Berkeley, science proves to be old-fashioned and scholastic. It naturalizes vision by taking the geometrical objects for the thing (i.e. vision) itself. For Berkeley, there is no ‘innate geometry’, which, as the Cartesian model suggests, can be seen immediately by drawing a set of lines and angles. Science is not able to recognize that ‘seeing’; in order to say it, it has to differ from the sensory practice of seeing. For Berkeley, science proves to have no means to reflect properly upon its own conditions of possibility that make a scientific object like ‘seeing’ visible. Berkeley, on the contrary, claims to name vision without referring to vision itself. No objects themselves, not even vision itself is able to describe vision. He relates the world outside, i.e. the world of senses, with the inside (mind) of the human being and with God. What is outside is perceived inside and appears as a Godly, universal order: vision as di/vision.

The Hypothetical Blind Rethinking how we perceive distance via distanced objects, Berkeley argues that information about distance is obtained by touch and not by sight. Hence, images on the curved retina suggest tangible objects—’objects of sense’, that are read by the mind that links these objects as well as previous experiences of them. Objects of sense are like signs that refer to things and not things themselves. The connection between sign and thing, between seen object and touched object, is, according to Berkeley—with the help of God—a universal principle as a matter of the mind. The mental translation of vision is about the direct and flawless suggestion of tangible things. In order to prove his theory, like Descartes, Berkeley sets in place what Gitter recently has called the ‘hypothetical blind man’ (Gitter in Kleege, 2005). According to Berkeley, the blind man can perceive distance without seeing. However since touch itself explains nothing, but only suggests images and signs, it remains a matter of the mind to prove Berkeley right. In Berkeley’s theory of vision, blindness plays an important epistemological role. However, as Kleege (2005) has argued most recently, it is a rather ‘thankless role’; ‘a prop’ for theories of perception. The blind figure

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appears as the hypothetical straw man that disappears the moment the nature of vision is described as a universal mental act. Again, we can see how Platonism creeps in. The blind figure remains hypothetical since it is an idealistic construct that abstracts from the embodied practices of blindness in order to prove the nature of vision. Berkeley’s account also abstracts from the complex empirical practice of seeing. At fi rst glance, his accusation that science fabricates a rather artificial understanding of vision is quite seductive. Utilizing lines and geometric forms, science will produce nothing but ‘normal’ sight, which cannot be found in our everyday practices of vision. Thus, it cannot express our normal manner of seeing—which according to Berkeley is often unclear and blurred. His proposal instead is radical: ‘[V]ision’ has nothing to do with vision itself. Seeing cannot explain vision. Vision is a mental act and physiological seeing only implies a minimum visible (Berkeley, 1709/2005: § 80). Seeing is a ‘yes/no’ condition—either you see or you don’t see. Blind people are therefore blind when they don’t see. From the logics of di/vision, blindness may tell us much about vision but in order to do so blindness itself that is always more than just ‘non-sight’ has to stay necessarily invisible. Like in ancient Greek Platonic reasoning, the blind figure has to appear in these early modern stories on di/vision, though just for the sake of disappearing again. Why?, one may ask. As the other side of vision, the blind figure lacks di/vision. It appears as a joker. A joker28 in a card game is indifferent to all divisions and hierarchies in the game. The joker helps out in order to move on and even creates a different and new order within the game. With the joker, a blank element is put in place in order to change a traditional order and sustain a new one. Consequently, within the modern discourse on vision as di/vision, the blind figure becomes present as just such a highly valuable blank figure. The blind figure appears as a necessarily blank entity in order to make new (i.e. modern) theories of vision valid and correct. It has remained ahistorical, a natural given, a ‘time-less’ joker for theories of perception ever since. Obviously, this does not mean that blindness is excluded from modern reasoning. Not at all. The blind figure is included, but under the conditions of modern religion, of vision as division, and not that of blindness: inclusion by exclusion, exclusion by inclusion. The specificities of ‘being’ blind are blanked and become a mere function of di/vision. Yet, as we have seen, the blank figure is needed to question common orders and to establish new ones. Blindness becomes a function of vision and visual practices.

Suppose a Blind Man is Restored to Light In ‘The Birth of the Clinic’ Michel Foucault notes At the end of the eighteenth century, at the beginning of the Renaissance, education was given a positive value of enlightenment: to train was a bringing to light, and therefore of discovering. The childhood

82 Rethinking Disability and youth of things and men were endowed with an ambiguous power: to tell the birth of truth; but also to put to the test the tardy truth of men, to rectify it, to bring it closer to its nudity. ( . . . ) What allows man to resume contact with childhood and to rediscover the permanent birth of truth is this bright, distant, open naivety of the gaze. Hence the two great mythical experiences on which the philosophy of the eighteenth century had wished to base its beginning: the foreign spectator in an unknown country, and the man born blind restored to light. (Foucault, 1997b: 65) When talking about the blind man restored to light, Michel Foucault addresses a most prominent moment in history that was thought to link the possible cure of blindness with the inauguration of modern thought. Drawing on a key text of modernity, John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1991 [1690]), I will analyze the historical constitution of blindness within modern epistemological concerns, whose consequences can be traced to the present and configure the way blindness is treated and understood. Locke’s essay introduces the bifurcation of nature into primary and secondary qualities separating the realm of ‘nature’ as it is from ‘nature’ as humans perceive it. It appears as a key difference that manifests the religion of modernity that was meant (a) to oppose traditional, scholastic views on human knowledge, (b) to humanize our knowledge of the world, and (c) to di-vision blindness from sight in order to prove the bifurcation of nature into fi rst and secondary qualities. Locke’s division still plays a crucial role in contemporary studies of disability. It is re-echoed by the very differentiation between individual and social models of disability whereby disability is understood as antagonistic, self-referential realms— opposed natures as it were—from where disability emerges. Hence, again, like in Berkeley’s theory of vision the blind figure became important although he played an ambivalent role: He was introduced to the modern discourse of understanding human understanding and at the same time he was excluded from being a relevant epistemic figure of modern thought. More radically: The proof of becoming religiously modern meant to found modernity as a clearly and distinctly different realm from tradition by the very cure of blindness itself. Such modern dream, attitude or ethos—however one wants to call it—is remaining modernity’s vision and belief ever since. In consequence, however, in the name of ‘human understanding’ blindness has been reduced to being (a) a mere function of vision (its lack); (b) an individual impairment; and (c) a state of epistemological ignorance. At the same time, we can see how blindness has been re-configured by visual cultures. As I will argue, it refers to the very socialness if blindness inasmuch as it brings to fore how the intermingling of technoscientific innovations, medical practices, politics, and philosophical rigor of reflecting

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upon human understanding and knowledge re-assembled the very reality of blindness itself. Foucault’s quote above addresses the very intriguing situation: Suppose a man is born blind and then restored to light. Would this person automatically see? Would the person fi rst have to learn how to see? What would this situation teach us about seeing, thinking, and learning in general? These hypothetical questions can be traced back to the famous Molyneux Problem posed by the Scot, William Molyneux, in 1688. Molyneux’s question became widely known through John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1991 [1706]), 29 initiating a discussion that will powerfully unite optical, philosophical, political, and educational concerns. These epistemological concerns gained importance with the possibility of curing blindness by cataract operation—in particular, the innovation of technomedical practices of reclining the clouded lens. 30 The miraculous healing of Tobi in the Old Testament had become reality, not thanks to the revelation of an angel but to the technoscientific innovation introduced by medical practice. Practitioners, opticians, philosophers, educators—all became interested, with their different practices and perspectives, in the figure of the blind. In this chapter, I will refer as modern epistemological politics to all these heterogeneous practices gathered around blindness and its possible cure, visible in different forms since the end of the 17th century. Modern epistemological politics announces a radical division in the history of blindness. The puzzling and distressing incapacity to know the nature of blindness— that is, the experience of the epistemic limit of humans that blindness produces and which has accompanied visual cultures since the Greeks—might now be overcome (Buxton, 1980; Barasch, 2001). I have shown previously how within the ancient Greek ‘culture of light’, the blind figure appears as the ambiguous limit of social, cultural, political, and philosophical efforts of understanding, performing and governing human societies. The blind have been pitied for their ignorance, their unbearable sufferings or misfortune and praised for their second sight and supra-human being. For the Greeks, the blind figure lives within a non-comprehensible realm of ‘darkness’ that is and is not human. The possible medical cure of ‘blindness’ as it was discussed in the 17th century, however, marks the possible step that this utterly ambiguous figure may fi nally enter the clear and distinct realm of vision and light. With its introduction in discourses of human knowledge, blindness will lose the ambiguous character that had characterized it among ancient Greeks. Then, the blind person will function only as a prominent figure that limits and identifies human boundaries—including the limits of human understanding and knowledge. Once cured, the exblind figure will be scrutinized by the epistemological gaze, promising a new start, the birth of a different world that would open new paths for understanding human perception, knowledge, and learning. Through its

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incapacities, the blind figure will testify to human nature and to all the labor involved in thought and vision. Through its role in the epistemological politics of the 17th and 18th centuries, the blind figure re-emerges as the figure of non-knowledge ‘who cannot understand the idea of light’ (De Man, 1996: 39). Moreover, we moderns have lost the attitude of believing in the power of Gods that compensate blindness with second sight and supra-human agency. Since modern religion is very much about the killing of God and humanization of knowledge, there is no conceptual space left that interprets blindness as transgressing human understanding. Since the 17th century, the discourse on blindness has reduced blindness to an individual impairment and to mere relations of vision and light dependent on the functional silence of the transgressive power of blindness itself. As the reader will see, the blind figure is not excluded from the human realm. Quite to the contrary, he is included in the epistemological discourse, but as the other side of knowledge—present through the absence of knowledge, visible for his ignorance. Becoming the ‘other’ of knowledge and the ‘other’ of sight, blindness is reduced to a deficient mode of perception, a substantial lack one must overcome to enter fully the world of humans and modernity. Through modern epistemological politics, the blind figure fi nally sees the light and disappears!

On Human Understanding—On Inaugurating Modernity John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1991 [1706]) can be considered a central modern text that discusses both the blind figure and the ‘labour of human knowledge’, that is, all the work involved in thinking. In his attempt to understand how we acquire our knowledge, Locke will argue that human thought rests on sensory experiences, opposing the scholastic view, according to which we have innate, abstract, and universal ideas, pre-given in the mind. Ideas are the effects of learning processes, never independent of the laboring of thoughts and sensations involved, and hence, they refer to a form of tacit or mute knowledge that can be neither directly communicated nor understood without the flow of sensory practices. Following Aristotle, Locke distinguishes between ideas that can be obtained either through one or through several senses. Colors can be obtained only through the eyes, sounds through the ears, whereas shape and space are obtained through more than one sense. Since sensations are qualitatively different from each other, they may give rise to different ideas and relations, while the absence of sensations should lead to the absence of ideas. To support this point, Locke draws upon the blind figure; lack of sight— and therefore, of sensations due to light—induces a lack of ideas of colors and of light. If ideas of color were innate, argues Locke, even blind people

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should have access to them, which is clearly not the case. And to strengthen this, he introduces a new character, a man gone blind: For what is not either actually in view, or in the memory, is in the mind no way at all, and is all one as if it never had been there. Suppose a child had the use of his eyes till he knows and distinguishes colours; but then cataracts shut the windows and he is forty or fi fty years perfectly in the dark; and in that time perfectly loses all his memory of the ideas of colours he once had. This was the case of a blind man I once talked with, who lost his sight . . . and had no more notions of colours than one born blind. I ask whether anyone can say this man had then any ideas of colours in his mind, any more than one born blind? (Locke, 1991 [1706]: 28) This man was born with sight but lost it for some reason. After talking to him, Locke verified that this man also lost all the ideas of colors he had once acquired and, therefore, he could be equated to a man born blind— supposed to have no ideas of colors at all from the very beginning. This was a proof in favor of the sensory origin of our ideas: When sensations disappear, so do ideas. Ideas cannot be innate—otherwise we all would have ideas of colors, even blind people—and the fact that the loss of sensory ability is accompanied by the loss of ideas underlines this claim. Some years later Locke will receive a letter from M. Molyneux, 31 a politician and advocate of new learning (Zemplén, 2003) interested in optics, whose wife became blind after a stroke. Molyneux has read Locke’s essay, and posed the following question: What would happen if a blind person were restored to sight? Could he recognize through sight the objects he knew when he was blind? Locke introduced this question in the second edition of his essay, in the same way in which it was posed to him, that is, as a thought experiment. Later on, the question would attract more attention with the emergence of new surgical possibilities of removing cataracts, becoming a recurrent reference for philosophical discussion and theories of perception. This is the answer that Locke gives to Molyneux’s question: Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness so as to tell, when he felt one and the other, which is the cube, which the sphere. Suppose then the cube and sphere placed on a table, and the blind man to be made to see: square, whether by his sight, before he touched them, he could now distinguish and tell which is the cube? To which the acute and judicious proposed answers: Not. For, though he has obtained the experience of how a globe, how a cube affects his touch, yet he has not yet obtained the experience that what affects his touch so or so must affect his sight

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Rethinking Disability so or so; or that a protuberant angle in the cube, that pressed his hand unequally, shall appear to his eye as it does in the cube. (Locke 1991 [1706]: 67, original emphasis)

Locke’s answer to Molyneux’s problem was that the formerly blind person would not be able to identify and name the geometrical figures seen immediately, but only after touching the cube and the globe (Degenaar, 1996; Morgan, 1977; Paulson, 1987; von Senden, 1932/1960; Zemplén, 2003). Since the blind person did not possess ideas of color, he could not use them to recognize objects visually. But the blind man did have ideas of shape, since blindness does not hinder touch, and hence, he would recognize differences between the cube and the globe through their shape, even by seeing them for the fi rst time, because he would remember touch. Recognition through sight would have to wait for him to get accustomed to light and gain new ideas through this sense. Consequently, he argued, seeing and knowing involve labor and transformation—just as we all have to leave the cave, the place of darkness and fl ickering shadows as it is in Plato’s world. Seeing the light and freeing oneself from a life of endless uncertainty is hard work—for blind people as it is for philosophers. In this way, this thought experiment reaffi rmed Locke in his conviction that there are no innate ideas—the naming of the objects seen has to be learnt.

The Nobility of Sight If we read these quotes together, it is clear that in Locke’s essay ‘sight’ is equated—sometimes metaphorically, sometimes quite literally—to knowledge: The noble sense of sight transmits ideas to the mind. For Locke, the imperfection of knowing is universal—just like the imperfection of perception and communication of words, sounds, smells, and taste. The clairvoyance of any representation is blurred, and the knowledge about it is uncertain. Still, against this imperfect background, sight is the least imperfect of all the senses—it performs human perfection within the general imperfection of knowledge. Sight needs light to convey ideas to the mind, where they can remain thanks to memory, even in the absence of light: This is why the sighted can maintain their ideas of light and colours even at night—or, for that matter, while blinking (Locke, 1991 [1706]: 68). The mind can understand and have insights even in absence of light. Locke’s interest lies within the appraisal of sight as the most comprehensive of all our senses, conveying to our minds the ideas of light and colours, which are peculiar only to that sense; and also the far different ideas of space, figure, and motion, the several varieties whereof change the appearances of its proper object, viz. light and colours: we bring ourselves by use to judge of the one by the other. (Locke, 1991 [1706]: 68, original emphasis)

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Sight comes into view as the most clear, distinct, and sharp way of sensing; and facilitates the powerful continuity of ideas—the idea of light that produces the light of ideas in us (Locke, 1991 [1706]: 222). Sight allows direct translation from light as sensation to light as idea. Sight, light, and ideas are in perfect communication, and their relation produces faultless knowledge in a smooth, effortless, and immaterial process, as if there were no gap between the thing perceived and the thing understood. We look and we immediately know, gaining an insight into the nature of things. Perfect knowledge is seeing as if one thought, and thinking as if one saw. Seeing, perceiving, and knowing are ideally equated. Moreover, the process of production of ideas appears as disembodied, immaterial, and effortless—especially when compared with other types of body sensory activity. This disembodied form of seeing maximizes the compression of time and space in order to maximize depiction in the most minimal period of time—hence, the equation between sight and insight, and the seeming immediacy of perception. Seeing sharpens and enables the mind, which undertakes routines, customs, and habits that go unnoticed— the perfect immaterial symbiosis between effortless sight and powerful action of the mind.

Lacking Sight . . . Lacking Knowledge It is not difficult to guess what happens with the figure of the blind person, when insight is equated to sight and light: In the attempt to understand human thinking, blindness has been left aside. Within epistemological politics initiated by Molyneux and Locke, the blind figure appears as a quasi-natural relict that lacks sensory skills and full understanding. The blind person is like a child unable to learn, a figure of non-knowledge that cannot understand the idea of light, since he cannot see and consequently cannot know. The blind man is facing a serious problem: his natural imperfection. In general, as Locke argues, any lack, loss, or deficiency of the senses lowers the quality of perception and thus the quality of knowledge (Locke, 1991 [1706]: 68ff). But, given the importance he attributes to sight, blind people suffer from a particularly hindering impairment and hence are dependent on other forms of understanding and knowing. Unable to enjoy the nobility of sight and light, he must content himself with using words to gain knowledge. Locke notes: ‘[B]ut if, . . . we endeavour by words to make them clearer in the mind, we shall succeed no better than if we went about to clear up the darkness of a blind man’s mind by talking, and to discourse into him the ideas of light and colours’ (Locke, 1991 [1706]: 52, original emphasis). Thus, discursive knowing is far from being perfect, since it obviously produces different ideas for the hearer than for the speaker. The blind person faces the permanent production of double contingencies of ideas between speaker and hearer. For Locke, human knowledge is primarily a matter of labor of vision and thoughts and not of communication of words:

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Rethinking Disability Since sounds have no natural connexion with our ideas, but have all their signification from the arbitrary imposition of men, the doubtfulness and uncertainty of their signification, which is the imperfection we here are speaking of, has its cause more in the ideas they stand for than in any incapacity there is in one sound more than in another to signify any idea, for in that regard they are all equally perfect. (Locke, 1991 [1706]: 248; emphasis added)

Words uttered, produce sounds—and sounds, like colors, smells, and tastes are secondary qualities. Primary qualities, such as solidity, extension, figure, and mobility, are intrinsic qualities of things, which characterize and distinguish them, producing ideas in us such as solidity, extension, figure, texture, motion or immobility, and number. Secondary qualities, dependent on the primary qualities, are powers that produce sensations in us, and are not inherent to the things themselves. They depend on our senses, configuring things for us. As immediately perceivable qualities, they denote powers ‘by immediately operating on our bodies to produce several different ideas in us, or else, by operating on other bodies, so to change their primary qualities as to render them capable of producing ideas in us different from what before they did’ (Locke, 1991 [1706]: 64–65, original emphasis). For Locke, words are neither natural nor real primary objects but sounds to which we attribute signification. Words do not produce a dividable mass of undividable qualities, as primary qualities do, but produce instead a mess that spreads between humans and things. The use of words multiplies and diffuses the ideas. Words, like all other secondary qualities, blur the clarity and distinctiveness of things. They are springs of uncertainty; highly unsatisfactory means of communication. The unsolvable imperfection of human knowledge becomes even more imperfect when messing around with words and sounds. This leaves the blind man at the highest grade of imperfection and incompletion of knowledge: Deprived of colors and light, the blind man cannot understand the idea of light; lacking the quasi-natural communion of sight, light, and ideas, the blind man has nothing else to offer than words, a messy understanding and highly deficient knowledge, as opposed to the effective, clear, and distinct mass of knowledge produced by the sighted. So much so that the blind person even fails to notice the imperfection of human nature, since he lacks the basic sensory skills to become knowledgeable in the fi rst place. As we have seen, Locke started his argumentation with the story of a man who was born with sight but turned blind, living in darkness for 40 or 50 years. According to Locke, this blind person told him the story himself. This information is important for Locke, because it enables him to compare the person gone blind (who loses his ideas of color) with the congenital blind (who has never had such ideas) and, through this, a comparison between the blind and the sighted. However, we could question how valid such conclusions can

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be for Locke’s empiricist gaze, if they stand on such shaky grounds—the story told and not experienced by someone. If Locke did not trust words very much because they muddy the clarity of things, how can he trust the narrated experience of a blind person? Let us not forget that for him the blind man is a flaw, incompetent in terms of knowledge; therefore, to believe a blind man’s words would be to speculate on a truly untrue basis. However, Locke obviates this problem inasmuch as his ‘special informant’ is two people in one: He was sighted and has become blind. Thus, through him Locke does not compare so much ‘sight’ with ‘blindness’ as such, but ‘sight’ with ‘lack of sight’—ideas and their absence, knowledge and its absence: Thus, the comparison is between knowledge and its deterioration. Blindness, then, is reduced to a ‘lack of sight’; the complexity of the different sensory practices of blindness as a source for specific and complex forms of knowledge is completely ignored. There is no place in Locke’s discourse for the sensory practices of blindness, since for him these practices are not comparable to those of the realm of sight, ideas, and knowledge. Rather, they are excluded and differentiated from proper knowledge. The legacy of Molyneux’s problem—as told and analyzed for the fi rst time by Locke—iterates the epistemological dominance of vision and light and reformulates Plato’s cave story32 of the dividing line in modern terms. An epistemological line is drawn, just in order to be transgressed: a line between light and darkness, knowledge and ignorance, sight and blindness, epistemological rigor and epistemological impairment. Through modern epistemological politics, the previously blind person becomes a witness of his former ignorance, allowing others to verify the hypothesis of the sensorial and experiential nature of ideas and to question the parlance of ‘innate ideas’. The blind figure is instrumentalized to prove that ideas are not innate, and this only after having his sight restored. Being blind, he can offer no contribution to epistemological concerns. Only after being cured can he render his virginal look to exploration. Only then may his epistemological innocence and ignorance enable him to tell the truth about human nature at fi rst sight.

Epistemological Politics Now, if the blind figure is not treated as an equal when it comes to philosophy, neither is he one in politics. For Locke and other moderns, the quest to challenge the innate nature of human knowledge involved resisting the authority of unquestionable and traditional knowledge regimes— in particular, the closed authoritative knowledge systems of scholasticism (Morgan, 1977). Consequently, Locke’s politics were positioned against the uncritical acceptance of traditional forms of (political) knowledge practices understood and enacted as universal and innate principles. If knowledge is not innate but a result of human experience, so are traditional systems of thought, and therefore humans can change these as well.

90 Rethinking Disability This is not to say that for Locke there are no principles. On the contrary, Locke is primarily interested in basic truths (ideas) of understanding. But ideas cannot be innate because they are derived from experience: Experiencing God’s rules, principles, and innate ideas requires human labor to discover them and thus one should stop the vague speculations about their fi xed imprints and the political (oppressive) effects that come along with them. Locke’s fight against innate ideas is a struggle against blind trust in authority. And it is blind people who—since they cannot see—are highly dependent on trusting others blindly, so to speak. Not only is blindness an impediment epistemologically, but also politically. Modern epistemological politics include the blind, but as epistemologically ignorant and politically passive! Locke’s epistemological politics describes the process of knowing and understanding as a human learning process fostered perfectly by human sight. With sight one can learn to ‘see’ better intellectually and politically; one can come closer to things in order to understand and also to change them. And the figure of the blind becomes the epistemological tool to prove it. As the child who has to learn to see properly, distinguishing between the representation and the thing, so will the blind figure, cured from his cataracts and experiencing sight through new medical practices, learn how to see. Thus, modern epistemological rigor does not refer to the ‘epistemology strictu sensu’ (Latour, 2004) that cuts itself from social and political practices. Rather, modern epistemology is enmeshed in socio-political issues and is actively constructing and positioning the social world and its actors, dividing the latter into able and disabled, knowledgeable and ignorant, active and passive subjects. And it is the blind figure that fits for all. In any case, given the weak grounds of blind people’s declarations, Locke must have felt quite fortunate to receive Molyneux’s request in 1688. Indeed, Locke’s situation has turned to the better, since with Molyneux’s thought experiment the information does not come from a blind person, but from a former blind man who gives testimony of epistemological concerns. Moreover, a thought experiment posed by the sighted Molyneux seems to be trustworthier than the story told by the gone-blind person who has to compensate his lack of ideas with the mess of words. The mess of Molyneux’s words, however, seemed to be less problematic than the real story told by the blind man! Some years later, though, the circumstances will change—again in favor of Locke’s modern epistemology: As we have seen previously Bishop George Berkeley will feel fortunate to ground his Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (Berkeley, 1709/2005) on the report by a surgeon called Cheselden33 on the successful operations to remove cataracts.34 This new situation will allow modern epistemology to enroll scientists and medical practice to eventually prove empirically what before could only be speculated through the mess of words of the blind figure.

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This notwithstanding, problems will not disappear. The modern epistemological politics—the modern religion of vision as di/vision as it were— which neutralizes the sensory practices of blindness itself, shows its limits precisely in the empirical settings that attempted to translate this epistemology into medical and psychological practices. As clinical records show, after being restored to light the ex-blind person did not display a coherent set of practices, failing to provide a consistent answer to the epistemological riddle given by Molyneux and Locke (von Senden, 1960). As Warren (1978: 84ff) argues, it is precisely the artificiality of such clinical settings that makes evident the limits of the scientific and medical gaze, unable to address the full complexity of blind people’s practices. For instance, many of the conclusions drawn by perception studies using variants of this type of Molyneux experimentation rely on a highly questionable device: the ‘blindfolded’ subject. In these experiments, the reactions of a sighted person are compared with those of a sighted person whose eyes have been covered by a bandage. Maybe this is why, they admit, such experiments remain ‘generally unsatisfying’ (Warren, 1978). Indeed, comparing these ‘artificial blinds’ with the sighted reifies blindness as a deficiency of sight, as if there was nothing else to blindness than not seeing, underestimating the complex sensory relations of blind people in the fi rst place. Hence, theories of perceptions that are still concerned with Molyneux’s Problem in one way or another classify and trivialize blindness as predominantly an issue of non-sight. Moreover, the logics of modern epistemological politics individualizes the process of knowing as a matter of human perception and thus individualizes blindness as a ‘problem’ of human individuals who suffer from a lack of sight. The riddles around Molyneux’s problem are, as Michel Serres points out, more a question concerning the geometry of the sighted than a question for epistemology (Serres, 1998): It is precisely a matter concerning the modern religion of visual cultures. That is, even though the Molyneux Problem appears as an epistemological concern, it is a rather limited and specific one which relates questions of optics, medical practices, and human perception/ knowledge; moreover, it addresses the geometry of the sighted, inasmuch as it clearly and distinctively tries to separate the epistemological realm of the sighted from the non-epistemological practices of the blind. Indeed, the legacy of Molyneux’s problem creates a clear-cut division between blind and sighted people. This reduction is performed through abstraction and exclusion, both of which are already inscribed in the setting of these scientific and medical experiments performing a visual frame of references. The blind serve as ‘test persons’ within such highly abstract visual and geometric settings, settings which privilege the ‘nature of vision’ and the ‘nature of human knowledge’ in abstract, and not the specificities and multiplicity of everyday practices of blind people’s practices. Configured by visual means, blind people are conceived as ‘good practitioners of geometry’

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(Boullier, cited in Degenaar, 1996: 47). Only in this way do they fit into the scheme of the Molyneux Problem in the fi rst place. The objects that the blind person has to sense in Molyneux’s setting are perfect cubes and spheres, that is, geometrical objects, figures that we rarely fi nd in our world beyond the abstractions of language so perfectly adopted by medical and philosophical practice. The blind person has to deal with smooth, polished objects and forms that have been set in order to verify the geometry of the sighted. These are objects which abstract from the complexities of blind people’s everyday practices; not to mention all the (inter)relations with the other senses and the specificities of different socio-cultural contexts. The geometry of the sighted necessarily disregards the everyday practices of the blind, just as geometric bodies necessarily abstract from the complex realities of lived bodies, and medical practices from e.g. social relations. In The Birth of the Clinic, Michel Foucault has shown how the Lockean epistemological ideal of seeing and knowing has become absorbed and translated into the institutionalized ‘way of learning and seeing’ of medical practices (Foucault, 1997b: 64). Foucault illustrates fastidiously how the communion of sight, light, and ideas defi nes the positivity of the medical gaze. A gaze that transforms the linguistic impedimenta (the difficult relation between seeing and saying that has been bothering Locke) into a new relation between words and things: Modern medicine ( . . . ) identifies the origin of its positivity with a return—over and above all theory—to the modest but effecting level of the perceived. In fact, this supposed empiricism is not based on a rediscovery of the absolute values of the visible, nor on the predetermined rejection of systems and all their chimeras, but on a reorganization of that manifest and secret space that opened up when a millennial gaze paused over men’s suffering ( . . . ) it meant that the relation between the visible and the invisible—which is necessary to all concrete knowledge—changed its structure, revealing through the gaze and language what had previously been below and beyond their domain. A new alliance was forged between words and things, enabling one to see and to say (Foucault, 1997b: xii, original emphasis) Not surprisingly, the medical gaze has dominated the discourse on blindness since the 18th century. This is the momentous dream of us moderns that is often repeated; it is the moment in which the history of blindness and politics, philosophy, and medical innovation meet, in order to emerge anew. With the ex-blind person’s virginal gaze, blindness opens itself for the fi rst time to it’s own truth; with the enlightened gaze (be it politically, medically, philosophically), blindness is freed from its quasi-natural status of ignorance with the help of ‘the depositary and source of clarity’ (Foucault, 1997b: xiii) given by the eye and the nobility of sight. It is the moment where blindness disappears.

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Hence, medical, psychological, and pedagogical studies dominate the discussion on blindness by treating it as a lack of sight or generally as a problem of sensory impairment. Blindness is located within the body as a functional disruption of the normalcy of human vision, as a visual disability (cf. Dodds 1993; Sardegna & Paul, 1991; Zasloff, 1996). Such accounts make up the medical and individualistic model of blindness, as Oliver (1996) has argued, which defines blindness as a personal property, that is, impairment, a lack or loss of sight of an individual subject (WHO, 2001). This model distinguishes between physiological condition on the one hand and social context on the other. Even though social and cultural factors may affect the appraisal of blindness and its consequences in the life of a person, blindness as such must be understood, according to the medical perspective, as a physical condition. Blindness lies within the human subject, the warm body, making visible a direct and causal effect of the individual’s bodily and mental or psychological state. In effect, blindness as visual disability is regarded as a personal tragedy that needs to be treated with interventions upon the individual. As my analysis has shown, such a modelling of blindness is a highly specific process conducted by the power of modern epistemological politics that render the very socialness of blindness invisible. Moreover, blindness as ‘visual disability’ is an outcome of the classification, measurement, diagnosis, and treatment of different perspectives on the individual loss of sight. As another signum of modern epistemological politics, blindness is made present by functionally divided perspectives (di/visions as it were) of medical and professional care, knowledge and expertise on an individual deficiency of vision. Each of these perspectives creates a particular perspective on blindness as a negative effect of a lack or loss of sight. In spite of differences, these functional di/visions contribute to and stabilize the institutionalization of blindness as an individual problem or impairment. To summarize: Modern epistemological politics highlights that ‘the discourse of the world passes through open eyes, eyes open at every instant as for the fi rst time’ (Foucault, 1997a: 68). To our modern eyes, the history of blindness became the history of human knowledge and understanding, privileging the epistemological nobility of light and vision. This, according to my argument, has a long tradition most conspicuously visible in ancient Greek culture of light. Modern visual cultures owe much to the politics of Greek thought of vision and di/vision that clearly divided between being and becoming, humans (mortals) and non-humans (Gods), vision and blindness. Either you are capable of seeing the light in order to know and grasp the idea of things or you remain in the world of the blind that stumble in a vague world of mere opinions only tentatively follow the ever-changing multiplicity of empirical obstacles that are constantly re-assembled by the different ways bodies, senses, and things are related. Captured within the empirical world of becoming one remains unable to ‘see and tell’ and thus resembles the world of the blind. Being blind, one

94 Rethinking Disability will never reach the truth, the good, the beauty, justice, etc. precisely since there is no di/visionable ‘being’ of blindness, no idea of blindness except that it marks the effects of the lack of sight, the lack of being (inter-)mediated by light and thus enacts blindness as nothing but the lack of insight and knowledge. By dismissing the very practices of blindness itself and explaining blindness as a lack of enlightened, (inter-)mediated vision, we are at the heart of Platonism that favors the idea of things in the way they order empirical world. What makes the Platonic thought a Platonist movement is to forget the very empirical realm from which the ideas stem in the fi rst place. I have shown how Greek philosophy starts their systematic idealism from favoring sight as the most noble sense precisely since eyes and related practices of seeing and being seen are the most sun-like, i.e. the most God-like, practices. Obviously, Platonism depends very much on the metaphysics of light and (in-)sight that cannot be understood properly and thus depends on analogical thinking, which uses metaphors to make the founding ideas more real than the empirical complexity itself. The metaphysics of the empirical is translated into a metaphor. This very process refers to the very ‘blindness’ of Platonic reasoning itself. The blind figure functions as the empirical visible of such ignorance. At the same time, it is the blind figure that makes the ignorance of Platonic thought invisible. Moreover, by the strategies of black-boxing their own empirical ignorance Platonic thought purifies the world in a world of sight and a world of blindness, a realm of preferred ideas and paradoxes vs. a world of becomings and mere opinion, doxa. By drawing a clear (metaphysical) line that favors the idealistic world and di/visions it from the naïveté of the empirical world, not only do the blind turn—empirically and idealistically—into those who lack the abilities of mediating light, but the very ignorance of Platonic thought is made forgotten as well. Platonism makes forgotten the metaphysics of the empirical world that renders the empirical world in constant need of explanation. It is the different ways in which bodies, senses, and things relate that make the metaphysics of the empirical. It names the very socialness of blindness. We have seen how, in spite of its efforts and claims to overcome blindness, modern epistemological politics cannot do without the blind figure. The price the latter pays is high: In order to function within modern epistemological politics dominated by functional di/vision, the blind figure appears as a rather ‘hypothetical blind man’ deprived from the diverse and heterogeneous embodied practices and lived experiences of blind people themselves. Platonism, by forgetting about the empirical metaphysics of light and vision from which it gained its idealistic forms, explains the former by the latter. Ideas explain the empirical and by doing so Platonism constantly black-boxes how the empirical renders the ideas questionable. It blackboxes the blindness of ideas and with it the abilities of blindness itself. Through Platonism it is always the other that has to explain its ignorance and not Platonism itself.

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I have argued that such a Platonist movement is at work whenever we find idealistic either/or di/visions that purify the world in self-sufficient realms that explain the concrete, the materialities of the empirical world along abstract concepts that take the latter as the reality of things. Thus, the history of blindness appears to be the history that not only addresses the empirical world but also how it is successfully explained away by the idealistic world. It can also be read as the history of how visual cultures—in the name of knowledge, the good, truth, beauty, and justice—produce, define, and enact disabilities and inequalities precisely for taken the metaphysics of ideas as the explanatory device to make sense of the metaphysics of the empirical world. I have argued that such a Platonist moment is at work whenever disability studies differentiate a social model from a medical model, thereby di/visioning individual impairment from societal disability as categories of the ‘either/ or’. Unwittingly, disability studies, then, is part of the hegemony of modern visual cultures that have radicalized the Greek system of ‘either/or’ by installing their own religion of modernity by bifurcating the realm of nature from culture, of humans from non-humans, of the social from the non-social. This appears to be most unfortunate since it is the social model of disability that has been trying to overcome the (a-)normalization processes of a medical model, which has been accused of ontologizing and naturalizing disability as an individual impairment by highlighting the empirical praxis of disablement instead. To differentiate between the social and the medical, between society and the individual, between disability and impairment the very Platonism of visual cultures does prolong. Not only does it support the logics of di/vision, it also naturalizes ‘the social’ or ‘society’ as the explanatory power of impairment and disability. In order to create Rethinking Disability, however, I have argued for rethinking the social as well. I have done so by introducing the difference between the ‘religious’ and ‘religion’. Whereas the former (‘religious’) refers—although in an abstract form—to ‘the social’ that has to be explained by the re-assembling of heterogeneous entities that bind diverse bodies, senses, and things, the latter ‘(religion’) demands a decision, an ‘either/or’ di/vision of believing in this or that, which explains the assemblages. It explains the many by the one. So do disability studies when they explain disability by ‘the social’ as some(-)thing different from impairment and explain individual impairment by ‘the social’. This is precisely why it is so important to draw upon the history of blindness since it narrates the history of disability not only as a category of the ‘either/or’, but also as an idealistic matter of fact that brings to the fore the very normative di/visions of hegemonic practices and how they are made absent. Thus, cultures of vision not only black-box blindness, they also favor an understanding of the social that is very much the effect of cultures favoring sight and vision. With the return to the Greek epic, to ancient Greek myths and tragic plays, we can see already a different way of understanding of the social; it has become visible with the ambiguities and contingencies of the blind figure as a figure of transgression. Rather than

96 Rethinking Disability separating off different realms of humans and non-humans, knowledge and ignorance, the social and the non-social, it is precisely the blind figure that functions as a figure of connection, of mediation. The blind figure mediates between the different entities and thus brings to the fore all the multiple and often contradictory ontologies of the reality of blindness. It stresses, so my argument goes, an alternative understanding of the social that does not explain the reality of blindness idealistically but draws on the metaphysics of the empirical that leaves open what is to be understood as ‘the social’. Hence, the history of blindness as narrated by Greek art and plays makes us aware that ‘the social’ does not explain anything but has to be explained by the very assemblages of heterogeneous entities itself. So, we might ask ourselves, what have we learnt and what can we still learn from history of blindness? With the analysis of the Greek philosophy, Berkeley, Molyneux’s problem, and John Locke’s essay, we have learned that epistemology is always already politics. Politics of visual cultures that cannot do without blindness although they try to do without it by black-boxing blind practice itself. Platonism and even empiricist accounts like Berkeley’s and Locke’s, as well as subsequent theories linking human knowledge to theories of vision and perception, continue an epistemological and geometrical project that abstracts and excludes the complexities of blind people’s life. The very strength of disability studies has been, precisely, to propose alternatives to challenge the reductionist perspective(s) of modern epistemological politics. Opposing the conceptualization of disability as a physiological condition, disability studies have emphasized the radical importance of social structures, cultural perception, and collective experiences in the constitution of disabilities (e.g. Barton, 1996; Corker, 1998, 1999a, 1999b; Corker & Shakespeare, 2002; Hales, 1996; Ingstadt & Whyte, 1995; Mitchell & Snyder, 1997; Priestley, 1998; Scott, 1969; Stiker, 2002; Swain, Finkelstein, French, & Oliver, 1994; Gleeson, 1999). However, the di/vision between medical or individualistic models on the one hand, and social models on the other, is reminiscent of the division we moderns have inherited from modern epistemological politics, as it has been unfolded prominently by Locke’s discourse: the division between primary qualities (physical and physiological characteristics of bodies) and secondary qualities (powers that produce sensations that are not in the bodies themselves). As I have stressed earlier, disability studies emerged as a highly political endeavor to protest against the reductionist effects of modern epistemological politics and its emphasis on primary qualities. In an attempt to counterbalance this excess, they put the weight on secondary qualities, favoring a social model of disability/blindness. Reversing this dichotomy has produced highly valuable insights into the importance of the social construction of disabilities and its political effects. However, to make secondary qualities primary qualities only seems to reverse the problem and runs the risk of offering a new reading of the old pre-modern book of epistemological politics but with the same old modern (visual) means.

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One possible way of rethinking blindness may suggest affi rming blindness as a practice that is more than seeing and not to be understood as a mere privation of sight (a lack) as well as more than a result of oppressive societal structures. In both cases, one will see beyond the bifurcated limits of what modern epistemological politics of blindness is able to see! This does not mean we should return to the ancient Greek blind figure with supra-human second sight but, more to the point, that we may do well to turn to the everyday practices of blind people, as has been addressed by the recent and highly stimulating work of blind scholars like Deborah Kent (Kent, 2008), Sally French (French, 1999), John Hull (Hull, 1991), Martin Magee (Magee & Milligan, 1995), Georgina Kleege (Kleege, 1998), Rod Michalko (Michalko, 1999), or Siegfried Saerberg (Saerberg, 2007), to name only a few. They show that blindness resists its mere depiction and defi nition as an (visual) impairment. Their work gives blindness its own voice! These authors reflect upon the history of othering blindness by epistemological politics and make evident that such attempts are highly problematic and disconcerting. ‘Blindness’ in such accounts refers to a multiplicity of practices and experiences. These readings of dis/ability describe the richness and differences of sensory practices of blind people within a societal infrastructure dominated by vision. They bring back the very socialness of blindness that has to be explained by the diverse ways of how different bodies, senses, and things relate. Such narrations show that blindness does not render itself easily to the realm of the legacy of the religion of modernity but offers alternatives to it. These accounts affi rm blindness and oppose in this way its reduction to a mere privation of vision (i.e. its reduction to being simply a ‘lack or loss of sight’) and di/vision (the clear divide between ‘the sighted’ and ‘the blind’, perspectives on a visual deficiency). If we want to bring back the ‘empirical metaphysics’ (Latour, 2005: 51) of blindness, it seems important not to remain within the either/or distinctions of modern epistemological politics, as is expressed by such ‘big divides’ as primary vs. secondary qualities, nature vs. culture, individual/medical vs. social, agency vs. structure, bodily impairment vs. societal disability, and so on as modern religions of vision and di/vision make us believe in (cf. Swain & French, 1997). If we abandon such oppositional dichotomies as starting points, we can begin affi rming the richness of the history of blindness and the practices of blind people. Moreover, we may start rethinking the socialness of disability that constantly re-assembles the heterogeneity of bodies, minds, senses, and things. After all, as its etymological root reminds us, ‘blindness’ is intrinsically linked to the practices of blending and mixing. Adopting such practices, we may start writing a history of blindness and dis/ability that opens up a space for ‘blending’ the disciplinary boundaries between social and medical models by telling a more diverse and complicated story of dis/ability if we consider the practices of how these dis/abilities are founding and stabilizing or disrupting and changing common modes of societal ordering. It

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may make us rethink those abstract ‘big divides’ so powerfully installed by Platonism and modern epistemological politics. Moreover, it may enable us to think of blindness and dis/ability as a mode of inclusion that does not exclude but includes the heterogeneity and difference of the other. Obviously this is a project that cannot do without philosophy as much as the philosophy involved cannot do without the ordinary actions of dis/ablement. It requires a philosophy in medias res. The intermediate reflections offer a possibility to do so and outline a dis/ability manifesto.

Part II

In Medias Res

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A Dis/ability Manifesto

Rethinking Disability transcends the rift between theory and practice of disability; with it the division between impairment and disability or individual and society, is transgressed. Rethinking Disability brings back a philosophical ethos of the empirical into the social understanding and construction of dis/ability. The dis/ability manifesto centers the social as the core matter of concern. Following Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1994: 2), this comprises ‘the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts’ of dis/ability. It bids farewell to the idle idea of fi nding a consensus upon or gaining the power over what dis/ability is—be it through contemplation (‘objective idealism’), reflection (‘subjective idealism’), or critical communication (‘intersubjective idealism’). The conceptual rethinking of disability tries to avoid a general and abstract idea of disability, but focuses on retracing the singularity of issues concerning dis/ability as they become real in the process of assembling bodies, minds, senses, and things. Thus the conceptual practices cannot be thought of without the physical, the material, i.e. the empirical. More precisely, it is the contingency of the empirical realities that configure the concept of dis/ability. The conceptual and physical are different entities and should not be conflated. However, they can be explained only in association with and through the other. This names the explanatory purpose of the philosophical, conceptual ethos that differs from modelling disability as a social and/ or medical matter of fact: Its business is to explain the more abstract things from the more concrete things. It is a complete mistake to ask how concrete particular fact can be built out of universals. The answer is, ‘in no way.’ The true philosophical question is How can concrete fact exhibit entities abstract from itself and yet participated in by its own nature? In other words, philosophy is explanatory of abstraction, and not of concreteness. ( . . . ) Each fact is more than its forms, and each form ‘participates’ throughout the world of facts. The definiteness of fact is due to its forms; but the individual fact is a creature, and creativity is the ultimate behind all forms, inexplicable by forms, and conditioned by its creatures. (Whitehead, 1978: 20)

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This is what the present chapter is aiming for: It tries to clarify the abstractions that are used to explain dis/ability. There are many of them that gained sacred forms within modern thought: ‘the social’, ‘society’, ‘nature’, ‘human’, ‘things’, ‘bodies’, ‘senses (perception)’, ‘mind’, ‘subject’, ‘object’, etc. Obviously, Rethinking Disability cannot explain all of the abstractions mentioned. This cannot be the aim and would easily misread the Whiteheadean concept. Furthermore, and this is the lesson one can learn from Whitehead’s empirical philosophy (and Deleuze & Guattari’s, ANT, and many others) as well: It is not about mere thought experiments, or pure mental activity, perception or perspective, or theoretical investigation concerning dis/ability; nor is it about fi nding out abstract explanations about the question ‘what is disability’s nature?’ On the contrary, it is precisely the avoidance of ‘the fallacy of misplaced concreteness’ that tries to explicate the concrete by the abstract. Consequently, the questions concerning dis/ability’s nature shouldn’t be couched in terms of stuff, or matter, or material ( . . . ) which has the property of simple location in space and time. ( . . . ) What I mean by matter, or material, is anything which has the property of simple location. By simple location I mean one major characteristic which refers equally both to space and to time, and other minor characteristics which are diverse as between space and time. (Whitehead, 1967 [1925]: 48–49) Rather—and this is what the genealogy of the etymology of ‘religion’ and respectively the concept of the ‘social’ point at: It is about unravelling the processes, practices, and relations of (re-)assembling mind and matter, theory and practice, humans and non-humans, etc. that elucidate the dipolar actual entities of dis/ability. Once we try to avoid simply locating dis/ability within ‘society or ‘the individual’, ‘the social’ or ‘the physiological’, we can start Rethinking Disability anew, tracing the heterogeneous relations of bodies, senses, and things that make up the shifting and often ambiguous sociality of dis/ability. If one considers the philosophical ethos of the empirical as being ‘explanatory of abstraction’ and thus a moment of creation and creativity that (a) associates facts and forms and (b) highlights their interdependencies, one may open new possible ways of linking innovative conceptual thought with rigorous empirical research of dis/abilities.1 It is the richness, complexity, and contingency of the empirical world that teaches the conceptual understanding of dis/ability and not the other way round. Such an empirical philosophy of dis/ability leaves open what dis/ability is, when, where, and why it leads to disabling or enabling practices. From the view of empirical philosophy, dis/ability remains to be explained: empirically and conceptually. Moreover, only if one tries to avoid—conceptually and within our research agendas—to simply locate dis/ability, we will become

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able to (a) avoid and fight the negative effects of dis/abling practices in late modernity, (b) insert critical and subversive knowledge and practices instead, and (c) stay away from becoming a modern ‘religion’ of the either/or but draw upon the socialness of dis/ability that enables and questions given di/visions.

FROM MODELS TO CONCEPTS With this in mind Rethinking Disability advocates a conceptual understanding of the social of dis/ability rather than a social model of disability. The difference between concept and model is important. A model is very much an abstract, idealistic methodological framing of reality. It gains its strength by reducing the complexity of reality by disregarding or neglecting particular characteristics or specificities. Thus, the social model of disability wittingly disregards the individual medical or biophysical concerns in order to highlight the ‘social’ dimension of disability instead. This not only is seen as an alternative to other models (respectively the medical model) but has pragmatic reasons as well. It is thought that the disabled people benefit from the different perspective given by the social model inasmuch as it represents disability as a ‘social’ and collective matter of facts next to biomedical and/or individual matters of fact. Interestingly enough, to name the ‘social’ approach to disability a ‘model’ imitates, and is very much indebted to a techno-scientific reasoning that the social model is meant to be an alternative for. A conceptual approach to disability on the other hand is concerned with the intrinsic relation between the empirical and conceptual and how both sides are constantly made real, configured, and reconfigured by the very relation. Thus, a concept of the socialness of dis/ability draws upon how the reality of dis/ability is (re-)constructed and (re-)enacted. It opens the space for questioning such reality and thus may constantly contribute to rethinking the specificities of that reality. Hence, a conceptual approach of disability tries to avoid the notion of ‘the social’ becoming ‘one’ or a universal explanatory domain next to the biomedical, physical, etc. Rather, it brings to the fore how the relations between and within biomedical practices, physiological relations, etc.—say between bodies, senses, and things—(re-)assemble and (re-)enact the socialness of disability. From a conceptual approach there is neither the need for a model of the either/or in order to trace the socialness of dis/ability, nor is there a need to exclude the non-social from a major role in understanding dis/ability. On the contrary, it is the non-social and how it relates that is part and parcel of experiencing the socialness of dis/ability. Deleuze and Guattari lucidly describe the conceptual thinking as advocated here. Accordingly, concepts create events and aren’t about mere matters of fact:

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Rethinking Disability Concepts are not waiting for us ready-made, like heavenly bodies. There is no heaven for concepts. They must be invented, fabricated, or rather created and would be nothing without their creator’s signature. ( . . . ) The concept is the contour, the configuration, the constellation of an event to come. The concept is obviously knowledge—but knowledge of itself, and what it knows is the pure event, which must not be confused with the state of affairs in which it is embodied. The task of philosophy when it creates concepts, entities, is always to extract an event from things and beings, to set up the new event from things and beings, always to give them a new event: space, time, matter, thought, the possible as events. ( . . . ) The philosophical concept does not refer to the lived, by way of compensation, but consists, through its own creation, in setting up an event that surveys the whole of the lived no less than every state of affairs. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994: 33–34)

Rethinking Disability, then, is about conceptual practices that highlight the singularities of the experiences of dis/ability: its eventful character. In other words: Unlike the ethos of modern religion, a philosophical ethos of the empirical argues that universals like ‘disability’, ‘impairment’, or ‘nature’, ‘the individual’, ‘the social’, and ‘society’ do not explain anything—they themselves have to be explained (cf. Deleuze & Guattari, 1994: 11). This is why, and it is my main point, the social model of disability risks all the strength of its argument by substituting ‘society’ for ‘nature’ or the ‘individual’ as the explanatory sacred of disability. Rather, as I argue, it is ‘the social’ and with it the modern religion of ‘society’ that is put into question by the realities of dis/ability and not explained by it. The retracing of ‘the social’ along the etymology of ‘religion’ already indicated the very limits of the explicatory power of universals inasmuch as it refers to the bond of heterogeneous entities that cannot be explained separately, i.e. simply located, but come into being only in association with their other, along the inclusion of what they are not. It is precisely the bond between the world and God, a supplement to the association of heterogeneous elements—minds, bodies, senses, and things—that expresses in abstracto their religiousness and in concreto the social becoming of how minds, bodies, senses, and things and their abilities and disabilities come into being. Following from that to simply locate dis/ability within ‘the social’ or ‘society’ also points to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness if considered not as an event but as a mere matter of fact. Philosophical concepts open the space for eventful thinking which ‘model-thinking’ tries to avoid. The social sciences have been successful in questioning any attempt to simply locate ‘reality’ either within nature or within the human being. This is what concepts of dis/ability share with the social model; they bring to the fore the relations, the practices that enact dis/ability and are suspicious of abstract theorizing (cf. Oliver, 1996). Now it is time to question

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all these related strategies that simply locate reality and with it the reality of disability within ‘society’. The explicatory power of the universal of ‘the social’ or ‘society’ remains to be explained as well: As a universal ‘the social’ or ‘society’ explains nothing but has to be explained in the way it is relating (with) the non-social. Once we avoid simply locating dis/ability in the mind, in the body, in the senses, in society or nature, we are able to re-read and re-assemble the social and bring back the possibility to include minds, bodies, senses, and things and how they configure the complex realities of dis/abilities. With this in mind, the philosophical reading of the etymology of ‘religion’ refers to an immanent understanding of ‘beings’ or ‘things’ (e.g. dis/ability) as events, gathering a collective of heterogeneous entities which entails actual entities (beings) and the process of becoming actual (becomings). It brings to the fore the reality of dis/ability as a creational, constructed, and eventful unity from the manifold and a unity within and of the manifold. It describes the conceptual reality of ‘dis/ability’ as a process of concrete construction: Concepts of dis/ability need the material in order to become real and vice versa. Hence, the conceptual cannot be thought without the physical and vice versa. No theory of dis/ability makes sense without the practices and experiences of dis/ablement. And the practices and experiences of dis/ability cannot be thought of directly; they are in need of concepts. It is the reality of things that come into being as a gathering, an assemblage of heterogeneous entities and not as a given matter of fact—be it physical or conceptual, natural, individual or social. In such a reading, the ‘being’ of dis/ability names a ‘becoming’ and opens up diverse ways of rethinking the realities of dis/ability: in theory and in practice. It induces a change through rapprochement of the actual and the virtual of dis/ability which may strengthen to address the question of how we live and how we want to live. This is why I have introduced the etymology of ‘religion’ and gave it a socio-philosophical interpretation in the first place: It refers to the most general ontological viz. cosmological concept of reality that relates assemblages of collectives of heterogeneous entities. It is about the mystery, the metaphysics of the creative act, of becoming self in bondage with and through the other. It is through the other that we also may be able to think of our lives differently. In such a reading, dis/ability studies is a core practice-oriented project of thinking and re-thinking the socialness of human conduct. If we want to know about societies we have to look at how dis/abilities come into being and we shouldn’t rely on an idealistic domain of the social called ‘society’ in order to understand dis/ability. This is precisely what the etymology of religion makes visible and what it means when it refers to ‘the bond between God and the World’. It addresses the ontological mystery of ‘creative origination’ (Whitehead, 1978: 341) of things assembling the conceptual and the empirical, mind and matter, i.e. ‘conceptual appetition’ and ‘physical realization’ (ibid.), fluency and permanence, embodied emotions,

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feelings and consciousness, humans and non-humans, infi nite and finite, etc. Hence, if understood socially, these ‘universal opposites’ (Tarde, 1999a) that make up ‘bipolar’ (for instance abled and disabled) actual entities ‘cannot be separated into two distinct problems. Either side can be explained only in terms of the other’, as Whitehead (1978: 347) rightly argues. This extensive quote makes its more than clear: God and the World are the contrasted opposites in terms of which Creativity achieves its supreme task of transforming disjoined multiplicity, with its diversities in opposition, into concrescent unity, with its diversities in contrast. In each actuality there are two concrescent poles of realization—’enjoyment’ and ‘appetition’, that is, the ‘the physical’ and the ‘conceptual’. For God the conceptual is prior to the physical, for the World the physical poles are prior to the conceptual poles. A physical pole is in its own nature exclusive, bounded by contradiction: a conceptual pole is in its own nature all-embracing, unbounded by contradiction. The former derives its share of infi nity from the infi nity of appetition; the latter derives it share of limitation from the exclusiveness of enjoyment. ( . . . ) God and the World stand over against each other, expressing the fi nal metaphysical truth that appetitive vision and physical enjoyment have equal claim to priority in creation. But no two actualities can be torn apart: each is all in all ( . . . ) Opposed elements stand to each other in mutual requirement. In their unity, they inhibit or contrast. God and the World stand to each other in this opposed requirement. God is the infi nite ground of all mentality, the unity of vision seeking physical multiplicity. The World is a multiplicity of finites, actualities seeking a perfect unity. Neither God, nor the World reaches static completion. Both are in the grip of the ultimate metaphysical ground, the creative advance into novelty. Either of them, God and the World, is the instrument of novelty for the other. (Whitehead, 1978: 348–349) It is the abstractness of the notion of ‘the social’ that remains to be explained in the way it relates to its other: the non-social. This has been the hypothesis: It is the understanding of religion as the religiousness of things that brings us closer to understanding ‘the social’. The social depends on the religiousness of things. The social, then, is about how it relates the nonsocial in order to assemble things, to bind collectives. And this is precisely what the etymology of ‘religion’ suggests! As we will see, such a reading of ‘the social’ will open up a novel understanding of the sociality of dis/abilities and it suggests novel ways of thinking about how dis/abilities come into being and perish in the way they (re-)assemble collectives beyond the hiatus of impairment vs. disability. A conceptual reading of ‘religiousness/socialness’ addresses the immanence of assembling the collectives of heterogeneous entities. It is about

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the construction of reality that comes into being as the immanence of transcendence (or the metaphysics of the empirical). Reality translates heterogeneous entities into being by the way heterogeneous entities are assembled. Thus, the philosophical reading of what is religious about ‘the social’ is that ‘the social’ mediates otherness and heterogeneity: mind and matter, self and other, the past, present, and future, the local and the global, the private and the public, the collective and the individual, humanity and technology, nature and culture, cultural diversity, etc. The dynamics of mediation2 may help us to better understand related hybrid forms of emerging societal reality and agency of dis/ability in late modernity. The latter visualize reality as a process of mediating heterogeneous elements, which, due its contingency (for good and/or bad effects), is—in principle—a risky and uncertain process. In that light mediation offers the possibility of understanding different identities and realities not as a mode of exclusive perspectives but rather as a mode of inclusive differences (Schillmeier, 2008b, 2009b). Whereas the former focuses on the exclusion of difference, diversity, and heterogeneity (the transcendence of difference), the latter refers to the process of mediation of the different and heterogeneous in order to understand current societal processes of belonging, of emerging agency, identity formation, i.e. subject and object formation of all kinds, etc. (the immanence of difference). Such inclusive dynamics stipulate the reframing of societal practices linking minds, bodies, and things in multiple ways. It enables comprehension of the transgression of traditional (b)orders precisely as a non-linear process of risk practices. Practices of risk require and acknowledge heterogeneity and difference instead of separating off exclusive spaces that dis-recognize the interdependency and inter-connectedness of diversity and otherness. The dis/ability manifesto questions the religion of ‘the social’ and highlights its religious, conceptual, and empirical reality. It offers a possibility to rethink the very unfortunate and highly modernist separation between the individual and society or impairment and disability. Thus, it provides a possible conceptualization of ‘the social’ of dis/ability that goes beyond its mere modern outlook which frames the religion of the social model of disability that is given by principles of simple location, separation, and exclusion. Whitehead (1978, 1995) offers an alternative reading that questions the ‘simple location’ or the very bifurcation of the nature of things. For Whitehead, ‘An isolated event is not an event, because every event is a factor in larger whole and is significant of that whole. There can be no time apart from space; and no space apart from time; and no space and no time apart from the passage of the events of nature. The isolation of an entity in thought, when we think of it as a bare ‘it’, has no counterpart in any corresponding isolation in nature. Such isolation is merely part of the procedure of intellectual knowledge. ( . . . ) The ingression of

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Following my line of argument as set out earlier, the ‘vicious bifurcation’ has become the religion of modern self-understanding. It is the ethos of modern religion to constantly re-read, re-assemble, and re-create the traditional world by technoscientific innovation, human sciences, and philosophical thought and making up novel forms of collectives that relate anew humans with humans and humans with non-humans. At the same time, all these changes are granted to the ‘human world’ or later to society. In doing so, we moderns are religious in a very specific way. We create novel assemblages that are neither solely human nor non-human affairs, but we explain these assemblages by separating off ‘ontological zones’, purified spaces of humans and non-humans (cf. Latour, 1993). In its radical modernist form, we fi nd the same strategy in the way we deal with ‘the social’ or ‘society’. Although ‘the social’ or ‘society’ is constantly made up and re-created by the interaction of humans and non-humans, the social explanation either is given to ‘humans’ when they attach meaning to their action with others and/ or related objects (cf. Blumer, 1969; Goffman, 1973, 1974) or is given to ‘society’ (or ‘nature’) that is granted a reality on its own (Durkheim, 1953, 1960a, 1960b, 1982; Luhmann, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998). And this also applies to the social model of disability: Although the social model of disability cannot be thought of without the experiences of individual impairment, it is ‘society’ that disables on top of the individual impairment(s). Whitehead’s alternative of eventful being (as briefly noted earlier) signals a possible way beyond modernist bifurcation and—as I will suggest—a possible starting point for Rethinking Disability. Going beyond the religion of modernity we will fi nd multiple belongings and hybrid identity formations that cannot be addressed adequately by the logics of exclusive differences (Axford, 2006; Beck, 2007; Urry, 2000). Likewise, it will bring to the fore the controversies of the politics of disability studies that rest upon a specific critique of societal power relations understood as the effect of repressive or oppressive structures. As Foucault has argued, ‘[I]n these analyses there is an implicit reference to a power whose major function is repression, which is effective essentially at a superstructural level, is part of the superstructure, and whose mechanisms are essentially linked to ignorance and blindness’ (Foucault, 2003: 43). For the social model of disability the superstructure is given by society in opposition to the individual, to nature that produces rigorous division, exclusions, marginalization, etc. Thus, from an exclusivist perspective, disability is understood as the superstructural power of society exercised ‘as mechanisms and effects of exclusion, disqualification, exile, rejection, deprivation, and incomprehension; that is

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to say an entire arsenal of negative concepts or mechanisms of exclusion’ (ibid. 44). However, against that background and in order to gain a strong voice that is able to speak for dis/abled life Rethinking Disability suggests moving beyond the ‘either/or’ strategy that defi nes the understanding of ‘the social’ as the delimiting marker of disability and for those who speak in the name of it. The social model of disability is traditionally modern, too traditionally modern, in my view. By arguing along exclusivist divisions exercised by a superstructural power of society the social model has locked itself up in the tradition of modernist thought, which produces all too rigid structures, and thereby paradoxically lost the conceptual ductibility and malleability of understanding the very sociality of dis/ability. This, then, leads to the very unfortunate exclusivist di/vision between individual impairment and social disability. It reiterates a very modern di/vision that clearly states where we might fi nd politics and thus ways of doing things differently. It is again society (and not the practices of individuals) which is not only the sole realm where the social model locates (political) power, but also the space for resistance, emancipation, freedom, etc. being exercised. This very much resonates with a traditional modern exclusivist division between ‘society’ and ‘nature’ whereby only within society do we fi nd possibilities for emancipating from a non-political nature that, uninterestingly, just does what it does. Rethinking Disability stresses that the social model is governed by an understanding of political power that clings to a historically outdated model. Throughout his work it has been Foucault’s conviction to get free from the idea of political power that ‘has to be analyzed within the Hegelian horizon of a sort of ( . . . ) totality that through an effect of power is misrecognized or broken up by abstraction or division’: It seems to me that it is both a methodological and a historical error to consider power as an essentially negative mechanism of repression whose principle function is to protect, to preserve, or reproduce the relations of production. It also seems wrong to consider power as something situated at a superstructural level relative to the play of forces. Finally, it is wrong to consider power as essentially linked to the effects of ignorance. It seems to me that this kind of traditional and ‘omnicirculating’ conception of power, found in historical writing and in present-day political and polemic texts, is actually constructed on the basis of a number of outdated historical models. It is a composite notion that is inadequate for the real world in which we have been living for a considerable length of time, that is, since at least the end of the eighteenth century. From where is this conception borrowed that sees power impinging massively from the outside, as it were, with a continuous violence that some (always the same) exercise over others (who are also always the same?). (Foucault, 2003: 50)

110 Rethinking Disability My point is that along this specific form of differentiation given by exclusivist divisions the very modern realm is delimited and rendered durable. However, it is important to see the very particularity of how modern exclusivist divisions come into being. Paradoxically, it is precisely not by ‘exclusion’ but ‘inclusion’. More precisely: Exclusivist perspectives visualize the modern gaze which unfolds a certain relationship linking inclusion and exclusion that renders the highly asymmetrical relation between what is seen as normal and what is abnormal stable: We moderns and our hegemonic discourses include the other by excluding ‘himself’, ‘herself’, or ‘itself’. Typically modern exclusivist divisions are given by the differences of subjects vs. objects, nature vs. culture, human vs. non-human, the individual vs. society, the social vs. the non-social, nation-states vs. nation-states, etc. Such politics of di/vision provoke a very unfortunate, highly modernist and anachronistic politics of belonging, fostering a ‘them or us’ attitude. Exactly such a ‘them or us’ attitude of disability faces its limits as well. Not only does it—wittingly and unwittingly—fi x the di/vision between the ‘abled’ and the ‘disabled’, the social model falls prey to a very common problem of critical sociological argumentation that tries to conflate the realm of ‘society’ or ‘the social’ as the space where disability is to be traced with the space of political resistance. As Bruno Latour has argued, the problem arises ‘from a confusion ( . . . ) between assembling the body politic and assembling the collective’: To put it broadly, society, this 19th century invention, is an odd transitional figure mixing up the Leviathan of the 18th century and the collective of the 21st. By asking society to do two jobs at once, that is, to make a collective traceable and to play the role of a substitute for politics, it has never been able to do either of them properly. The supposed existence of society has precluded the emergence of a wellassembled collective as well as thwarted all efforts at defining the odd sort of corporate body that political activities should remain to form. (Latour, 2005: 161) What is key for understanding and belonging to the social model of disability is the critical space of the social realm, of ‘society’, where disability happens to be enforced ‘on top of ( . . . ) impairments’ (UPIAS, 1976). Thus, it is the social realm as ‘society’ that plays a double role within the social model of disability. On the one hand ‘the social’ or ‘society’ refers to the space where disability is infl icted upon individuals and on the other it is the social realm that frames the critique against the medical model of disability and the belonging to the social model of disability. A critical theory of dis/ability that sets ‘society’ against the ‘individual’ sustains conceptually and methodologically the mysticism of the ‘individual’ and ‘society’ as two realities on their own. Models of disability that rely on the unfortunate distinction between ‘individual’ and ‘society’, ‘culture’ and

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‘nature’, ‘impairment’ and ‘disability’ are models that gain their identity by a mode of excluding the other. The main problem I see with the current social model of disability is that it considers social factors as critically set against the ‘the individual’, ‘the medical’, ‘biological’, the ‘physiological’, the ‘mental’, etc. This has led to an ideology of the ‘either/or’: Either you explain disability by social factors and you are within the social model or you consider ‘non-social’ factors (like the medical model) and then you are outside the social model of disability. What started to dispute a hegemonic set of oppressive practices against disabled people that was thought as a way of implementing modes of emancipatory politics ever since has been in danger of creating a monistic politics of belonging and membership. Rethinking Disability argues that the social model runs the risk of setting up—wittingly and unwittingly—highly artificial, hermetic, and moral boundaries, separating off those fighting for the good, i.e. ‘social’ issues of disability and those implementing the bad, i.e. those dealing with ‘medical’ issues of impairment, of dividing individual experiences of impairment from collective experiences of disability and deepening the gap between ‘the ill’ and ‘the disabled’, alienating ‘the disabled’ from ‘health care’, implementing artificial classes of ‘the disabled ‘ and the ‘non-disabled’. What we fi nd here is a very unconvincing and even counterproductive instrumentalization of the social realm or society. It serves as a way of describing the space where the empirical reality of dis/ability is experienced and at the same time it functions as a substitute for political action that excludes technoscientific, medical practices, and related individual concerns from the social which make up great parts of the controversies of contemporary understandings of dis/ability. Paradoxically, the social model that was thought to liberate and open up the study of dis/ability concerns unwittingly is narrowing down and blocking a full understanding of disability by employing a model of ‘society’ that stands against a model of ‘nature’ as attributed to the technoscientific and medical discourse. In consequence, the social model faces a double problem: It cannot adequately describe and research neither ‘disability’ nor ‘impairment’. Moreover, in defi ning the social in difference to the ‘non-social’ it leaves out the very different genealogies that constantly unravel the social multiple of dis/abling experiences and practices. A social model of disability that excludes the individual embodiment or technoscientific, medical, and biomedical practices from ‘the social’ or ‘society’ (a) omits the socio-historical relevance and changes of (individual) impairment, and (b) limits disability to a rather fictional notion or substance of ‘society’ or the ‘social’ that is given a rather fi xed reality by reasons of a politics of identity, such as politics of opposition that exclude major societal controversies concerning dis/ability (medical practices, individual impairment, etc.). Following from that does it mean that disability studies should prescind from politics? Not at all! It would be naïve to acquit science from politics. Yet what I am suggesting is a shift of disability studies from a politics of

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exclusion towards a politics of inclusion. A social understanding of disability rightly pointed out there is no given nature of disability and that it is vital to visualize and question any form of naturalizing disability. However, in order to engage in politics in the 21st century a social model of disability should give up on the politics that set ‘society’ apart and against ‘nature’ as well. Thus, the critical power of the social model of disability in explaining disability has run out of steam whenever it tries to argue: (a) that disability is enforced by the realm of ‘society’ that differs clearly and distinctively from the individually embodied nature of disability (i.e. from bodies, senses, and things), and (b) that it is the realm of ‘society’ that explains the ‘nature’ of disability. Only if we put aside the self-explicatory realms of ‘nature’ and ‘society’ we may ask how we wish to live and become enabled to make a difference. Rethinking Disability tries to challenge both the idea that the ‘troubled nature’ of human bodies causes societal disabilities and the counter-idea that the forces of ‘society’ constitute disability. Accounts which critically set the ‘disabling society’ against the ‘impaired body’ and vice versa perform—wittingly or unwittingly—a very modernist strategy of ‘body politics’ that relates matters of disability against the background of exclusive domains of reality: ‘nature’ or ‘culture’ and ‘the individual’ or ‘society’. Rethinking Disability also diverges from current critical realist models of disability that try to overcome the social model of disability which enforces strong divides between impairments and disabilities, the abled and disabled, etc. (cf. Shakespeare, 2006). Such models try to outline an ‘embodied ontology’ that points out ‘that there is no qualitative difference between disabled people and nondisabled people, because we are all impaired’. At the same time, such a reading suggests that ‘impairment is not the core component of disability (as the medical model might suggest), it is the inherent nature of humanity’ (Shakespeare & Watson, 2001: 24). I agree with the empiricist claim ‘to expose the essential connection between impairment and embodiment’ (ibid. 22). Such a perspective not only refers to a ‘continuum of impairment and embodiment’. It also emphasizes that ‘impairment and disability are not dichotomous, but describe different places on a continuum, or different aspects of a single experience’ (ibid. 22). I also concur with the constructivist argument which says that the divisions between ‘able-bodied people’ and ‘disabled people’ are the effects of controversies and not natural givens. Thus it is more than important to follow how the very ‘processes of exclusion and discrimination’ (ibid. 25) come into being. However, such a revisited critical model of dis/ability rests upon an all too realist argumentation whenever it draws upon the relationship between ‘society’ and ‘the individual’. Shakespeare and Watson emphasize that ‘[p]eople are disabled both by social barriers and their bodies’ (Shakespeare & Watson, 2001: 17) and thus disability ‘sits at the intersection of biology and society and of agency and structure’ (ibid. 19). Since they talk about relationships between the ‘individual’ and

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‘society’ or between ‘biology’ and ‘society’ they seemingly take both sides as taken-for-granted domains of different realities—realities that on the one hand bodily impair and on the other hand socially disable. Hence, quite contrary to their post-modernist attitude they conceptualize disability in a very modernistic way as ‘a complex dialectic of biological, psychological, cultural and socio-political factors’ (ibid. 22). The problem I see with the social model as well with its critique by Shakespeare and others is, that it positions exclusive realities next to each other. The critical realist alternative draws upon the empirical ‘ubiquity of impairment’ (ibid. 24) which dissolves the anachronistic political ontology of the social model of dividing the world into abled people and disabled. However, it keeps the very modernist distinction between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ whenever it differentiates between the social vs. the biological, the psychological, etc. Having said this, I think it is time to move beyond the discursive riddle imposed by the distinction ‘impairment/disability’ and let it requiem in pace. Once one gets rid of (a) such artificial dualistic differences as the individual vs. society, impairment vs. disability that (b) locate the ‘social’ in only one side of these differences—namely on the side of society and disability—then the understanding of social assumes a totally different meaning. Consequently, the social, then, is not a matter of fact that differs from ‘non-social’ matter of facts (individual, impairment) but turns into a highly contested matter of concern that comes into being in relating the non-social (bodies, minds, senses, things).

FROM EXCLUSIVE PERSPECTIVES TO INCLUSIVE DIFFERENCES Rethinking Disability takes part in this ongoing societal controversy about dis/ability. However, it is arguing that ‘the social’ of a social understanding of disability can be thought quite differently and in a less antagonistic way. With this in mind, Rethinking Disability adopts a different methodology of the social that is not defi ned by a politics of excluding and opposing the ‘non-social’ side of dis/ability and related models and discourses of dis/ability. Rather, Rethinking Disability tries to outline an inclusive understanding of disability, whereby the so-called ‘non-social’ matters of disability are included in order to gain an adequate picture of contemporary issues of dis/ability. Rethinking Disability turns the common explanatory power attached to ‘society’ or ‘the social’ upside down. Rethinking Disability questions the default position of the social model of disability which stresses that it is ‘society’ that explains, enforces, and constitutes a reality on its own that configures the ‘real’ issues of disability and that it is not the individual, physiological limitation that has explanatory power of disability. I will argue that is not ‘society’ or ‘the social’—that by differing from ‘the individual’ or ‘the non-social’—does explain disability. Rather, it is ‘the social’

114 Rethinking Disability that has to be explained how the elements of the non-social—i.e. bodies, senses, and things—are related. The relations of bodies, senses, and things configure, that is stabilize and/or disrupt, question, and alter the cosmos of different time-spaces of societal relations. In such a reading, the social has to be explained by the ways the non-social is related. Having said this, one has to carefully re-address dis/ability without falling into the trap of essentializing different realities or realms of bodies of disability. What the current debates about disability have shown so vividly is that there is no single way, no one perspective and solution of addressing, locating, experiencing, practicing, thinking, researching, conceptualizing, and theorizing dis/ability. Rethinking Disability offers a different possibility to research and conceptualize the very social understanding of dis/ability. It stresses that neither ‘society’ (social disability) nor ‘nature’ (individual impairment), nor the relationship between body and society explain disability. Thus, 1. Neither ‘the body’ nor ‘society’, nor ‘impairment’ nor ‘disability’ refers to fi xed domains of reality. 2. Dis/abling practices are not explained by the ‘impaired body’ or/and by a ‘disabling society’. Rather, dis/abling practices configure and stabilize or question and alter social orderings that make up enabling or disabling relations. 3. To affi rm disability then is to assert disabilities and abilities. Taking these three points seriously it does not make much sense anymore to divide disability into self-explicatory spaces of individual impairment or social disability. In consequence the relationship between abled people and disabled people, between impaired bodies and a disabling society becomes nothing but the different ways of how bodies, senses, and things relate and thus constitute and/or alter social relations that may enable or disable. Such a reading offers a new empiricist perspective of dis/ability that allows one to trace the very practices and experiences of dis/ability as they emerge from the association of bodies—human and non-human alike. Rethinking Disability then tries to give a voice to all elements that make up the situatedness of experiencing dis/ability. I agree with Michael Oliver’s view that in order to understand dis/ability one has to move from theory to practice (Oliver, 1996). However, if we take the practices seriously there is no reason why not to go from practice to theory. Actually, it is the only acceptable way if we don’t want to end up in abstract theories of dis/ability detached from the very dis/abling practices themselves which appear as mere informative material for abstract concepts of ‘the body’, ‘society’, or ‘the social’. What I am saying is that it is the dis/abling practices themselves that move our theories of dis/ability. It is as much a stubborn cliché of modernist thought to divide ‘practice’ from ‘theory’ as it is to divide dis/ability into ‘body’ and ‘society’, ‘social’ and ‘medical’,

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‘social’ and ‘technical’, etc. Rethinking Disability also tries to decenter an understanding of disability as a mere container for the negative embodied effects of impairments that constitute disabilities in human organization. The turn from disability to dis/ability highlights the spatial, temporal, and historical situatedness of dis/abling practices and relations that decide upon when, why, where, and how enablement or disablement is experienced. Rethinking Disability focuses on the very material processes and practices of becoming enabled and/or disabled.

FROM CRITICAL SOCIAL THEORY OF DISABILITY TO THE COSMO-POLITICS OF DIS/ABILITY It is precisely dis/ability which visualizes often highly invisible but no less powerful hegemonic and unquestioned, standard, routine practices, and related norms and normativities that are propagated, passed on, and installed. Rethinking Disability, then, centralizes dis/ability as a major concept of agency that disrupts, questions, and alters the common modes of societal orderings. It stresses what I like to call the very cosmo-politics of dis/ability that disrupt, question, and alter matters of fact of social practices as well as matters of fact of how these practices are observed by the (social) scientific gaze. The hyphen between cosmo and politics is an attempt to signal the multiple and heterogeneous dimensions involved in the making and questioning typical of the transformation of dis/ability into a highly relevant societal issue. Following such a reading, the study of dis/ability is not so much about the rectification of societal ‘divisions of labor’ but a possibility of gaining lucid insights into the complexities, contradictions, and dynamics of the ‘labor of division’ as they become visible by everyday practices of human life that are more complex than the given, global perspectives of ‘the social’, ‘the cultural’, ‘the biological’, etc. (cf. Hetherington & Munro, 1997; Lee, 1997, 1998a, 1998b). Dis/abled people, then, are more than just informants for all too abstract and routinized containers of (social) scientific theories and concepts that make sense of disability in rather routinized ways. Rather, dis/ability cosmo-politicizes the very self-descriptions of the different scientific views. In that sense, dis/ability also challenges the regulatory and homogenizing practices of the scientific and theoretical gaze (cf. Moser, 2000). With this in mind, Rethinking Disability advocates a rigorous, empirically driven conceptualization and research agenda of dis/ability. The main argument is that dis/abled humans are not just mere informants for a critical social theory of disability. Rather, the different practices and experiences themselves that link bodies, senses, and things in multiple ways bring to the fore the ‘social explanation’ of disability. Dis/ability then is not a mere given ‘matter of fact’ but a highly disputed ‘matter of concern’. The relations of bodies, senses, and things make up the experience

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of dis/ability that draws attention to how human social life is embodied, lived, felt, stabilized or changed, organized or disorganized, and how we may describe, analyze, and interpret it. Dis/ability is a major experience challenging the powerful hegemony of traditional, common, and often undisputed ‘matters of fact’ of given realities. As a ‘cosmo-political event’ (Schillmeier, 2008a) dis/ability politicizes the seeming ‘nature’ or ‘normality’ of the relationship of given facts. ‘Matters of facts’ of societal relationships between fi xed entities turn into ‘matters of concern’ of social relations that remain to be discussed, analyzed, and explained by the ways non-social entities are associated. Rethinking Disability is not so much interested in the being of disability but in the different ways dis/abling scenarios come into existence. It is about the processes, practices, relations, and experiences of becoming dis/abled. In the course of everyday life people become enabled and disabled in multiple ways. Being situated in and unravelled by everyday practices people may simultaneously be enabled to do this and be disabled to do that. Thus, dis/ability is not to be understood as a generic, all-encompassing term that sticks to a person and defi nes a person’s relationship with others, or worse, with society. There are no relationships with society that defi ne disability precisely since there is (a) no matter of fact that can be called ‘disability’ and there is (b) no ‘matter of fact’ that can be called society. There is no such thing as ‘society’ since there is no such thing as disability. What counts though to understand the situated practices and experiences of becoming dis/abled are the synchronic and diachronic relations of dis/abling, i.e. different relations in time and space that configure dis/abilities. To be sure, arguing that there is no such thing as ‘disability’ and ‘society’ does not intend on the one hand to trivialize the very negative experiences of disability nor does it try on the other hand to individualize disability. On the contrary, I like to address dis/ability as a complex matter of concern that is a collective experience. However, the movement from being disabled to becoming dis/abled leaves it empirically, methodologically, and conceptually open as to when, where, how, and how extensively and intensively people become enabled or disabled. Rethinking Disability stresses that it is not ‘society’ perceived as a matter of fact that is dis/abling but it is the practices and experiences of dis/ability that turn ‘society’ into a matter of concern. Rethinking Disability reintroduces a major agency to dis/ability that allows one to reformulate the question concerning a social understanding of dis/ability. Rather than explaining dis/ability through an oppressive or liberating ‘society’ that stands behind or above the individual, it is precisely dis/ability that makes us aware that there is nothing but relations that link minds, bodies, senses, and things situating, riddling, and altering social relations in place. A social understanding of dis/ability, then, turns ‘the social’ into a matter of concern that cannot be self-explained by social matter of facts.

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AGAINST A THATCHERISM OF DIS/ABILITY AND BEYOND A SOCIAL MODEL OF DISABILITY It is important to note that by stressing that there is no such thing a ‘society’ but relations of the ‘non-social’, Rethinking Disability does not intend to provoke a Thatcherism of dis/ability. The notion of society is not questioned and can be dismissed since there are only individuals who have to decide on their own what to do with their disabilities. Rethinking Disability questions any such attempt to turn social issues of disability into a neo-liberal quest, into a Thatcherism of dis/ability. Having said this Rethinking Disability agrees: Yes, there is no such thing as society, but not as a Thatcherism of dis/ability tries to suggest: There is no such thing as society due to the fact that there are only clever, discretionary individual agents. To understand dis/ability, things are more complicated than a Thatcherism of dis/ability is able to accept. It neglects the very becomings of dis/ability, which are neither a matter of individual nor a matter of societal effects. Thatcherism ties disability to the individual, to a dis/abled body: The better or worse s/he is able to deal with her or his disability, more or less s/he is enabled or disabled. In such a reading dis/ability is misunderstood as an individual property of a calculative/ing subject that deals with a calculable object. In order to be in line with the demands of neo-liberal modes of exchange a rationalist solipsism such as a Thatcherism of dis/ability makes two main conceptual reductions in order to understand dis/ability. It abandons ‘society’ since it presupposes subjects and objects as given matters of facts that relate to others as if they were mere matters of facts as well. Hence Thatcherism takes individuals as mere matters of facts. Thus, the very politics of a Thatcherism of dis/ability conflates relationships of matters of facts with relations that make up matters of concerns. It omits the very processes of mediation that configure humans and their relations with others (human and non-human alike) as relationships of calculating subjects and calculable objects. What it does is elide the very agency of mediators—the agency of third agents as it were—which in the case of calculating subjects and calculable objects is money. Money is said to be a very special medium of communication, a ‘third agent’ so to speak. Whenever money is brought into circulation it turns humans and their relations into calculating relations, individualizing and rationalizing humans into subjects and objects. To treat matters of disability as a matter of subjects that deal with disability as object are the two sides of the same coin that conflates dis/ability with mere economic relations. As disability studies have shown, the experiences of dis/ability have to do a great deal with poverty, i.e. with matters of economic risks and hardship (Kirchner, 1995; Hollenweger, 2003; Cloerkes & Kastl, 2007). And yes, dis/ability issues once mediated into calculable matters of fact are part of a dispositif, a politics of compensation and normalization that regulates and governs the ‘non-normal’ (Moser, 2000; Waldschmidt, 2003, 2004; Winance, 2007). No doubt the effects

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of economization turn dis/abled persons into clients of a service sector that often enact the very negative experiences of individualizing and rationalizing dis/ability into a subjects and objects of calculation. But dis/ability is also about agency, about becoming discretionary agents: It is about having and getting a voice. In that sense, it is important to calculate with dis/abilities, but dis/abilities are not exhausted in matters of calculation. Rather, dis/abilities are mediated matter of concerns. To point out that there is no such thing as society makes sense only if one adds that there is also no such thing as the individual. Only then we come closer to a social understanding of dis/ability as proposed here. Hence, this way of Rethinking Disability has brought us into a rather alien situation: In order to rethink disability along a primarily social understanding, we got rid of the notion of ‘society’ and ‘disability’ as mere ‘social’ matters of fact since we have argued that there are only relations of minds, bodies, senses, and things. On the other hand, we also dismissed an understanding of the ‘individual’ and ‘impairment’ as mere matters of non-social facts. In effect, Rethinking Dis/ability unravels a concept of inclusive differences of dis/ability. Inclusive differences demand to include the other, the excluded, the marginalized, the indifferent and by doing so these differences question the limits of the formerly unquestioned normativity and hegemony of strategies, routines, and norms of practices and thought. To affi rm dis/ability is to assert that things might be different. It affirms an understanding of the social as a matter of concern that constantly comes into being and perishes by the multiple ways of how non-social entities (dis-)connect. This is the major argument of Rethinking Dis/ability: To think about our human life and its modes of social ordering is to reflect upon the practices and experiences as they emerge from the cosmo-politics of dis/ability. Dis/ abilities relate bodies, minds, senses, and things by constantly (re-)assembling the realities of the social. The experience of dis/ability renders the socially contested, open to be questioned and changed. Thus, it is precisely the cosmo-politics of dis/ability that cannot be explained by ‘society’ or ‘the social’ but renders ‘society’ or ‘the social’ in need of being explained. Hence, it is precisely the cosmo-politics of dis/ability and related social studies that riddle common practices, experiences, and concepts of ‘matter of fact’ differences, like ‘ability’ and ‘disability’, ‘human’ and ‘nonhuman’, ‘normal’ and ‘non-normal’, ‘individual body’ and ‘society’, ‘subject’ and ‘object’, ‘culture’ and ‘nature’, etc. With this in mind, dis/ability studies are not just another hyphenated ‘sociology of . . . ‘. Rather, dis/ability studies can be seen as a major project of contemporary scientific and philosophical studies of societal life and how these relations, ideas, and practices of differences are configured and conducted, i.e. of how these differences are brought into existence, made real, and thus become highly consequential in our daily practices. Dis/abilities make a difference—in practice and thought! Dis/abilities bring to fore how bodies, senses, and things connect or disconnect, enable and disable, provoke good as well as bad experiences. To

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affi rm dis/ability in such a way is to insist that it remains empirically open and conceptually indecisive inasmuch as the practices and experiences of dis/ability enable or disable, generate pain or joy, include or exclude. To assert dis/ability, then, provides rich insights into human life and how it is organized in time and space.

FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE—OR HOW TO DO GOOD THEORY . . . Mairian Corker rightly sees the danger that ‘Disability’ discourse, like many discourses and scientific theory, regulates the local imperative practices of its imperatives practices and imposes a homogeneity on subject positions, determining how the ‘reader’ can enter into the dialogic relation with the text and often manipulating the reader into the role of agent and enforcer of the text’s monolithic authority on ‘disability’. (Corker, 1999c: 76; cf. Moser, 2000) Every scientific writer should be aware of this. One way of challenging the order of scientific and theoretical discourse of disability is to draw attention to the eventfulness of (discursive) orders as it emerges from the experience of dis/ability itself that make up the specificities of what I have called the politics of becoming dis/abled (Schillmeier, 2007c). Following the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey the ‘things of ordinary experience [dis/ability] contain within themselves a mixture of the perilous and uncertain with the settled and uniform’ (Dewey, 1971: xv). Both scientific discourse and ordinary experience deal with the things of our everyday life as the effects of events and not as fi xed substances. According to Dewey, ‘both point to the idea of matter and mind as significant characters of events, presented in different contexts, rather than underlying and ultimate substances’ (ibid. xvi). The experience of dis/ability then is ‘characterized by histories, that is, by continuity of change proceeding from beginnings to endings’ (ibid). Dewey’s understanding of experience is most important not only since it directly links ordinary experience with scientific reasoning. Further he argues that physical science makes claim to disclose not the inner nature of things but only those connections of things with one another that determine outcomes and hence can be used as means. The intrinsic nature of events is revealed in experience as the immediately felt qualities of things. The intimate coordination and even fusion of these qualities with the regularities that form the objects of knowledge, in the proper sense of the word ‘knowledge’, characterizes intelligently directed experience, as distinct from mere casual und uncritical experience. (ibid. xvi–xvii)

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These histories of experience are mediated by the connection of different entities—bodies, senses, and things—which offer the basics of critique: of critical knowledge of what is experienced and the ways of how it is experienced. According to Dewey, it is not the differentiation between nature and experience, between nature and culture that offers effective forms of critique. On the contrary, the modern divide between nature and culture hinders the articulation of effective critique of existing societal relations. Rather, it is the continuity of nature and experience/culture that is critique as it emerges from experience itself as the contingent process of eventful association, mediation, and transformation of things. The experience of things that mediates our social world into being, unravels the complexity and contingency, stability and instability, uncertainty and certainty, and with it the volatility, fragility, and the problems arising from the specificities of our human existence. With respect to dis/ability, such a reading that highlights the continuity of mind/matter, nature/culture, individual/society, agency/structure, and impairment/disability as eventful associations of heterogeneous elements by experience reconciles the highly modernist critique of social models of disability that differentiates between (natural) impairment and (societal) disability. It offers a new form of critique that articulates itself as a process of eventful mediation given by experience. Consequently, the experience of dis/ability becomes an open event of experience mediating primary (sensed, acted, felt, suffered, and enjoyed) and secondary (reflected) experience. 3 According to Dewey (1971: 4, 10–11)—following William James— ’experience’ is a ‘double-barrelled word’ (cf. W. James, 2003 [1912]) and constitutes the ground for empirical philosophy: [E]xperience is of as well as in nature. It is not experience which is experienced, but nature—stones, plants, animals, diseases, health, temperature, electricity, and so on. Things interacting in certain ways are experience; they are what is experienced. Linked in certain other ways with another natural object—the human organism—they are how things are experienced as well. Experience thus reaches down in nature; it has depth. It also has breadth and to an indefi nitely elastic extent. It stretches. That stretch constitutes inference. ( . . . ) [Experience] includes what men do and suffer, what they strive for, love, believe and endure, and also how men act and are acted upon, the ways in which they do and suffer, desire and enjoy, see, believe, imagine—in short, processes of experiencing. ( . . . ) [Experience] is ‘double barrelled’ in that it recognizes in its primary integrity no division between act and material, subject and object, but contains them in an unanalyzed totality. ‘Thing’ and ‘thought’, as James says in the same connection, are single barrelled; they refer to products discriminated by reflection out of primary experience.

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Adopting Dewey’s ‘denotative method’ grounded in experience does not question the idea of theorizing dis/ability nor does it restate a mere subjectivist reading of dis/ability. On the contrary, it offers an empirical, practiceoriented mode of theorizing that gains its critical strength by the very distributed material experience of dis/ability itself that associates minds, bodies, senses, and things. That dis/ability becomes a matter of concern depends on a highly complex ‘chain of intermediaries’ (W. James, 2003 [1912]: 28), which unravel a ‘context of associates’ (W. James 2003 [1912]: 5) that configures the subjects and/or objects of dis/ability. Hence, the difference between the subject and object, the knower and the known, thing and thought of the experience of dis/ability be treated as single-barrelled terms is reinterpreted ‘so that, instead of being mysterious and elusive, it becomes verifiable and concrete. It is an affair of relations, it falls outside, not inside, the single experience considered, and can always be particularized and defi ned’ (ibid. 6). In other words, the very contingencies and complexities of dis/abling practices become traceable as processes that link heterogeneous relations and not substances, essences. As I will show in Part III, it is precisely through the different contexts of associates (physical, mental, effectual, emotional, etc.) that the very social of dis/ability becomes visible as the intersection and mediation of heterogeneous material relations and processes. The very common strategies of dividing up disability’s ‘matter of fact’ by locating it either within the impaired body or as the effect of a disabling society, or as the relationship between these two different realities, are challenged. Rather, following a ‘denotative’ or ‘radical empiricist’ methodology, one can take conjunctive relations at their face value, holding them to be as real as the terms united by them. The world it presents as a collection, some parts of which are conjunctively and others disjunctively related. Two parts, themselves disjoined, may nevertheless hang together by intermediaries with which they are severally connected, and the whole world eventually may hang together similarly, inasmuch as some path of conjunctive transition by which to pass from one of its parts to another may always be discernible. Such determinately various hanging-together may be called concatenated union. . . . (Dewey, 1971: 56) Dis/ability turns into a ‘matter of concern’ that—depending on the ‘contexts of association’—articulates the ‘concatenated union’ of highly different modes of existence. Hence, [T]he one self-identical thing [disability] has so many relations to the rest of experience that you can take it in disparate systems of association, and treat it as belonging with opposite contexts [enabling and disabling, human and non-human, bodily and mental, social and nonsocial, past, present, and future, etc.]. (ibid. 7)4

122 Rethinking Disability Such a reading has tremendous effects on understanding the very socialness of dis/ability. Following from that the ‘social’ reality of disability does not refer to a single-barrelled term that defi nes the space of ‘society’ that differs from the ‘non-social’ reality of disability that defi nes its ‘nature’.5 Nor is ‘society’ or ‘culture’ the social space that defines the nature of disability, nor is it the subjective perception that defines disability6. Rather, it opens up the sometimes ambiguous, contingent, and uncertain and sometimes nonambiguous, non-contingent, and certain realities of experiencing dis/ability. It is precisely the ‘“co”, in which conjunctions do the work’ (Dewey, 1971: 102) that makes up the specificity of the social reality of dis/ability. In such a view, ‘the social’ which has been granted to ‘society’ is given back to the nature of experience itself only as a ‘multiverse’ (James) of conjunctions that mediate things into being, taking into account that ‘there is no original spirituality or materiality of being, intuitively discerned, then; but only a translocation of experiences from one world to another; a grouping of them with one set or another of associates for definitely practical or intellectual ends’ (W. James, 2003 [1912]: 77). Rethinking Disability crisscrosses the highly artificial division between individual, embodied impairment and socially constructed disability. From a ‘denotive method’ of experience, the di/vision between ‘impairment’ and ‘disability’—so vital for grounding a critical social model of disability— appears, though unwittingly, as a hidden theoretical strategy of abstracting from the socialness of dis/ability. The faster one forgets about the ideology of dividing ‘disability’ into the natures of impairment and disability, the faster one is able to turn from ‘theory to practice’ (Oliver, 1996) in order to conduct good, that is, empirically lead theories of dis/ability. Bearing this in mind, the critique of dis/ability studies gains a total different outlook. Critique is not enforced by separating off ‘social’ models of disability from ‘non-social’ models of impairment and its effects. Rather, dis/ability studies is meant to question all non-empirical methods of theorizing disability which ‘fail to use refi ned, secondary products as a path pointing and leading back to something in primary experience’ (Dewey, 1971: 9). Non-empirical theories of dis/ability are in danger of being trapped by the ‘fallacy of misplaced concreteness’. The latter means that ‘objects of reflection’ gain reality ‘in and of themselves’ by methods that abstract from the event of experience itself. In consequence ‘it becomes an insoluble problem what the things of gross, primary experience, should be what they are or indeed why they should be at all’ (ibid.). The abstractness turns into ‘blocks of inquiry, blind alleys: they are puzzles rather than problems’ and hinder problems of empirical methods to become ‘opportunities for more investigations yielding fruit in new and enriched experiences’ (ibid.). Dis/abilities emerge in situ within our everyday life. The dis/ability manifesto gives a voice to the material practices of dis/abling people and so identifies and affi rms their complex, multi-layered experiences of dis/ abilities.7 The questions why, when, and where one is meant to be abled or

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disabled, or why, when, and where a person experiences being dis/abled remain open empirical questions. What dis/ability is becomes a matter of how it is practiced and experienced in our everyday life. Rethinking Disability suggests that dis/ability is not a mere ‘matter of fact’: neither a mere given natural or individual fact, nor a mere social fact. Rather, dis/ability can be understood as the outcome of historically specific, embodied human and non-human configurations fabricated. Dis/ability matters! But dis/ability matters not as a fi xed, unquestionable, indisputable ‘matter of fact’. Rather, practices and experiences of dis/ability turn mere ‘matter of facts’ into ‘matters of concern’: They matter in order to understand and rethink societal life; they also matter in the ways these dynamics are observed by the view of the scientific gaze. They matter since they put the scientific gaze in question as well. Dis/ability understood as a ‘matter of concern’ problematizes the attempt given by exclusive perspectives that try to divide analytically, conceptually, or politically ‘disability’ a priori into an individual (natural) bodily impairment or a purely socio-cultural attributed disability. For ‘matters of concern’ neither the domain of ‘nature’ nor ‘society’ can function as a disability’s self-explanatory force. Rather, as a ‘matter of concern’ dis/ability disrupts, questions, and alters the understanding of dis/ability as a natural or societal matter of fact. As ‘matters of concern’ issues of dis/ability question the common orderings of social facts rather than being explained by them. Thus, the main argument of the book that treats dis/ability as a ‘matter of concern’ is simple but rich in its consequences: Dis/ability cannot be explained by ‘the social’ as if it is understood as ‘matter of fact’ that, although separated off from the matters of natural fact, is meant to explain the nature of disability. Generally speaking, neither the individual bodily or/and mental ‘impairment’ nor the societal forms of ‘disability’—taken on their own as sources, as matters of facts—are sufficient enough to address the emergence of the differences made by the experiences, practices, and understandings of dis/ability. Such a reading offers a new and revisited ‘constructivist’ and not ‘social constructivist’ account of what is known as the social model of disability. It also differs from a ‘critical realist’ stance that is meant to overcome a social model (Shakespeare, 2006). What unites such a perspective is ‘the social’ or ‘society’ as the explicative device of understanding disability and not impaired bodies. This book turns such a reading upside down and replaces the explanandum with the explanans: Dis/ability renders ‘the social’ in need of explanation and thus cannot be explained by ‘society’! The ‘social’ is not contained within ‘society’ as opposed to the ‘natural’ that is to be found in bodies human and non-human alike. Paraphrasing Bruno Latour, dis/abled bodies would not be ‘clarified in any way by adding something social to the description’ (Latour, 2005: 107) precisely since ‘the social’ cannot be understood as the explanatory device in the ‘rear-world’ (ibid.) that describes and defines rather nonsocial matters of facts—human and non-human bodies alike.

124 Rethinking Disability Hence, saying that dis/ability is ‘constructed’ simply means ‘that we account for the solid objective reality by mobilizing various entities whose assemblage could fail; ‘social constructivism’ means, on the other hand, that we replace what this reality is made of with some other stuff, the social which it is ‘really’ built’ (Latour, 2005: 91). That dis/ability is constructed means that ‘[the] social is nowhere in particular as a thing among other things but may circulate everywhere as a movement of connecting nonsocial things’ (ibid.). The social, then, is a movement, a process of associating non-social entities. In other words, dis/abled bodies become social bodies when they are described as the association of non-social things. But what exactly is the social then? And what is the non-social? Following Latour and Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) ‘the social’ is not to be understood as a realm, a reality on its own that defi nes itself by excluding the non-social. Rather, the social is social by associating the nonsocial. It refers to a process of ‘inclusive differentiation’ that makes up the social and not to a perspective of exclusive differentiation (‘the’ social, ‘the’ biological, ‘the’ medical, etc.) that gains its identity by excluding what it is not. In order to become social the inclusion of its other (the non-social) is vital. Generally speaking, sociality refers to the process of associating heterogeneous elements: humans with other humans, humans with nonhumans, minds with bodies, etc. These elements are not to be understood as the effect of sources (or the lack of them) but as the consequences of mediations: Only in relation with each other do they gain their agency and identity. By associating human and non-human entities these entities become what they are—they are mediating mediators enabling or disabling bodies. The social then is ‘neither one actor among many [e.g. nature, fate] nor a force behind all these actors transported through some of them but a connection that transports ( . . . ) transformations’ (Latour, 2005: 108). This process of relating mediators instead of fi xed entities can be called ‘translation’: It refers to a relation that does not transport causality but induces two mediators into co-existing. If some causality appears to be transported in a predictable and routine way, then it’s the proof that other mediators have been put in place to render such a displacement smooth and predictable. ( . . . ) There is no society, no social realm, and no social ties, but there exist translations between mediators that may generate traceable links (Latour, 2005: 108) Bearing these lines of argument in mind, the following chapters draw attention (empirically and conceptually) to the intricate and manifold nature of social life. They aim to highlight a dimension long neglected (and highly under-researched) by both social sciences and disability studies: namely the importance of the different socio-cultural relations between human sensory/sensing bodies and non-human technologies, artifacts, and objects.

Part III

Dis/abling Practices

1

4

2

Dis/abling Spaces of Calculation

These concluding chapters will discuss how ordinary acts of everyday life make up the complex and contingent scenarios of dis/abilities that create enabling and disabling (dis/abling) practices. Drawing on qualitative empirical data the societal visibility and relevance of dis/abling practices are analyzed by connecting disability studies and sociological ideas with insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS). The chapters explore how (visual) dis/ability is the outcome of human and non-human configurations and suggests that dis/ability can be understood neither as an individual bodily impairment nor as a socially attributed disability. Rather, dis/ability refers to complex sets of heterogeneous practices that (re-)associate bodies, material objects, and technologies with sensory practices. These practices draw attention to the multiple, material, spatial, and temporal processes that (re-)concatenate the conduct of human affairs in contemporary visual cultures. To specify my argument, I will illustrate some of the different ways money and money technologies make up highly dis/abling practices in the life of blind people. In this chapter I attempt to explore how ‘ordinary acts’ of dealing with money and with money technologies create enabling and disabling spaces of calculation. Rather than referring to money merely as a general symbolic medium of exchange, I highlight the materiality and the sensory practices involved in handling money and shaping social life. Both money and blindness become visible as complex sets of calculative practices, linking bodies, material objects, and technologies with sensory practices. These practices, I conclude, draw attention to the heterogeneous fabrication of sociality and to the emerging dis/abling spaces of calculation that unfold in the course of everyday life. In working the issue of dis/ability through space, Rethinking Disability joins recent attempts to show the heterogeneity of the social by exploring the multiplicity and interference of social spaces and spatial practices (cf. Callon & Law, 2004; Law, 1991, 1998, 2004; Law & Mol, 1998, 2001; Law & Hassard, 1999; Law & Moser, 1999; Munro, 1997a; Mol & Law, 1999, 2001, 2002; Moreira, 2004; Thrift, 1996; Urry, 2000). It brings to the fore the multiplicity of enabling and disabling spaces that emerge through heterogeneous embodied, social practices. When I speak of ‘the blind person’, of ‘blindness’, and/or of ‘blind people’ I do not assume an individual or a homogeneous group of individuals being distinct from its environment—for example, being distinct from ‘the sighted

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person’, from ‘vision’, and/or from ‘sighted people’. Spaces of sightedness and of blindness become present differently, and, still, they are not opposite or separated in social praxis. They crisscross, connect, and separate, and become present and absent for each other. This means, as Callon and Law have stressed, that ‘[t]here is no context in which being, things, or events naturally arrange themselves’ (Callon & Law, 2004: 3). Thus, no distinction is naturally given between sightedness and blindness; no natural distinction is given between ‘the blind’ as a group and a blind person, nor between a personal impairment and a social disablement. Rather, these differences articulate effects of heterogeneous social relations. Obviously, the same applies to the distinction between ‘the blind (person)’ and ‘the sighted (person)’. They for themselves are nothing but heterogeneous relations as well.

ENACTING SUBJECTS AND OBJECTS— MONEY AND MONEY TECHNOLOGIES Dealing with money plays a crucial role in our daily modern life. As long as we have money, we may continuously withdraw it, spend it, and receive more of it. We go to a bank, use an ATM (automatic teller machine), or log in and conduct banking transactions online. We pay with and receive coins, notes, checks, debit cards, and credit cards depending on what and where we spend or receive money. Money secures Western life, and it is no wonder that it is associated not only with economic value but also with a wide range of symbolic and emotional meanings (Furnham & Argyle, 1998). For all sorts of reasons, money may also pose difficulties. The most serious one, we suspect, is the result of the carefully protected scarcity of money. The current worldwide fi nancial crisis is a dramatic example. Generally speaking, money enables and disables ordinary life depending on whether one has it or not. But, in most cases, having money makes sense only in order to spend it. Only then does money appear as money: Only then can money perform its seductive power of translating itself from nonmoney into money and back into non-money (that is, other material things). Money circulates, working as a unity of account, exchange, and referencing value; its circulation constitutes vital social relations. The materiality of money itself, as it seems, is less and less of importance the more money is accepted as a mere general symbolic medium of exchange. This is, without doubt, one of the most important insights sociologists can offer to understand modern economic practices. The social history of money seems to prove them right: Money dematerializes the more ‘modern’ we become (Dodd, 1994). Coins turn into notes, notes turn into checks, checks turn into plastic cards, and plastic cards turn into electronic credits. Deutsche Marks and Spanish pesetas turn into Euros and Euros transform easily into Chinese Yuan and US Dollars. Indeed, freed from the support of gold and silver, dollars need only dollars. 3 What counts, then, is

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not the materiality of money itself but trust in its general power of translating and mediating social relations, despite the recognized fact that it ‘signifies nothing’ (Rotman, 1987; Shell, 1982, 1995). Such a reading, however, links money to social relations at the price of excluding the importance of the material and sensory practices of our everyday life. On the contrary, as I will argue, it is the materiality of money, translated into all kinds of inscriptions, which always keeps its material importance at least at one point in order to count as money. The multiple dematerialized forms into which material money is translated still work as money, but only if they can remain readable as such. The readability of money always demands at some moment a highly specific set of sensory skills to make money account for calculative money—although the locations for doing so may vary greatly. As Michel Callon has pointed out: ‘The material reality of calculation, involving figures, writing mediums and inscriptions are decisive in performing calculations’ (1998a: 4–5). Whenever this link of material translatability is broken, then, calculative money vanishes into thin air. Then it does not only signify nothing, it is nothing, not worth a cent! Being nothing, money disables translations; it disables the difference of having or not having money. Without translation, no calculation! In this section we will see how the so-called general medium of exchange normally—and ‘normally’ in our Western society means the normality of practices of visual cultures—depends on good eyes (and fi ngers) to become readable as calculative money. Put differently, the material realities of money visualize sensory dis/abilities. Most effectively, it renders invisible the normality and normativity of ‘good’ sensory (visual and tactile) practices, while making visible the complexities of visual disability. I will argue that blindness brings to the fore the power of dis/abling materialities such as money and money technologies. It draws attention to the complex abilities and disabilities of blind people in their everyday lives. Obviously, dealing with money also elicits many other enacted disabilities performed, by children, elderly people, or people with dyslexia, learning difficulties, mental disabilities, etc. Although these areas are equally important to look at, my main focus of study has been on the materiality of money and its importance in blind people’s everyday practices. As Simmel (1989a, 1992a, 1992b) has argued, money appears to be the most visible and concrete tool of rationalizing and standardizing relations that conduct the velocity of modern life. The circulation of money constitutes (calculating) subjects and (calculable) objects. Money is the most suitable substratum for private and personal property (Simmel, 1989a: 473). It addresses and confi rms the individual as a bearer of value in the stream of monetary conduct, and it translates interpersonal relations into functional/ factual ones. Money, however, also fosters social processes of individualization through which the individual gains mobility. S/he is enabled to change from traditional, local, and highly standardized relationships with others to heterogeneous and translocal individual relations with them.

130 Rethinking Disability Simmel has argued that although money is the purest form of a tool, a most mobile technology or medium of translation (Simmel, 1989a: 263– 264), it—like any other immutable mobile tools (Latour, 1990)—requires readability in order to circulate between, translate, and connect other mediators (e.g. people) (Simmel, 1989a: 205ff; Schillmeier 2009a). Linking these arguments with the topic of dis/ability, one can say that whenever readability is achieved, money enables to act and to do different things. Whenever, however, the readability of money inscriptions becomes problematic, this not only generates disabling scenarios but also makes individual people the bearers of disability. Ordinary acts of dealing with money make visible a personal bearer of disability who is disabled as a calculator as s/he is disabled from gaining social or cultural profit from money relations. We can see how money practices and technologies generate dis/abling practices in modern everyday life if we look not only at economic, calculative practices but also at the sensory practices that enable calculation in the fi rst place. Concentrating on sensory practices is a rather unusual move within academic discourse on money. However, attending to sensory practices draws upon practices other than merely economic ones. It not only reveals the importance of the senses in everyday life, which are dominated by visual practices, technologies, and infrastructures; the focus on sensory practices also questions the common idea that money is a neutral and dematerialized tool. Throughout its history, money has changed from shells, gold, and silver currencies to paper money, plastic cards, and electronic money and subsequently lost material value. All these different material and de-materialized forms of money nevertheless require a certain materiality in order to be sensed and read as money. The conceptual spotlight on sensory practices and the materiality of money will show how money (a) remains material at every moment of its circulation, and (b) affects typical scenarios of dis/ability when sensory practices become problematic. Drawing on visual disability, money practices often make people visible as blind, generating complex sets of dis/ abling practices. Obviously, money can be seen as a prominent mediator that is a prerequisite of standardized relations in both capitalist and visual cultures. Money is also a perfect means of showing how technologies individualize and reconfigure conduct in modern everyday life. Such a reading resonates with the very idea that disability is not a given individual impairment but the effect of social structures and processes that make people disabled (Oliver, 1980, 1994a, 1994b, 1996; Barnatt & Altmann, 2001; Barnes & Mercer, 1996; Barnes et al., 2003; Corker & French, 1999a; Corker & Shakespeare, 2002): Money is a good example for that inasmuch as different coins, notes, plastic cards, ATMs, etc. are standardized materialities and technologies that are highly problematic for people with visual impairment to access and use properly in everyday life. In effect, failing to use

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money and money technologies makes people with low or no vision disabled in their interactions, makes them feel vulnerable, restricted in their mobility, dependent on others, etc. Such an understanding of disability focuses on structurally enforced and thus socially induced disabilities. It advocates a shift in perspective away from a medical or technoscientific model that would treat visual disability primarily as an individual tragedy that results from an abnormal sensory capacity affecting social and cultural restrictions in everyday life (cf. ICF, 2001). Whereas a social model differentiates between historically specific socio-cultural structures, processes, and relations that disable human beings in their social life, the medical model advocates a universal and ahistorical technoscientific model that diagnoses, treats, and cures ‘abnormal’ bodily or mental individual impairments that prevent human beings from being, acting, and performing ‘normal’. Interestingly though, beyond their crucial differences, both models divide ‘culture’ from ‘nature’ to frame its object of research. Whereas for the social model only societal affairs are the primary causes for disabling people, the technoscientific model addresses only ‘natural’ causes and their complications for individuals as the primary effects that constitute disability. To be sure, neither perspective fails to acknowledge or incorporate the other. The social/cultural perspective has intensively discussed the importance of individual impairment, just as the medical model (ibid.) tries to recognize and integrate the social and cultural dimension of disability. However, for each perspective the perspective of the other gains importance only after the origin (social or individual, society or nature) of disability has been specified. According to each perspective, then, disability issues become compatible only when they are comparable societal or natural issues. Focusing on sensory practices, however, allows me to outline a concept of (visual) dis/ability that (a) does not separate off a priori socially attributed disabilities from individual physiological or mental impairments, and (b) explores how (visual) dis/ability is the outcome of social and non-social, human and non-human configurations. Bearing this in mind, (visual) disability can be understood neither merely as an individual bodily impairment nor as a socially attributed disability. Rather, (visual) disability refers to complex sets of heterogeneous practices that (re-)associate bodies, material objects, and technologies with sensory and other practices. These practices bring to the fore how ordinary acts (re-)assemble social orderings by linking the material configurations of human (culture) and non-human (nature) relations. The focus on money practices will show not only that the use of money and money technologies individualizes people into having a disabled vision that diverges from ‘normal’ sight but also that money practices bring to the fore the ways (sensory) practices other than normal vision question, disrupt, and alter the prerequisites and standards of (visual) social orderings.

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THE POWER OF MEDIATION Such a reading not only rethinks the culture/nature divide of disability. It also questions the standard defi nition of money dating back to Adam Smith as a neutral medium of exchange and highlights its (inter-)mediating agency. Money indeed is a perfect medium of exchange of and for rational, clever, and calculative agents, but only if it is readable as money. Money not only realizes a specific (i.e. capitalist) mode of production with its ability to commodify abstract labor power (Marx, 1963); it also stabilizes specific everyday forms of action within visual cultures. Thus, on the one hand, the value of money that does not derive from the physical properties of the commodity keeps alive the mode of production and capitalist power relationships. On the other hand, blind practices make clear that the materiality of capitalist production cannot be thought of without the sensory (visual) practices linked to money and money technologies. Thus, through money practices the hegemony of capitalism is allied with the hegemony of visual culture. Money, then, does not ‘signify nothing’ (Rotman, 1987); it is not a totally blank medium. Rather, it makes visible power relations of societal production and hegemonies of sensory practices. Money is not just essentially a symbolic phenomenon whose analysis requires ‘a frame of reference closer to that of linguistics than of technology’ (Parsons, 1967: 345–346; cf. Luhmann, 1997). Money is more than a ‘highly specialized language’ (Dodd, 1994: 60) functioning as an abstract and multifunctional medium with no ‘value in use’ but only ‘in exchange’ (Parsons, 1967: 306). It is more than an ambivalent symbol with no intrinsic usefulness (Habermas, 1981: 397). Rather, it mediates material dis/abilities: economical and non-economical alike. Money mediates human social relations—for the good and the bad. It is true that money, as Simmel (1989a, 1992a, 1992b) and Latour (1990) have pointed out, can be seen as an unmoved mover [unbewegter Beweger] (Simmel, 1989a: 204), an ‘immutable mobile that links goods and places’ (Latour, 1990: 58). Money extends by a set of immutable mobiles (coin and paper money, credit and debit cards, checks, electronic money, ATMs). These different immutable mobiles make up a ‘cascade of mobile inscriptions’ (Latour, 1990: 58) translatable into and compatible with other inscriptions. Money ‘is mobile (once it is coined), combinable, and can circulate through different cultures, it is immutable (once in metal), countable (once it is coined), combinable, and can circulate from the things valued to the centre that evaluates and back’ (ibid.; cf. Callon, 1991). Contrary to what traditional sociological readings may suggest (Parsons, Habermas, Luhmann), Simmel’s and Latour’s arguments resist the reduction of money to a mere medium of symbolic communication. In his inimitable way, Simmel’s philosophy of money unfolds the modern social being as a ‘tool being’ (Harman, 2002). The power of money as a circulating tool reconfigures our modern life: Its radically relational, empirical character

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overflows every dyadic relation supposedly constituting our modern Cartesian world. It is not that subject-object relationships constitute us moderns, but that subjects and objects are made present because of the conduits of circulating heterogeneous relations; for example, of money tools, of the materiality and technology of money. According to Simmel, money translates the relationship between a person and a ‘qualified thing’ into connective, mediated relations (Simmel, 1992a: 179). As a circulating tool—a ‘quasi-object’, as Michel Serres (1991a: 102) would call it—money has no reference to stable or fi xed entities and substances; and, still, it allows us to grasp the most abstract, the singularity that obtains its sense through multiplicity (Simmel, 1989a: 137). It is the ‘characterlessness’ of money as tool that ‘mixes what is possible with what has been accomplished and makes the bifurcations multiply’ (Serres, 1991a: 56), including the bifurcation of dis/abilities as we will see. Simmel has stressed the ‘double nature of money’ (Simmel, 1989a: 212): It is a concrete object that gains importance only in divesting itself of its object character and becoming mere movement and function. The ‘sociological character’ of money can be found in the fact that it serves collective purposes; indeed, money sets forth social relations that enact individual interests. As a collectivity, the object connects with others and sustains individuality. Simmel made his point clear with another example, that of jewelry. One adorns with a ring, a bracelet, like perfume marking the desire for the other, and for the collectivity; like a diamond, radiating and ‘overflowing’ individual specificity and desiring to be for the other, to become collective (Simmel, 1993d: 387–388). Evidently, for Simmel, it is ‘not the things but humans’ that perform the processes where money is involved (1989a: 211); but money and humans are visible only as a set of heterogeneous human/non-human relations in the fi rst place. That is Simmel’s most interesting point here. Through money, social relations such as person to person or subject to object become visible as relations between ‘people’ and ‘things’. We should note that it is a matter of relations and not of relationships, as Strathern (1991, 1999) would say: It is highly important to understand the heterogeneity and complexity of social processes not as relationships between fi xed subjects and objects, individuals and society, but as relations, as connections or mediations of social and non-social entities that make up the complexities of modern subject/object relations (cf. Munro, 1996). There is no such thing as the individual or the society, but only relations constituting individuals and societies. Thus, we may also say that there is no individual impairment and no societal disability, but only dis/abling relations. Accordingly, what makes money so complex is that it is not economic at all! It may become powerful for economic practices—and it actually does, as we all know—but it should not be understood merely economically. It (necessarily) overflows the economic framework (Callon, 1998b). The ‘functional blankness’ of money (Hetherington & Lee, 2000) places money

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within human relations, as a ‘quasi-object’ (Serres, 1991a: 105), a third element which circulates and constitutes the relations of subjects and objects (Callon, 1991). For Simmel, it is neither money as medium nor money as form that simplifies or objectifies human relations; rather, it is the ‘chronic form’ of immutable mobility that cuts into and reconfigures the entanglement of human relations (Simmel, 1989a: 266). Money also puts human relations at risk in that it places them within a chain of human and non-human agents. It gives human relations a form that transcends the mere presence of human beings. Human relations extend into the non-human, and, as modern practices of money show vividly, they extend spatially and temporally, reconfiguring the relations involved and setting them anew. The power that enables money to link heterogeneous relations is its blank character: the rationality of money consists precisely in not having a global identity, rationality, or character, neither as a means nor in its purest form. Money gains its value effect from being involved in local entities and relations. However, it cannot be reduced to the local entities it meets. Rather, money, as a means of translation and circulation, is highly indifferent to local materialities. Paradoxically, money as framing or overflowing is nothing but the effect of local relations that emerge from the spaces of entanglements that money conducts. This is what Michel Serres meant when he asserted that ‘money does not circulate for exchange fi rst of all, but for locating and fi xing relations’ (Serres, 1991a: 36). To affi rm money is to take it as a ‘blank figure’; it is sheer possibility (Simmel, 1989a: 67). Moreover, money gains its global power precisely by being valued and by valuing the local importance of relations. It is about the very mediation of the global by the local and the local by the global. This leads us to ‘a new theory of action in which what counts are the mediations and not the sources’ (Callon, 1998b: 267, fn 10). The global, physical form of money is locally produced. Relations themselves conduct the conduits of the object of money. Subjects and objects come into being as heterogeneous relations of human and nonhuman relations, powerfully divided apart and connected by the translation and mediation of the inscriptions provided by the materialities of money.

DIS/ABLING INSCRIPTIONS In order to function as such a highly immutable mobile, money must be materially visible (Hutter, 1993: 159ff) and ideally possess five physical properties—portability, indestructibility, homogeneity, divisibility, and cognizability (cf. Burns & DeVille, 2003)—that connect it to systems of inscriptions like writing (book-keeping, calculation). Calculation with money, then, is dependent on these compatibilities and translations that make up what Latour (1991) calls ‘centres of calculation’. For the visually

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disabled, however, these centers of calculation are contested/ing since they constitute possible centers of disability whenever the compatibility and translatability of money fail. This is the point I want to underline: the shift from the parlance of disability to that of dis/ability or dis/abling practices. It highlights the very situatedness of enabling and/or disabling practices of human affairs as a set of highly specific (inter-)mediations. Dis/abling practices do not sum up as socio-structural modes of oppression or as mere individual tragedies suffering an abnormal bodily or mental condition. Disability cannot be exclusively divided into the duality of social and cultural or individual and natural matters of fact. Rather, dis/abling practices are mediated cultural/ natural relations and make apparent that human affairs extend into the non-human, reconfiguring the spatialities and temporalities of societal relations. They depend on third elements such as mediators, which in our case are money and money technologies. By circulating, money constitutes and reconstitutes relations, for instance relations of dis/abled subjects and dis/ abling objects (Callon, 1991; Schillmeier, 2007a, 2007b).4

MONEY IN THE MAKING, MONEY IN ACTION To specify this argument let us have a look at the money practices and how they are part of dis/abling of blind people. These last sections draw on empirical work that I conducted in the North-West of England between 1997 and 1999, which was concerned with blind people and the use of technologies in their everyday life. I conducted 30 qualitative, semi-structured, and narrative interviews, and I made non-participatory observations. Many of the blind people interviewed were not totally blind; their sight varied from seeing some colors or a small amount of light to seeing only rough edges, black spots, and so forth. Only a small number of people were totally blind. Obviously, it also makes a difference if people are congenitally ‘blind’ or became blind later in life. But this is just one of many specificities that make up the complexities of people’s blindness.

Risky Spaces of Money—Enacting Blindness Claire, in her thirties, diagnosed with glaucoma and interviewed in my research, described the vital importance of money as follows: Money is so central to our society! And it is the practical day-to-day things like money, . . . it’s just too difficult because it is something we all have to do and there is no way around it. It is depending on issues of trust when you are with your friend, the person in the shop, or whoever. Well, you know it is the vulnerability blind people feel when actually walking toward a cash point, particularly if they have a white

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Rethinking Disability cane ( . . . ) You know, the age thing, a lot of visual impaired people are older and therefore just by virtue of that may not have moved on from going to the bank, you know, going inside the bank and actually using the cash dispensers ( . . . ) I do not feel fine at one of those machines either, particularly at night or in the evening. I tend to look around if somebody is there and you are conscious if there is somebody behind you and if you can’t see you feel more vulnerable. . . . I think the whole issue of money is fraud, . . . for me just knowing which is a five-pound note and which is a ten-pound note and coins and things like that. It is a very basic problem, you know, money is very difficult. It is impossible to recognize and to differentiate what is what. It is about the size of the note, about the feel of it, and just generally because money is so important to everybody.

Indeed, money is important for everybody, and, as I said earlier, it is difficult to do without. As we can see with Claire, the money issue comes in different forms and it connects all the different spheres in life (Leyson & Thrift, 1997). Money issues become meaningful in different places and with different people. For Claire, money potentially endangers her life with others. Accordingly, money relations involve trust in others, the more so in those risky spaces where one deals directly with money and money technologies. The queue at cash points is one of those places. Cash points are ‘[p]oints of access’ that ‘can easily become points of alarm’ and ‘subject individuals to vulnerability’ (Goffman, 1971: 300–302). Even the sighted cannot be sure of what happens behind their backs; as Goffman (1971, 293–294) says, there are always ‘lurk lines’ which induce vulnerability. Cash machines silently perform in this risky public space of vulnerability. Although we all have this feeling it is even more so for blind people. Within the intensities of crowded public spaces where bodies perform in rather proximal spaces, blind people cannot look back or cannot react back, as sighted people can. Blind people feel a certain lack of control as they remain exposed to the scrutiny of the sighted others: The sighted see the blind, whereas the sighted often remain absent for the blind (French, 1999; Hull, 1997). The blind person may feel the ‘pressure’ of being looked at but he or she cannot give a look back (Lusseyran, 1995). Moreover, visual—that is, face-to-face— practices permit a wide range of nonverbal communication that appears as rather limited for those who are blind. Accordingly, there is a strong asymmetry of communication. This marks one of the most serious realities for the blind: The blind and the sighted do not share the same sensory practices, experiences and knowledge (Jernigan, 1995; Saerberg, 2007). I will exemplify this with the use of ATMs. ATMs forcefully materialize the complex social spaces and their effects, which make some of its users blind: You know, the hole in the wall, it is just not geared for blind people. They can use them, they can be trained but it is difficult. There is a certain sequence to most of them. Every transaction you do, there

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is a sequence to them. So they just follow the sequence. Obviously the buttons are exactly the same, so it is not a problem like that. The problem is finding the hole, putting the card in. They can operate the machine, but it’s putting the card in the machine. That is difficult. (Sensory Team, Social Services, Manchester) Using a cash point is not easy. If one has a valid card, keys in the right pin numbers, does the right sequences, and stays within the given time limits to conclude the operation, one might successfully get money out of the slot. If one misses a sequence, types in a wrong code, or takes too long, one has to start anew—knowing, though, that the number of attempts is limited; after the third mistake in a row one is considered untrustworthy and the card is confiscated! One cannot discuss or argue with cash machines. Well, one can, but it does not translate into money! Cash machines are effective and efficient because they are self-restricted and lack flexibility. In order to be safe and trustworthy, ATMs have to use highly standardized interfaces for a highly standardized user. They are what cybernetics calls ‘trivial’ machines, as they know and accept only standardized procedures: They do what one wants perfectly well, in a secure and trustworthy manner, but only under their conditions; and these conditions are highly visually designed and configured.5 If one does not fit the ‘normative packages’ (Star, 1991), which the ATM unfolds by design, one remains disconnected, disabled to make money flow. One is made blind, as a consequence of not being able to read and follow the instructions of the ATM. To put it differently, ATMs cannot put up with the complexities of different sensory practices, such as those of blind people. As a consequence, ATMs enact the normality of visually dominated practices and visualize blindness. To make the problem worse, not all ATMs require the same sequences or share the same interface design, which means that, among other things, the blind person has difficulties finding the slot in which to insert the plastic card. This forces the person to fiddle around conspicuously with his or her card—which can be understood as ‘ego-centric preserve’ (Goffman, 1971: 29), a circumstance which one understandably tries to avoid, as nobody likes to display his or her insecurities with personal affairs publicly. If the person manages to insert the card, follow the right sequence, and receive money, the next challenge is to check on the spot how much the machine has given. To make sure of the amount of money received, the blind person needs time for touching, comparing, measuring, and feeling the money. But, again, one does not tend to do these things in public spaces, especially if one already feels vulnerable! As a result, many blind people avoid cash machines; not because they are blind, but because they are disabled as blind by the visual infrastructure of money technologies. Indeed, this is what allows us—and only in this specific case—to distinguish between sighted and blind users. Spaces where money circulates enable ‘effectiveness’, but only as long as the people performing ‘money practices’ comply with certain standards. But if such money practices are disrupted, then money space shows its

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fragility and vulnerability: Money spaces stop being effective, and people who cannot conform to their standards are excluded from money practices. This exclusion makes visible what usually remains invisible: Blind people’s practices visualize quite vividly the power of money and of money technologies as standardized and standardizing, which normalize and configure the ‘normativity’ of their users. Now, this example shows how blindness and sightedness are not inherent properties, but effects constituted out of heterogeneous relations involving different materialities and technologies, different people, and different (sensory) skills, which make up practices of social space and the social spaces of practices. Put differently, the differences between blindness and sightedness is stabilized not by a fi xed state or condition of blindness or sightedness itself, but as the mediation of heterogeneous materialities and practices. As Serres (1981, 1991a, 1991b) has clearly shown, any mediation between two elements needs a third one in circulation that fi xes the poles—or, as Callon (1998b) says, each defi nition or framing of elements is necessarily a source of overflowing. For Georg Simmel, money—understood as a third element—is so important precisely because of its capacity to establish heterogeneous relations, as, for instance, in economic systems. Money substitutes for the exchanged thing and permits the continuity of exchange; as an equivalent for the exchanged thing, it prevents the object from being ‘consumed’, as it is in bartering practices. The ‘real position’ of money within economic systems is granted by its ‘ideal position’ outside the economic system. Money is not an economic object because, as ‘a concrete value’, it is nothing other than the ‘graspable material substance’ of the economic relation. Simmel argues that the significance of money as an ‘unmoved mover’ (Simmel, 1990: 125) is that it ‘brings about an ever-growing number of effects, while it remains itself immobile’ (ibid. 171). [Money] expresses itself empirically as the constancy of value, which clearly depends on money’s interchangeability and on its characterlessness ( . . . ) The lengthiness of the sequences of economic activities, which is indispensable to the continuity, coherence, and productivity of the economy, depends on the stability of the value of money. Only this makes possible long-range calculations, complex undertakings, longterm credits. (ibid. 130) Thus, in the following sections I will explore how money as the third element mediates or overflows the framing of blindness as an individual property and its mere relation to sightedness. We may ask, accordingly: If, through the power of money, the agency of modern subjects and objects is portrayed as the emergence of networks of dependency rather than as the possession of individuals, what does this imply for calculative agencies? What does this indicate for the complexities of blind people and their money practices?

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Sylvia (30 years old), a receptionist, is asked how she deals with money in her everyday life. This is her response: I don’t like notes, to put it that way. I get confused. I like to get change in coins if I can. I get confused and confuse them with receipts and stuff like that . . . because I can’t tell what they are. I feel it and uh ( . . . ) color, with my eye condition color is very important ( . . . ) I have congenital cataracts with glaucoma and I am also diabetic—which doesn’t help. I’ve got nystagmus, I’ve got a couple of other things I can’t pronounce ( . . . ) strained vision, I’ve got two percent left—that’s not a lot, more peripheral than anything. . . . I can distinguish bright colors, they are the best. I get confused with dark colors—black, brown, blue, I get stuck with. If it is bright and there is lighting it’s very important. . . . I don’t like notes, they are difficult to distinguish for me. I cannot tell when there is bad lighting what color they are and there is not really much difference in the size. Notes are a nightmare; it is impossible for me to tell the difference. Sylvia’s blindness involves a rather complex set of different eye-related and non-eye-related conditions. She has to use a multiplicity of sensory translations to specify the unspecified visual world that comes in ‘more peripheral than anything’. Within the ‘normalcy’ of our common visual world, she lives in a ’2% mode’ that allows only for the periphery of things to come into view. Indeed, she lives a peripheral life, on the margins of visual relations. Paper money reminds her of that. She does not like notes; they confuse her. As a receptionist she often deals with papers, and mixing them up is problematic for her and her work. Bright light is important for her to be able to give notes of the right size and to turn close things into her nearness, for nearness is not a matter of distance or visual clarity: Things become near for her when they are readable, touchable, and workable. For Sylvia money becomes present as good and bad money. Bright and colorful notes are good money, but, generally, paper money is not bright enough to be clearly distinguished from receipts. Paper money is bad money, then, and Sylvia avoids it because, for her, bad money is no money at all. Coins, however, cannot be confused with receipts. Coins are heavy, round, and come in various diameters. They introduce difference and, thus, are not easy to mix with words. They unfold a nearness that permits proximal differentiating practices, whereas paper money remains dark no matter how close it is. Paper money remains distant; it disturbs Sylvia’s work. Paper money cheats her. Notes become mere ‘Zettel’ (scraps) as the Germans named ‘money’ in the 18th century; or they become ‘flying money’ as the Chinese tend to say: scraps, flying objects, difficult to depict. I think that Sylvia’s story gives us a remarkable set of complexities that disturb the very commonality and readability of normalized and

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normalizing processes. Sylvia’s trouble with currency can be read as the questioning of common standardizing and standardized practices of knowledge. Moreover, it can be read as an affi rmation of blindness. In her case, the specificities that have enabled the circulation of money are unplugged. Her problem makes us aware of the fragile moment of connectability of different inscriptions. The very standardized script of the visual readability enacted by money is strongly dependent on visual relations, and it is precisely this that has been interrupted, consequently visualizing Sylvia’s blindness. I propose that the social complexity of Sylvia’s blindness is not a question of deciding whether Sylvia is blind either because of her peripheral, ’2%’ seeing or because of the standardization of an object (money in our case). This rather reductive way of putting the problem would demand a decision between subject and object in order to fi nd the source of Sylvia’s trouble with money and of Sylvia’s blindness. It is reductive because it forgets that both subjects and objects are the effects of heterogeneous mediations in the fi rst place. Rather, Sylvia’s story brings to the fore the heterogeneity of relations that make up the situatedness of her blindness as a moment of practice, of actually dealing with currencies, whose readability is blurred by blindness. The affi rmation of blindness introduces vague knowledge; it makes entities undecidable and indecisive. Sylvia deals with money that appears now as money, now as paper, now as money again, now as receipt, now as money, etc. The affi rmation of blindness also means that blindness emerges in the form of peripheral ‘knowledge practices’ that constitute and separate good and bad money. Knowledge, money, and blindness are decided upon locally, and those local relations shuffle them anew. Money loses its general qualities in order to become ‘blind money’. Though it remains portable, money appears worn out, heterogeneous, invisible, and non-sensible. Money has lost its neutrality; or, better, as I have already suggested: Money has never been neutral since mediators are never neutral. We should rethink this modern myth of technology as pure neutral means of intermediation, and money and blindness help us to do so. Money marginalizes Sylvia, but, simultaneously, peripheral seeing marginalizes money: With blindness, money stops being standard, compatible, and automatically translatable. The system then does not control a standard, but affi rms difference. The money system leaks and liquidizes into deviation, into rather unusual and non-standardized forms of monies. Money multiplies under the conditions of blind practices, as does the situatedness of blindness under the conditions of money and money technologies. Elizabeth, 50 years old, totally blind, says: Beforehand I plan how much I will use. Well, I only use fi ve- and tenpound notes. That’s how I manage it. If in the shop they know you,

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they are usually very friendly. They say that’s a ten-pound note, and I say ‘that’s a ten-pound note yes, I know’. I cannot tell the difference from the size. I use a plastic template to measure. I fold them too, half and half again. ( . . . ) You give a note and you get coins as change and you are not sure what it is because there are a lot of people queuing around you. People tend to push. It’s a vicious circle. I don’t want coins as change but I always get it. And Margaret, 62 years old, age-related macular degeneration, stresses: The problem is that people don’t count out the change to you, do they? That’s the problem. They hand it to you unless you have someone who is there to check it for you. You can’t have someone around all the time, can you? Well, then you take it home. So say when there are a lot of people. People are in a rush; there you are, in a queue. You are stuck. You cannot do anything; you give the note, say a twenty-pound note. You cannot check what you get back; you have to trust, trusting, yes. Richard, 70 years old, glaucoma, shortsighted, blurred vision, tells: I have one-pound coins in my right pocket and the other coins in my left hand pocket. I can’t sort out small change in the shop unless I know how the thing, how much it is. To buy milk I get it already in my hand before I set off. But if I don’t know, I give him a pound coin from my right pocket, you see. You see, in Manchester I only pay by pound coins. MS: And when you buy bigger items? Richard: Well, then it is notes, or Visa card. MS: What about the number on the Visa card? Richard: No, I can’t read the number on the card. I have to rely on the assistant to read it. I just give the card and they sort out the rest of it. Money cannot be understood as a neutral tool. It situates and is situated, mends and is mended by highly specific sensory practices that enable or disable the societal power of artifactual mediation. As we see, money comes in different forms, sizes, shapes, and textures of currencies, in letters such as bills or bank accounts—sometimes in Braille, sometimes in normal fonts; money comes in plastic cards, through ATMs, and it is shuffled to and fro electronically worldwide. It is evident that money practices enable the modern individual to connect with heterogeneous extensions and networks worldwide. At the same time Margaret’s, Elizabeth’s, and Richard’s comments highlight that the possibility of ‘global’ extension is dependent on ‘local’ practices that demand the readability of the inscriptions involved. It may also involve more than one person to read.

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Through the power of third elements like money and money technology, agency can be portrayed as emergent in translating networks of dependency (e.g. networks of readability) rather than as an a priori possession of individuals. With this in mind, we may ask what does this imply for dis/ abled people ‘caught up in a network of relations, in a flow of intermediaries which circulate, connect, link, and reconstitute’ (Callon, 1998a: 17; cf. Callon, 1991) dis/abling practices? We saw how blind people are made visible as individuals who are unable to fulfill a practice, as those who disrupt the flow of traffic. Much as the blind figure is individualized as a person with a problem, he or she also appears as strongly collectivized, in the sense that the blind user of money becomes dependent on other people and on other technologies: Others must mediate for him or her. Whereas modern sighted users are usually individualized and detached and independent from others, blind users appear conspicuously immersed in social relations through which independent or dependent individuals emerge. In visual relations blindness becomes present as a simultaneously individualized and collectivized entity. Thus, visual money practices visualize the blind as ‘quasi-subjects’ and their monies as quasi-objects (Latour, 1993). This means that both subjects and objects are not fi xed entities, substances, or essences, which either have the capacity to know or are meant to be known. Rather, they appear as relational effects, they belong to each other and cannot be explained merely from one side—be it the subjective or the objective aspect. Interestingly enough, it is blindness and blind people, and in our case their practices with money, that make present—in a much more visible form than vision itself—the quasisubjectivities and quasi-objectivities of modern practices.

Good and Bad Money Dealing blindly with money involves time-consuming practices of touching and comparing differences in size, shape, and texture, as well as asking and involving others. Assistive technologies such as templates and coin holders are used to measure, manage, and translate the vague inscriptions of money into calculable forms. In order to recognize money, many blind people (alone or with the help of others) need to sort out coins and notes, fold them, and separate them in different pockets and compartments before they conduct everyday transactions. They have to ‘earmark’ (Zelizer, 1994, 1998) different monies according to what or where they intend to buy. Exact amounts of money will do in non-familiar and nontrustworthy environments (e.g. one-pound coins for small products are often used in cities and unknown places), inexact amounts in familiar places. Blind money becomes comparable, countable, calculable, and ‘visible’; it becomes tangible through practices that give money a recognizable location ‘outside’ the very coin or note itself. Good blind money, for instance, is a one-pound coin as left or right pocket money; a five-pound

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note turns into a one-side folded paper, a ten-pound note into a two-sided folded paper, and so forth. These are blind practices that translate bad money (money for good vision) into good money (money for the blind) that count as calculable money. Blind money practices multiply the materialities of money precisely since blind mediations do not follow the normative inscriptions of visual cultures. Good blind money is ‘left-pocket money’, ‘folded money’, ‘one pound only’ storage money, ‘single coin’ payments, or money counted by trustworthy people, etc. We may say money and money technology come in and enact remarkably complex and different spacings and timings. Dealing with several currencies, then, requires complex processes of translation that make money connectable and usable for individual purposes. After all, as Latour (1990) bluntly put it, it does not matter how well money flows through the world, it is the money one has in one’s account that counts. It is the moment of mediation, the trans-action, the translation itself that remains always locally crucial and of importance. Money transactions fail if heterogeneous mediations fail, and such failures mediate other trans-actions that overflow the money transactions and constitute individual disabilities. Dealing with currencies is one of these moments of trans-action in which both the specificities of local individualities and global standards, as well as subjects and objects are mediated. Hence, allocating and translating different currencies and their vague inscriptions into unique appearances make them distinguishable and accountable as material of calculation that may function as money that is paid by a discretionary agent, in our case: a calculating subject that deals with calculable objects.

Dis/abling Actor-Networks Money practices are more or less problematic depending on where blind people deal with money and who or what underwrites the blind person’s skills of translating visual money into blind money. The velocity of ‘town practices’ often makes it impossible to turn bad blind money into good blind money (Schillmeier, 2009a). If one can feel, sort out, and mark money at home, sitting peacefully in one’s living room, bad money may be successfully translated into good money. If, by contrast, one is in front of a counter in a queue, it is rather difficult to do so. Good money (say a 10-pound left-pocket note) becomes bad money when a bunch of unknown coins is returned; it is too difficult to sort out directly. In the hands of the blind, money often works as money did in the past: only traveling locally and for rather limited purposes. Needless to say, blind people are prone to be cheated, and money practices demand a lot of trust. As we have seen, these acts of sensory practices play a crucial role in supporting ordinary but highly normative socio-cultural practices, generating in/dependencies, producing locations of non/knowledge, agency, vulnerability, etc.

144 Rethinking Disability We see clearly how the complexities of ‘blind’ money and normal ‘sighted’ money interfere; they rarely converge in taken-for-granted ordinary acts. In order to pay cash, money is made good blind money (folded notes, exact amounts, with the help of others and assistive technologies, etc.), but the change comes in visual inscriptions: bad money for the blind, nothing but a handful of unmarked coins or papers. In urban spaces people lack the proper time and space to translate visual money into blind money. Accordingly, as Elizabeth, Richard, and Margaret (as well as many others) tell: They never know what they will get back. What Elizabeth called the ‘vicious circle’ is what renders blindness visible and stable due to the visual relations of money practices. The blind person is made visible since visually attuned systems cannot deal with blind money as blind money and vice versa. What one can learn from the focus on sensory everyday practices with money and money technologies is that: 1. Dis/ability is neither a mere given individual impairment nor a purely social phenomenon that abstracts from such individual sensory and physiological concerns. 2. Rather, people go through moments where embodied practices enable or disable. The cases described include practices in which a person knows what s/he is counting, paying, and receiving, others in which s/he is stuck within visual inscriptions, swallowed by uncertainty and vulnerabilities. Thus, describing people’s agencies, skills, disabilities, and vulnerabilities means describing contexts of hybrid acts. The latter link different sensory regimes, human and non-human configurations and make up highly specific spatiotemporal relations. These hybrid acts enact dis/abling ‘actor-networks’ that converge into abilities or diverge into disabilities (Callon, 1991, 2005; Callon & Latour, 1981; Latour, 2005; Schillmeier, 2007b, 2008c). The notion ‘actor-network’ tries to capture the idea that actors, human and non-human alike, their abilities or disabilities to do things (feeling, thinking and acting) are the effects and affects of heterogeneous entities. Hence a network is an actor as much as an actor is a network.6 Actornetworks are effects of the eventful association of minds, bodies, and things. This process of eventful association can be called translation. Only through translation does the composite of our world come into individual being, maintains, and/or changes. Thus, actors are translated translators. The elements involved may differ in the ways they work as associates: They can be either ‘intermediaries’ or ‘mediators’.7 An intermediary ‘transports meaning or force without transformation’, whereas mediators ‘transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry’ (Latour, 2005: 39). In the cases of Richard, Elizabeth, and Margaret one can see nicely how money can be an intermediary that transports the normativities of visual cultures and how it turns into a mediator

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and becomes bad money and disables its users. Obviously, as we have seen, blind practice may turn these bad mediators into good intermediaries again. The latter, then, are mediated mediators of dis/abling practices. Thus, a blind person dealing with money goes through moments of order and moments of disorder; moments in which s/he knows what s/he is doing, and others in which s/he is swallowed by uncertainty. Paraphrasing Serres, we could say that blind practices transform themselves by homeomorphism. Serres clarifies this mode of transformation through the difference between darkness and fog (Serres, 1998: 86). He argues that darkness, as the opposite of light, maintains the characteristics of the world whereas fog transforms them. Distances, measurements, and identities are continuously made nebulous in fog. Even though one maintains the tactile assurance of things, one loses the feeling for size, form, and shape (cf. Hull, 1997). Foggy things, albeit closely attached and tangible, remain detached and ungraspable. Fog visualizes indecision; it mingles distinctions. Darkness, on the other hand, neither restates visual difference nor gets caught up in indecision. On the contrary, it confi rms the differences blindness makes. It blurs the clear-cut differences of visual relations. To make a parallel, darkness refers to well-ordered blind money: to the moment blind people manage to translate visually ordered money into non-visually-practiced money (blind money). In contrast, the fog shares the messy characteristics of the non-translatability of visual money into blind money, those moments in which blind people fail to perform visually ordered streams of conduct as expected by the normativities of objects and practices involved. In the moment of foggy relations, money is made present as messy money, bad money, and fugitive, flighty, volatile: It is undecided money. The fog is like the patina over clear and distinct forms of visual inscriptions mediated by money and by money technologies, which blurs the visual depiction of differences. Hence the blind person gets stuck in visual money relations. The fog visualizes blindness and brings the calculability of money to a halt. Currencies lose their trustful invariance and appear worn out. The same coin or note starts an ontological dance of vagueness: Is it a one-pound coin, a two-pound coin, neither of those? Is it just a piece of metal? This is a rather critical moment for calculation: disabled calculation. Only when the foggy zone of visual inscriptions is abandoned to enter the darkening practices of blindness can the blind person turn bad money into good money. For the blind person, good money is a highly local and rather workladen set of practices. Blind money has already lost the power of immutable mobiles that are kept circulating within the visual readability. In the hands of the blind person, immutable mobiles become mutable. And even their mobility is questioned: Instead of circulating fluidly, money moves in ‘stop-and-go’ sequences; it gets stuck the moment it has to be read blindly. This does not mean that money vanishes altogether. Blindness is—as I argued previously—not about clear cuts. But hard coins and shiny paper notes become fragile, slow intermediaries that decrease in number. The

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materiality of inscriptions becomes imperative: different colors and textures, different shapes and weights, different figures and edges, etc. Different materialities that enable or disable blind money relations are crucial for the readability and circulation. Blindness visualizes relations as embedded in and dependent on highly local material differences and mediations. Blind practices demystify money as a mere dematerialized symbol, by showing how each symbol presupposes mediating materials. Blind money needs material supplements as well—human and/or technological—in order to be recognized as blind money. Blind money practices disrupt the economic character of exchange and interpretation that clearly differentiate between thing and sign. Rather, as Michel Serres has put it, By its movement [money] marks the floating relations in the group. ( . . . ) Money would be the transition between thing and sign, between the stone and voice—a third suffrage. ( . . . ) Money is the thing-sign— sometimes close to the thing, still a stone, but precious; other times close to the sign, the broken symbol. (Serres, 1991a: 135–136) The sociologization and idealization of money as a mere social fact, a symbol, as a mere sign (Ganßmann, 1988; Smelt, 1980), ignores the specificities of its local forms and shapes—that is, its materialities, its material inscriptions—which have to be kept readable in the fi rst place, in order to make present the specificities of social relations. Money has been described as the perfect tool and especially as the perfect intermediary. In my example, the process of exchange is disturbed by the clash of different sensory spaces. The process of exchange is also constituted by extra-linguistic practices, as the effect of cross-performances of the bodies, senses, and things, which constitute dis/abling spaces of relations and connections. These spaces decide upon success or failure of specific forms of exchange. The performance of different materials assembled, affecting sensory practices, is not ‘performative’, if by this we understand that performance mimics preexisting forms of practice. It is not performative in the sense of a joyful play based on sequences open to boundless interpretation. But it is a performance in the sense of the mediation of different materials that for themselves are the effects of mediations (Schechner, 1993; Seremetakis, 1994). Thus the materiality of money, as well as the situatedness of blindness, is performed through the practice of mediations. Good or bad money is good-money-in-practice or bad-money-in-practice. Now I am able to draw together some of the arguments I have developed about blind money practices so far. Money is becoming present as a highly differentiated set of currencies. These practices we may call the ‘earmarking’ of blind monies, as Zelizer has put it (1994, 1998). The central thesis of Zelizer is that money multiplies in different social practices and circumstances. Money is given different meanings in different places and situations. She

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questions the common understanding of money as a neutral tool standardizing and dominating social life. Rather, money has a multiplicity of meanings in everyday practices (Burns & DeVille, 2003; Doyle, 1999). For instance, in a household, the money earned by the father is differently treated and used than the money that the mother earns or that the older son earns; people ‘earmark’ currencies in order to give them different meaning and value. Money is kept in households separated in different boxes, or on different accounts at the bank for different purposes, in order to differentiate monies. We have also seen that money is differently earmarked by the blind to become meaningful and multiple. However, whereas Zelizer argues that it is the power of social attribution over the power of money that multiplies the latter, I will argue that this is a result of a change in the rules of mediation: the disruption of the readability and translatability of visual inscriptions. Blind money is not a mere source neither of the material sphere nor of the social sphere. Rather, the money affairs have shown that the social and the nonsocial are highly attached and mediated. The point I want to make is not that blind people do the same as sighted people in the sense that they separate and differentiate things in order to make them visible and that these practices are all social practices. This argument would be far too global, and would forget the local specificities I have been emphasizing throughout the book. Rather, I have tried to show how visual inscriptions produce difficulties for blind people and how blindness fades, darkens, and blurs visually standardized inscriptions. The affi rmation of blindness makes visible the fact that the social is a heterogeneous affair that cannot be explained merely socially. In addition, I have drawn attention to the principle of ‘overflowing’, as Simmel and Callon have called it. The process of overflowing refers to the ruin of every attempt toward a hermetic closure of relations as relationships that strictly differentiate—clare et distincte—the one from the other, the visual from the blind, the material from the social, etc. My reading of Simmel has shown that subjects and objects are always mediated, and that only because they are mutually constituted in relations can they be differentiated as such. The subject becomes known through the object and the object becomes known through the subject—and this is what makes them drift apart. Neither subjects nor objects are merely subjectively mediated. The circulation of tool-money coins subjects and objects. Moreover, I have tried to show that the intermediaries themselves are mediated by different practices. In my reading, it is money-in-practice that conducts the instances of multiple—good and bad—money. From such a perspective the argument defending the dematerialization of money, and with it of modern life, not only standardizes the complexities of mediating objects but also misses the point. The claim that money is a mere symbol cannot account for the difference between, say, gold, copper, plastic, and electronic monies; it has nothing to say about the specificities of relations through the mediation of inscriptions and different materialities (Derrida, 1999).

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We should not understand the emphasis on materiality as a return to essentialism. It is the ‘thinging’ of things as a collective and heterogeneous moment of becoming present that makes up a thing—subjects and objects alike—and not a presupposed thing in itself to which meaning has been attached (Heidegger, 1971). My point, then, is that a ‘thing’ such as money or blindness is for me as well as for Simmel, Latour, and our blind practitioners a mediated collective. It is an event, a practice—as the old German word thing suggests—and not a fi xed and framed entity. The practices of money make present the constitutional ambiguity and vagueness of both money and blindness. Blind money practices actualize the multiplicity and fragility of those occasions in which people are rendered visible and blind. Money changes the world, indeed. Money enacts the blind person and is enacted by the blind person. Through the practices with money and with money technologies, the blind are made to live with fog and darkness. Money, mediated as foggy or dark money, good or bad money, enacts the dis/abling spaces of blind people’s calculation. Reflecting upon these heterogeneous practices of blind people dealing with money, we may gain a more complex understanding of the abilities and disabilities that make up the everyday lives of blind people. Taking the disabling spaces of calculation seriously, we also may fi nd potential ways out of the troubling fog of such ordinary acts of dealing with money and money technologies.

Opening the Caisse Noire When blind people are paying cash, they add complexity to the supposed ‘normality’ of everyday money transactions. Blind money practices ‘complicate’; they politicize the cosmos of the situatedness of normative visual infrastructures. Blind money practices, I can say, have cosmo-political agency (cf. Schillmeier, 2008a, 2009b). We meet Richard again. Richard, 70 years old, glaucoma, short-sighted, blurred vision, says bluntly: ‘Sometimes I even hold a handful of change and I say “take what you need”!’ When Richard does not know how much money he has in his purse or pocket, he just offers a bunch of coins and notes to the other person who is meant to take the required amount. Richard does not pay with good blind money—calculable money—but offers bad blind money, incalculable cash. Richard’s practice is rather unusual: One does not let others fiddle with one’s money, but Richard is compelled to trust others to translate bad- into good-money-in-practice. For blind people such a situation is very common. Like elderly people and children, blind people often ask: Can you take what I owe you? This chapter illustrates and analyzes such a situation to which I accidentally became a witness. This is the story: The ‘Uni Sprint’ bus is approaching ‘Lancaster Market Hall’ bus station. It is a sunny summer day around noon. Lancaster is busy: cars,

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people, business, and noise—the everyday action of a lively middlesized town. There is a constant coming and going of buses, buses that connect different people with different places. I am sitting in one of these buses (Bus Nr. 1) on my way to Lancaster University, waiting to depart. It is a public bus used by non-students as well. A woman (probably in her thirties) approaches the bus stop where the bus I am sitting in is waiting. Encumbered with shopping bags and a leather handbag, she walks with a black dog in a yellow harness on her side. The dog is a retriever, a guide dog. It is the dog with the yellow harness that makes the woman’s blindness visible. It seems that the blind woman and her dog are familiar with the bus station. The guide dog is relaxed, walking next to her, and the two of them approach the bus station quickly. Several people get off the bus and others would like to go on the bus. People queue up in front of the bus’s door. The blind woman asks a man who is queuing if this bus is bus number 1. The man confi rms with a friendly voice. Now she and her dog are part of the queue, in the middle of the queue. While she waits, I have time to reflect. I have not met the woman and her dog before. I do not know her. All I know is what I see and what she makes me see: She grabs my attention; I am made to realize that she is blind since she walks with a guide dog. I am aware of the visual imbalance: I remain unseen and unknown to her, whilst she is exposed to my gaze. Queuing, the woman and the dog are rather calm and much focused to keep the right distance to the others. After a short period of queuing, the woman and the dog enter the bus. The pole which divides the entrance of the bus in two sides—one for entering and another for leaving—makes it quite difficult for the woman to enter the bus simultaneously with the dog since the dog tries to enter where people are leaving the bus. After a while they have sorted out the problem, the dog stops in front of the driver and the woman asks for ‘Greaves’ bus stop. This is the moment where she enters the situation of buying a ticket. The bus driver (who is sitting) has problems in understanding what the woman (who is standing) is asking for since she is not facing the driver when asking. There is no eye contact, no face-to-face interaction, and it is still noisy and all this seems to disturb this ordinary interaction. She repeats the question and the bus driver fi nally understands. ‘The ticket is 70p’, the bus driver answers. The blind woman puts down her plastic bags and lays down the guide dog’s harness in order to search for the purse in her leather bag. The retriever remains very calm; the dog does not seem distracted at all. While searching for the purse, the ticket machine confirms the little contract by printing the receipt with a rattling sound. The woman opens her purse and feels

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Rethinking Disability for the 70p. The search for the 70p is complicated; it takes more time than usual. For the blind woman different coins mean different textures, shapes, and forms that have to be felt, compared and identifi ed. The situation is highly demanding, overly-demanding.

But what does ‘more time than usual’ mean in such a situation? To buy a ticket in buses is a fast interaction. Otherwise it possibly endangers the time-schedule of the buses, for example. Money-for-ticket practices are not designed for long stops. Buses, like all public transport, must follow timetables so that arrivals and departures can be planned, foreseen, relied upon. They order mobility. Since buses must be ‘on time’, the money/ticket exchange is designed to consume as little time as possible. Thus, the more invisible, the more standardized, and the less time-consuming this exchange appears, the better the flow of exchanges and connections. Exchange practices a certain set of normative, standard packages and measures that, precisely because they are standard, exclude those who are indifferent to the standards and norms involved (Callon, 1991; Star, 1991). In public buses one tends to pay with coins and not with notes. People want to keep the buses running, and coins work better for that purpose: Notes detain the driver longer. Good-ticket-money is the exact amount, or one gives slightly more and normally receives change immediately. Badticket-money is a 100-pound note. Big notes and credit cards are out of the question. Money practices in buses differ from those in shopping centers. For example: They change depending on the context and the products purchased. Money-for-ticket practices exemplify rather routine practices of exchange, practices that enable movement from place to place with public transport in order to buy things or meet friends, for instance. The woman is looking for the right coins. People are queuing behind and she attracts people’s attention. The people queuing behind her are friendly; they do not push, although queue situations are latently pushy, fragile orderings, as we all know. The more so for the blind woman; she seems rather nervous. (I assume that she is aware of being beyond the supposed time limit reserved for paying the ticket.) Looking stressed, the blind woman cannot find the right coins and finally hands over her purse to the bus driver by asking: ‘Can you please take what I owe you?’ Conspicuously, the bus driver is irritated by the situation. After some moments of hesitation, he searches for the 70p. He immediately finds the exact amount and gives the purse back to the woman. Reaching out for the harness, the woman reconnects to the dog, and with the harness back in her hand, they search for a seat. What does this story tell us about dis/abling practices? This scene shows that we are constantly engaged in connecting, moving, and being moved by complex spatial and temporal human/non-human material configurations.

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All these locally complex practices enable and disable different actions. For the woman and her dog this meant the handling, mediation, and also disruption of the ‘stream of conduct’ that ‘bus action’ demands. Paying blindly makes visible the powerful ‘structural silence’ (Seremetakis, 1994: 17) imposed by the normativity of a specific socio-cultural and physical ordering which, in the Western world, is primarily a visual ordering (Levin, 1993; Cooper, 1993, 1997). For Goffman (1971: 278) sightedness is part of ‘“personal” standards of conduct’ that have to be maintained in public relations to act out the ‘normalcy show’ (ibid. 282): [T]he ease he attains in his Umwelt presumes that he constantly sustain[s] certain ‘personal’ standards of conduct, for example, aliveness to the scene around him, mental agility, access to memory, sightedness, locomotive competency, literacy, cleanliness, rein on passion, appropriate age and sex behavior. And local contingencies and occurrences can suddenly bring his embodiment of these standards into question. Persons with concealable stigmas are likely, of course, to have still further cause for alarm within themselves. (ibid. 278) Further, ‘[the] individual’s ease within his Umwelt depends upon his knowing how this division is to be drawn at any particular moment’ (ibid. 312). Visual orderings configure inclusive practices that connect heterogeneous elements but also exclusive practices where the circulation of these elements gets stuck. In the case of the blind woman: She becomes visible as blind to the rules and routines of the visual conduct-stream of money practices. These standard settings she experiences are not flexible enough to include blind practices in a ‘silent’ and ‘invisible’ way. Blindness produces structural noise and visibility that attract people’s attention. Blind practices falter; they skip the rhythm of the practices involved. Blind money practices curdle the liquidity of visual money relations. They introduce a different form of action and question the routines of common knowledge practices. The question ‘Can you take what I owe you?’ is an unexpected and violating disruption of taken-for-granted practices. The flow of exchange routines builds upon the quality of money as an intermediary, i.e. an immutable mobile and not a mutable immobile. The agreement about the costs—so amazingly standardized by our immutable objects of money, the rattling machine, and the ticket—becomes utterly unclear: The agreement stabilized and safely transported by immutable mobiles is interrupted by the mutability of money inscriptions. For the woman the money in her purse remains ontologically vague and foggy. Unable to draw the line between good and bad money, she cannot pay and is forced to hand over her purse. In effect, the woman cannot be sure of what will happen with her money; her bad and foggy money becomes risky money. With Goffman one can say that she is forced to open up personal territories in a public relation and

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is enacted to trust. She knows neither what she is paying nor what she will get back. Money is difficult for the blind, indeed. As Seligman (1997) has shown, trust emerges at the limits of systems of highly uncertain role expectations. In our story the need of trust emerges where two sets of sensory practices clash: visual and blind ones. The bus driver shows visible discomfort paying with the purse of a blind stranger in his hand. Is he allowed to do this? Is he violating the contract’s premises that fi x who pays and who receives the money? In any event, the expected locus of agency—the one who is meant to pay—has changed. When handing over her purse the world around the blind woman becomes ‘hot’, as Goffman would say. Money scripts are not written for handing over one’s purse in public relationships. Rather, the purse is a highly ‘egocentric preserve’ (Goffman, 1971: 29) that strictly belongs to the territories of the self, kept separated and often hidden from the gaze of non-familiar others: the ‘inside of pockets and purses ( . . . ) are not ordinarily freely accessible to other than the possessor’ (ibid. 294). Handing over the purse is like public expropriation of the personal territory, the passing of territories of the self into public affairs (ibid. 289). Thus, the structural silence of the visual order is broken when the boundaries between the private and public territories become permeable. The immediate environment around her is transformed into something [s]he must suspect, the suspicion falling on persons present, objects present, sounds and movements, and finally, on places not directly gazed at. When this suspicion occurs, ( . . . ), then the individual may become anxious indeed, and what [s]he becomes anxious for is not merely his/her safety but his/her situations: [s]he ceases to be able to take for granted and discount and disattend the background features of the world around him/h[er]. Normal appearance becomes, as it is, a broad cover under which persons and agencies may try to monitor him/h[er], approach him/h[er] for attack, conceal things vital to him/h[er], attempt to make secret contact with him/h[er], and the like. [Her]/His Umwelt becomes hot for him/h[er]. (Goffman, 1971: 328; alterations by MS) This hot, disruptive encounter where nothing seems secure not only actualizes and makes blindness visible, but also alters the commonality of visual practices involved. The smooth flow of exchange business is interrupted, timetables may be mixed up, people are forced to wait, and the bus driver has to pay. Routines, which usually work ‘blindly’, are visibly disturbed and the woman with the dog appears as Other excluded from the related expectations and practicalities of these routines. Her money practices make clear the limits of ordinary acts taken for granted ‘blindly’. The situation has woken up the social ‘somnambulism’ (Tarde, 1921) of well and highly normatively ordered ‘invisible’ visually dominated practices. ‘Can you take what I owe you?’ also makes problematic the very idea of discretionary and calculative agency enacted by money practices. The

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woman nevertheless acts without knowing how to calculate and how to pay. She defers her blind money practices by delegating the act of paying, her sensing and knowing, to the bus driver. This deferral/delegation creates a confl ict between roles and conflates role expectancies: Who is paying; who is calculating? The moment the blind woman hands over the purse to a stranger, she turns into an agent with ‘bad’ calculative skills who cannot cope with money issues on her own. She is turned into a highly vulnerable person who must trust the other. Still, she achieves discretionary power by making the bus driver look for the money and pay. She delegates and distributes her expected calculative agency to others and so gains discretion. Handing over the purse is quite a radical move: At the same time that it reveals the woman as dependent on others (who are not thought to pay) it shows her discretion and agency. The woman has achieved discretionary power by enrolling the bus driver at the very moment that she was constituted by her indecision how and how much to pay. She has affi rmed her indecision by passing on a highly valued personal item to a stranger, an action whose result cannot be predicted. It disentangles the frame of action from a dyadic economic relation of exchange with fi xed calculating subjects and calculated objects and brings to the fore insecure and fragile practices as a collective act of mediation that demand trust in others. What strikes me as extremely important is that the woman establishes a friendly relation with others (the bus driver). It is a highly risky one, though, since—as the saying goes—friendship ends with money. Under pressure, uncertain, and without many possibilities of redefining the situation, the blind woman does not solve the problem in her own terms: She does not close or frame the problem on her own, privately we may say. On the contrary, she increases uncertainty and heterogeneity by unsettling the borders of personal preserves and linking to the unknown. The blind woman permits the unknown other to have a voice, a say in solving her problem. So she is able to re-assemble the situation by an act of friendship enacted by uncertainty and based on differences. Friendship practices are ‘opaque act[s] which cannot be classified as safe acts through perception’ (Goffman, 1971: 305). Practices of friendship come in different forms and shapes. Her retriever dog—like in Michalko’s story—is also part of her heterogeneous practices of friendship (cf. Michalko, 1999; Seremetakis, 1994: 13–14). Such a friendship does not refer to social practices where humans expect, perform, and relate similar and known frames of action but denotes an emergent quality of differences and materially heterogeneous configurations. Practices of friendship are motile practices. Motility, as Munro has argued, is ‘the facility to bring the material of social spaces near or far and make matters appear present or absent’ (Munro, 1997b: 223) as well as the capacity to withdraw from common divisions and question their operational modes of action. Practices of friendship with the unknown other, then, reveal the heterogeneity and precariousness of societal orderings.

154 Rethinking Disability To sum up: In this section I have introduced a methodological and conceptual shift of understanding that does not exclusively describe disability from either a social perspective that abstracts from physiological impairments or a medical perspective that individualizes disability as the effect of an embodied impairment. With reference to visual disabilities and money practices, I have highlighted that the very questions of when, why, and how people are abled or disabled are relational matters of sensory and other practices that link heterogeneous entities (bodies, technologies, objects). The interference of different sets of (sensory) practices discloses specific power relations that (re)compose the modes of ordering involved. I have tried to illustrate how the clash of different sensory practices constitutes multiple scenarios of dis/abling spaces where third elements (e.g. money) circulate and mediate heterogeneous relations. These practices also multiply the types of money—money for the sighted, money for the blind—that emerge as risky, good money that enables (trans-)actions or/and bad money that disables (trans-) actions in ordinary everyday acts. Disability, therefore, cannot be described merely as an individual impairment or a socially attributed disability. Rather, dis/abilities gain their societal relevance by the processes of mediating social and non-social, human and non-human configurations. Focusing on sensory practices and money, I have described how the interferences of different sensory regimes of practice disrupt the normativity of taken-for-granted (knowledge) networks and often effect exclusive practices. However, these practices open the possibility of becoming discretionary in the ways they delegate and redistribute agency to others. Becoming a discretionary subject cannot, then, be thought as a property of independent beings, but becomes visible as a relational matter, a matter of dependency emerging from temporary solutions within specific locations. I have also made a fi rst and highly provisional attempt to show that such uncertain, insecure, and highly risky practices make visible friendship practices that rely not so much on the shared, known, and similar but on the unknown, different, and heterogeneous. The dis/abling practices of money multiply the realities of money while blindness brings to the fore the multiple, often highly provisional and fragile ‘becomings’ of societal reality. These becomings refer to a complex series of translations and movements that enact the ‘ontological choreography’ (Cussins, 1996) of societal realities, making up the dramaturgy and multiplicity of human dis/abling affairs.

5

Time-Spaces of In/dependence and Dis/ability

In the last chapters I have tried to bring to fore the emergence of dis/abling spatialities. In the following, I will highlight the temporal construction of everyday spaces that make up the societal relevance of in/dependences and dis/abilities. Introducing Martin Heidegger’s notion of ‘time-space’, the proposed view tries to avoid bifurcating in/dependences and dis/abilities a priori as the effect of given realities. Rather, they again appear as highly fragile mediations of heterogeneous elements that make up the times and spaces of emerging in/dependences and dis/abilities. With special reference to ‘visual disability’, I will explore how ordinary acts of ‘dealing with money’ and ‘going shopping’ configure multiple ‘blind’ temporalities and spatialities of in/dependence and dis/ability. For many people, the question concerning dependence and independence (in/dependence) is vital for experiencing enabling and disabling scenarios (dis/abilities) in the conduct of everyday life. This chapter draws attention to the temporal construction of everyday spaces that make up the societal relevance of in/dependences and dis/abilities. The focus on ‘time’, though, cannot be accomplished by abstracting from ‘space’. Rather, employing a temporal conception on in/dependence and dis/ability tries to stress the very practices of ‘time-spaces’ that bring into being the very specific ‘times’ and ‘spaces’ of in/dependence and dis/ability in the fi rst place. By doing so, I avoid bifurcating in/dependences and dis/abilities a priori as the effect given by different abstract realities such as culture and nature, subject and object, individual and society, human and non-human, etc. I borrow the notion of ‘time-space’ from the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Heidegger’s ‘Zeit-Raum’ (Heidegger, 1994, 2000b) marks the event that refers neither to ‘time’ as a mere subjective construction nor to ‘space’ as an objective one. Moreover, the notion of Zeit-Raum cannot be thought of properly as the mere effect of the succession of ‘nows’. Hence, Zeit-Räume shouldn’t be conflated with Zeiträume, which are measured and countable spaces of time. The relationship between Zeit-Räume and Zeiträume is that of ‘mediation’ and ‘intermediation’. As already discussed, an intermediary ‘transports meaning or force without trans-formation’, whereas mediators ‘transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry’ (Latour, 2005: 39ff).

156 Rethinking Disability Clocks and chronographs are a good example to clarify this relation: Clock-time mediates time through the spatialization of time into periods, numbers, distances, etc. As clock-time ‘time’ comes into being through the very absence of time; mere spatial relations define time. In effect, clocks and chronographs become space-giving intermediaries of time. They give space to time as clock-time and so time becomes measurable, calculable, traceable, exact, comparable, dividable, specifiable, etc. Clock-time, then, isn’t time but gives time, and in a very specific, spatialized, and embodied sense. Through clock-time we have and/or don’t have time as seconds, minutes, hours, and days wherever we are (Adam, 1995). Obviously, clock-time time brings us closer to understanding time, especially in modern times. However, clock-time doesn’t explain ‘the event’ Heidegger is talking about; and neither is clock-time ‘time’—except, as we have seen, as a specific, globalized intermediary opening up the possibility of and maintaining having modern spaces of time. To conflate ‘clock-time’ or ‘space of time’ with ‘time’ or ‘time-space’ would refer to the ‘fallacy of misplaced concreteness’, as Alfred N. Whitehead (1978) would say; by spatializing time, it abstracts from the event of time itself. Rather, the event refers to the time-space of mediating being itself: ‘The event is the selfestablishing [selbst ermittelnde] and mediating [vermittelnde] middle of Being’ (Heidegger, 1994: 75).1 The time-space of the event appropriates the openness of the no longer and not yet: It appropriates the absence of presence of time-space and its possible effects. This is a difficult move. However, as we will see, it will bring us closer to question the fi xed times and spaces that defi ne dis/ability either as impairment or as disability. Time-space means ‘temporalizing spacing— spacing temporalization [Zeitigendes Räumen—räumende Zeitigung]’ (Heidegger, 1994: 261). The event, and this is Heidegger’s point, comes into being as appropriation [Ereignis] and disappropriation [Enteignis]. As an event, time-spaces make time and space present and absent in the fi rst place. Time-spaces mediate time into space and space into time. It mediates the motility of time and space. Time spatializes and space temporalizes. In such a reading, space and time are heterogeneous entities but as the effect of time-spaces that mediate the durability as well as changeability of what is thought as temporal or spatial relations. Obviously, for Heidegger it was important to describe the event of Being [Sein] in difference to beings [Seiendes]. This chapter follows the event of beings (instead of Being) in difference to beings. To be sure, this is not the betrayal of the philosophy of the event but its mediation. The latter unfolds what I like to call empirical philosophy. 2 This brings me back to the time-spaces of in/dependence and dis/ability. A temporal reading of in/dependence and dis/ability that focuses on time-space, so my argument goes, leaves ontologically open what is to be understood as ‘dis/ability’ or ‘in/dependence’. It gives a fundamentally novel reading to dis/ability. In/dependence and dis/ability cannot be treated as fi xed

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beings, but become an event of time-spaces that mediate their multiple realities of in/dependences and dis/abilities instead. Rethinking in/dependence and dis/ability through the event brings to the fore their ‘being’ as a ‘contestable zone of controversy [strittiger Streitbezirk]’ (Heidegger, 1994: 260f). This in mind, a ‘time-space’ reading of dis/ability and in/dependence questions any attempt that splits up and amends dis/ability and in/dependence into mere sources of different given realities in order to understand them. In contrast, this chapter will follow the traces of how in/dependences and dis/abilities come into being through everyday practices. These practices elude an abstract di/vision of in/dependence and dis/ability into pure cultural or natural occasions in time and space. Thus, a ‘time-space’ reading if dis/ability disrupts the religion of modernity. Obviously there is a wide range of becoming in/dependent and dis/abled in everyday life. Every becoming, as Moser and Law (1999) and Schillmeier (2007a) argue, is specificity in its own right. Different (blind) people live differently in different environments and have different lifestyles; they live alone or with friends or family, they use different props for different reasons, they have different preferences and repugnances, etc. In order to feel independent and able to do the necessary domestic routines without much distress, bodies, senses, and things have to relate well. To be mobile outside their homes, some blind people manage on their own whereas others depend heavily on relatives and friends. To go out, some use assistive technologies like the white cane or a guide dog. Still, within the complex and highly variable arrangements of societal life, these relations that allow independent living are fragile tempo-material achievements and may easily turn into dependence and disability (French, 1999; Hill, 1989; Michalko, 1999; Saerberg, 2007). Consequently, when people feel independent or dependent it is the contingent effect of highly specific material relations that have their own rhythms and times, make up their socially relevant spatialities, assemble affects and affectations, visualize (or alter) preferences and old habits, and so on. In effect, these relations are delicate achievements and are easily disturbed when bodies, senses, and things do not assemble properly. They may turn good (enabling) achievements into bad (disabling) ones. These highly situated and heterogeneous human and non-human configurations assemble the multiple times and spaces of dis/ability and in/dependence. As we have already seen in the preceding chapters, for the ‘visually disabled’, dealing with money makes up some crucial scenarios of defi ning their times and spaces of in/dependences and dis/abilities.

TIME/SPACE ‘MONEY’ It is taken for granted that money functions as an intermediary that constantly relates the times and spaces of the world along economic orders.

158 Rethinking Disability Translating money into things and vice versa, money and money technologies keep economic infrastructures circulating and durable. Money also functions as a mediator—for good and for bad. First of all, the circulation of money enacts the very relation between (calculating) subjects and (calculated) objects. Calculating subjects and calculated objects are not intrinsic features of humans and non-humans. Rather, they need a third element like money which opens up for the times and spaces of calculating subjects and calculated objects: accelerated action and distant action (cf. Simmel, 1989a, 1989b. 1992a, 1992b). Moreover, money mediates the world into fetishes and facts, luxury and debts, peace and war, love and hate, those who have money and those who don’t, the rich and the poor, etc. Money creates banks and those who rob them, and—according to Bert Brecht—it remains an open empirical question as to what or who is the bigger offence or delinquent. At the same time we have seen that the rapid circulation and distribution of money inscriptions and money technologies mediates the enactment of visual relations that dominate modern cultures (Simmel, 1997). With this in mind, the circulation of money stabilizes modern visual cultures inasmuch as it relies on the visual readability of money inscriptions. Money and vision keep modern subjects and objects and their spatio-temporal networks durable. Money, however, not only mediates material, social, and moral inequalities, but also creates sensory inequalities and in/dependence. As we have seen previously, in modern times we call it ‘visual disability’. Claire, 53 years old, glaucoma, says: Money is so central to our society! And it is the practical day-to-day things like money . . . it’s just too difficult because it is something we all have to do and there is no way around it. It is depending on issues of trust when you are with your friend, the person in the shop, or whoever. Well, you know it is the vulnerability blind people feel when actually walking towards a cash point, particularly if they have a white cane . . . I do not feel fine at one of those machines either, particularly at night or in the evening, I tend to look around if somebody is there and you are conscious if there is somebody behind you and if you can’t see you feel more vulnerable . . . I think the whole issue of money is fraud . . . for me just knowing which is a five-pound note and which is a ten-pound note and coins and things like that. It is a very basic problem, you know, money is very difficult. It is impossible to recognize and to differentiate what is what. It is about the size of the note, about the feel of it, and just generally because money is so important to everybody. As we have seen with Claire, Elizabeth, and the others mentioned, money not only mediates economic exchange but also mediates social relations. Everyday money transactions require more trust in others since the asymmetry of sensory perception is accompanied by the risk of fraud. Due to

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such sensory asymmetry, people become more vulnerable especially in public spaces. They invite muggers and thieves; the more so if assistant technologies like the white cane symbolizes that the person is blind. Not only do social relations change, but also money itself does. It translates from money of and for the sighted to money of and for the blind. However, as we have seen, visually attuned money doesn’t translate easily into ‘blind’ money. Currencies differ in their materiality. Money mediates into different materialities (coins, paper money, plastic cards, electronic money, etc.); they also have different colors, shapes, textures, weights, thicknesses, and sizes. To become blind money, different temporal and spatial arrangements have to be mobilized. Blind money practices slow down and lengthen money transactions; blind people plan, select, and earmark the money in use. Assistive technologies like templates function as intermediaries to make them translate into blind money. Generally speaking, it is the assemblage of human and non-human configurations enacting blind times and spaces that disrupt, question, and alter the presence of visually enacted times and spaces. These configurations also mediate the intermediary ‘money’ itself; visual money becomes blind money. Such a clash of different regimes of time and space disables when no translation, when no mediation is possible. Through failed money transactions, blind people become disabled. They become visible as blind in visual relations. In that moment, blind people are caught in the event of the no longer and not yet. Money, then, is no longer visual money and not yet blind money. It remains as disabling everyday life. Rose, 73 years old, age-related macular degeneration, summarizes: I prefer cash; it is better for me. I feel more secure with cash and it allows you a more normal life. That’s why I prefer cash. If you didn’t have cash you have to leave it to somebody else. I need to feel to be a little independent with the money, you know. When I pay, when I go with my daughter shopping I pay myself. I tell her what I want. She takes me to the counter and I pick up my stuff and pay myself. I feel independent and I’ve got my own money to pay it. You know, the bills come in and I can’t see them. I have to leave all that to my daughter to sign it. It’s direct debit. All those big bills. But the ordinary everyday things in life I like to be independent. Or, if I want to pay something. You know, if somebody comes for a collection or something. I can’t bring my card out and say right I give you fifty pence by card for ‘The Big Issue’ or something. You know if you live on your own as I do you’ve got to be independent. There is no way just to rely on other people. You’ve got try it yourself. Rose wants to be able to manage money on her own. As we said earlier, handling money is an act that defines calculative subjects and creates a highly specific set of dependent independences as Simmel (1989a) has pointed out

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so well.3 The proper use of money makes her feel like a self-acting, calculating, and discretionary subject who is able to deal with calculable objects. This is precisely what money relations achieve and necessitate: split subjects and objects. If Rose cannot deal with money, she doesn’t feel like a discretionary subject and she appears disabled. Rose, like Elizabeth, Sylvia, and all the other blind people I have researched, cannot use ‘money’ in general. Rose’s economic transactions are rather limited to those involving ‘cash’: She does not deal well with credit cards or with bills. It is her daughter, she says, who takes care of bills. For Rose this does not seem to be extremely problematic as long as she can still be in control of everyday tasks involving money: the supermarket, somebody knocking on the door for a collection, etc. In these situations it is important for her to manage and pay ‘with her own money’, which, in order to become hers, has to have a material specificity. Cards don’t work to pay at the door and bills have to be paid by direct debit signed by her daughter. Big notes are difficult as well, since Rose, like many blind people, cannot check the change properly (given the short period of time, they feel vulnerable or an obstacle for others and so on). Blind people can never be sure what they get back; and it is precisely money that has been able to measure precisely what to get back! Accordingly, Rose’s independence is mediated through several dependencies. For her, managing on her own does not mean doing everything alone. She doesn’t mind that her daughter signs big bills since this is the best option anyway. She is fi ne with her daughter walking her around, picking up the products she has asked for, and bringing her and the products chosen to the counter. But once there, she wants to pay on her own. For Rose, the very act of paying at the supermarket’s counter defi nes the agency of paying and excludes all those who have contributed to make her shopping not an individual but collective achievement. Rather, paying individualizes Rose’s independence. It does not matter that the daughter has helped her continuously and has done all the physical actions of her shopping. The ability to pay marks the whole action as her own—then she feels independent and that she is paying ‘on her own’. All those specificities described, so my argument goes, come into being as the effect of the event when money for the sighted translates (or doesn’t) into money for the blind. It is the very time-space mediation of a third element like money that opens up the possibilities of highly specific times and spaces of dis/abilities and in/dependences. We could see how dependencies create independences. Collective dependencies on others—human and nonhuman alike—configure independent action and abilities. Obviously, collective dependencies may also lure in dependencies and disabilities. It has become very clear that money transactions are dominated by visually regulated rules and routines. As an event, though, blind practices disrupt, alter, and change these practices dramatically. Money practices slow down so significantly that blind people become present as different. Blind practices also visualize the hidden structures of visual everyday money practices, which have been defi ning the spatial situation as well as

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the temporalities of action involved. The different materialities, sizes, textures, shapes, weights of the different currencies also play a crucial role in visualizing sensory differences and their temporalities mediating in/dependences and dis/abilities. Furthermore, money appears as a most relevant intermediary in our everyday life—we cannot live without money; ‘money is so central to our society’, as Claire said. Indeed, money rules the world. It also mediates the world into highly specific relations and entities: value calculating subjects and calculable objects with value. This is why independent money management plays a dominant role for the blind. As I have shown previously, such independence is very much an effect of mediated dependencies. Value objects as money that seem to be endlessly translatable into other things are risky objects since everybody wants to have them. And we have seen that it is much easier to have money, to be with money, and to deal with being sighted than being blind.

STANDING ALONE: SHOPPING EXPERIENCES Mary, 62 years old, age-related macular degeneration, stresses: The great difficulty is to stand alone. We are going to the supermarket and they have the habit of moving things. We all sometimes get lost or stuck when we encounter unknown situations. For the blind, living in hegemonic, modern visual infrastructures, this is a much more recurring experience than it is for the majority of sighted others. Mary hints at a typical situation where and why she gets stuck: People in the supermarket tend to move things. Indeed, supermarket strategies tend to change the order of their products from time to time, so as to induce customers to explore the shop and go to areas they normally would not visit. This is meant to make people buy more and different things. For Mary, those strategies appear highly problematic: She does not fi nd the things she was thinking of buying nor does she fi nd possible new products. At that moment, the presence of the supermarket does not translate into the possibility of proper shopping; Mary gets stuck and the displacement of things makes her feel displaced as well. As we can see, being able to move around and to fi nd one’s way involves the synchronicity of memorized spaces and sensed spaces. When Mary fi nds and identifies the product she intends to buy, the different spaces (memorized and sensed spaces) are simultaneously present and appear as one space where multiple spaces are synchronizing. Memorized and sensed spaces translate into each other; they are time-space, so to speak. But when her memorized space does not connect with the sensed space or vice versa, the lack of synchronicity leaves her stuck in a present past, a future present and a present future. Again, we can see what it means to be caught in the event of the no longer and not yet. Stuck and standing alone, the

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supermarket’s time-spaces are not part of her knowledge anymore. She becomes a stranger in her normal everydayness. With Heidegger (1993), one can say that the present memorized spatiality that is ready-to-hand [Zuhanden], usable, and accessible space, where things are relevant, known, and work, does not translate into the readiness-to-hand of sensed spatialities. Ready-to-hand things assemble Mary’s ‘blindness’ and allow her to feel independent and enable her to move around and do her everyday routines. Present-at-hand [Vorhanden], the time-spaces of the supermarket turn into detached arrangements lying somewhere outside her ready-to-hand memorized knowledge. They make up mere present-at-hand spatialities alienating what is ready-to-hand in her memorized space. Subsequently, the presence of the products she wants to buy appears utterly absent; Mary is caught up in present space full of disconnected and unknown objects. The presence of these absent object-spaces makes her stuck in the past. She cannot connect to the ready-to-hand of present space. The non-synchronicity of memorized and sensed spaces visualizes Mary’s blindness as highly disabling. Left in the past, she stands alone in the present, feels rather bad, and becomes completely dependent on sighted others. She experiences the no longer and not yet. Simmel (1993c, 2002) has already pointed out the different social times and spaces that emerge depending on different sensory practices. He argues that the ‘sociological mood’ of the blind differs from the deaf and the way both—deaf and blind people—relate to the hegemony of visual practices and infrastructures (cf. also Ree, 1999). For ‘the blind person, the other person exists only in succession, in the temporal succession of their utterances’. The ‘restless, disturbing simultaneity’ of past and present relations as ‘it lies revealed in the faces of people elude the blind person’ (Simmel, 1997: 114). The blind, according to Simmel’s argument, can detach from the ephemeral, modern ways of seeing and being seen, because they can withdraw from visual relations, whereas the deaf are exposed to them. The blind person lives primarily in non-simultaneous times and spaces, which ‘may be the reason for the peaceful and calm mood, the uniform friendliness towards the surroundings, which is so often observed among the blind’ (ibid.). The deaf, the one who sees without hearing, ‘is generally much more confused, helpless and disturbed than the one who hears without being able to see’ (ibid.). This is partly compensated by the different modes of memorizing through hearing or seeing. We recall better what we have heard than what we have seen, ‘despite the fact that what a person has said is irredeemable as such, whereas a person presents themselves to the eye as a relatively stable object’ (ibid.). The impression one could get is that Simmel simplifies and romanticizes blind practices inasmuch as it is only the ‘nature’ of vision that allows for the vibrating simultaneity, whereas the blind person remains in the haven of tranquility given by the non-simultaneous world of blindness. The blind

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appear as the non-modern counterpart to the velocity of modern (visual) life. However, I think that Simmel’s sociological account of the senses shows that different sensory practices mediate different social practices. As we have seen earlier with Elizabeth, Sylvia, Richard, Rose, and Mary, it seems rather difficult to make any general claims about fi xed sources that make visually disabled people ‘blind’, since it is very much a question of how different ‘blind’ times and spaces come into being through a multiplicity of mediators. In such a reading, Simmel points very precisely to the issue at stake here. It is the co-presence of different sensory and memorizing practices, different temporal practices, and the emergence of simultaneous and non-simultaneous spaces that mediate the openness of the human social (cf. Simmel, 1919). This point is relevant to understanding how Mary needs to sense and access the supermarket’s times and spaces when she is faced with the incompatibility between her memory of things and her actual sensory practices of them. The permanence of things is granted much more by the mediation of sight than by the other senses. Sighted people are thought to live in the presence of things and persons. To be sure, they also rely on memorized spaces and make the presence visible as a ‘seen’ practice. The actualization of the present time and space, however, can be done in a much faster and independent way (for instance, by ‘having a look around’ in the supermarket). Blind practices on the contrary are much more dependent to construct the present through the passage from the past into the future. Blind people, more than sighted people in visual culture, are constantly moved by the possibility of events that change the known into the unknown. Accordingly, blind people have to relate more closely to the absent, the non-present, and, indeed, to the invisible (cf. Derrida, 1993). The actualization of past into present is not a process that is smooth and fast—as the ‘stop and go’ or ‘zigzagging’ movements of blind people show. Such movements visualize the hard work of constant translation between memorized and sensed/perceived spaces that mediate the emergent timespaces into new times and spaces as they come into being while sensing and perceiving. Blind practices slow down the temporalities of visual practices and visualize what remains invisible for these visual relations. Most importantly, blind practices show very explicitly that we do not deal simply with the presence of things. Rather, the past and the future have to be translated in multiple ways (depending on, for instance, the different sensory practices involved) into the presence of human practices. They are constantly in touch with the event of the no longer and not yet; they appropriate the absence of presence. Blindness unravels the presence of memorized space in our daily, visually attuned practices. With this in mind, the past does not refer to the things that happened in the past, as if they were fi xed in a self-contained and isolated space that has been left behind. Rather, the past appears where it is not supposed to be: in the present. Blind practices bring to the fore how

164 Rethinking Disability the past translates into and interferes actively with the present. In this way, blindness discloses the weaving of different pasts (as well as futures), which normally remain hidden within the tempo-spatialities of taken-for-granted visual infrastructures. Blind practices reveal the disruption of the linearity of the flow of things, i.e. from the past into the present and future. Enacted by the known4 past and the unknown future, the very act of walking blindly unravels that we always go backwards and forwards in time. We constantly mediate different times and spaces. One can say that the very process of becoming blind ‘complexifies’ the visual times and spaces in place. It not only makes present the normativity of the ‘structural silence’ (Seremetakis, 1994) of sighted times and spaces, it also draws attention to the becoming of highly idiosyncratic but mixed times and spaces that synchronize or do not synchronize with other times and spaces. Blind practices are a good example to question and alter the ‘presentism’ (Assmann, 2002: 400) of common social constructivism where the past and future are mere effects of the present. In our case (where Mary is standing alone), both the past and the future enact the present through the mediation of past and future things. The supermarket’s past arrangements come into a present which, for Mary, belongs to the (unknown) future. These multiple temporal belongings challenge our common (modern) understanding of presence as a mode of non-simultaneous and simultaneous ‘nows’ (presentism). Rather, they draw our attention to the power of highly individual, relational effects of time-spaces, which maintain or disrupt, question and alter, the temporalities and spatialities of societal orderings in place. It also challenges the classical reading of subject/object relations. The things with which we deal in our everyday lives are not mere objects that subjects perceive. Rather, they contribute to the enabling or disabling times and spaces in the conduct of everyday practices. In Mary’s case, they emerge as uncertain and vague times and spaces of past and future objects. Caught in the event, the non-accessible presence of things enacts times and spaces of dependencies that are highly disabling. Hence, it is not about the given subjectivity of sensing or perceiving the objectivity of things. Rather, it is about the mediation of heterogeneous times and spaces that make up human and non-human configurations. It visualizes the compatibility without comparability of time and space as it becomes apparent through the event (time-space): Each extends the other, but only from the other’s position. What the extensions yield are different capacities. In this view, there is no subject-object relation between a person and a tool, only an expanded or realized capability (Strathern, 1991: 38). Mary’s times and spaces do not synchronize with the times and spaces of the marketing strategies given by the supermarket. Different times and spaces emerge from ‘a difference-driven process by which the given is given’ (DeLanda, 1999: 31). As Gilles Deleuze (2001) argues:

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‘Diversity is given but difference is that by which the given is given ( . . . ) Every phenomenon refers to an inequality by which it is conditioned ( . . . ) Everything which happens and everything which appears is correlated with orders of differences’ (Deleuze, 2001: 222). Mary’s story shows the interference of such different temporalities and spatialities. These different realities do not fuse into one, but remain two that are co-present to each other. All of these different times and spaces are real—blind and sighted, actual and virtual alike. They materialize into Mary’s ‘blindness’ and the supermarket’s ‘sightedness’. Not only do they co-exist, they become present on their own terms; that is, they are selfreferential practices of visual and blind time-spaces. Thus, we have rather complex assemblages of times and spaces that make different times and spaces relate and not relate. To be sure, when things are moved in the supermarket, blind as well as sighted people are somehow alienated from the possibility of shopping; but, and this is the point, they are affected differently. The supermarket moves things for the sighted and not for Mary! In effect, Mary stands alone and the supermarket sells nothing. She endangers the supermarket’s strategies. Just as the blind beggar who is holding out for money threatens capitalism, so Mary threatens the supermarket’s policy when she gets stuck. Moreover, being stuck enacts Mary’s disability as a highly visual one and creates the dependence on the sighted. At the same time, the situation actualizes the capacities and skills of ‘normal’ sighted customers who may have a look around and will (potentially) buy more things. When Mary gets stuck, she uses specific techniques to overcome her ‘blindness’: I stop anybody to ask and I am saying: ‘Are you staff?’ And they mostly say: ‘No love, we are customers’. But I ask anyway: ‘Can you tell me what’s on that packet? Can you tell me the cooking instruction and can you tell me the expiring date?’ and all that sort of thing. By that you keep your independence and you are ( . . . ) it is better than sitting down and doing nothing ( . . . ) I have a good husband; without him I’d be useless, absolutely useless ( . . . ) [The white cane] is your best friend, you know? It is a walking stick, a courtesy cane. If you carry a cane people will move away from you. I could not go outdoors without it. We are mates. Without the cane it would be very diffi cult. When she gets stuck, one of her strategies is to enroll others, to make them act with and/or for her. So she tries to synchronize the different visual and blind times and spaces. The husband appears to be very useful in mediating such mixed situations as well. Without her husband’s mediation she often feels ‘absolutely useless’. In addition, relations with technologies mediate

166 Rethinking Disability too: The white cane allows her to keep moving outdoors, 5 to keep the right distance to others by triggering off courtesy rules. An assistive technology like the cane turns into a ‘courtesy cane’, a ‘mate’ that—like her husband— mediates and synchronizes mixed situations and their differing orderings. Thus, humans and non-humans alike become best friends in mediating her into independences and abilities. Again, we can see that there is not a given source that affects in/dependence and dis/ability. Rather, it is the very process of mediation that enables her to do things and move around. Mary extends her ready-to-hand embodied practices to heterogeneous others. Thus, the very ability or disability to do things is not a question of independency or dependency. Rather, dis/abilities are effects of heterogeneous relations that actualize in/dependencies on heterogeneous others. With this in mind, independences and abilities refer to enabling relations ‘without having to look’ (Heidegger, 1993: 69). As argued previously, these assemblages unfold the readiness-to-hand of things. According to Heidegger, the associations [Umgang] with ready-to-hand relations are, metaphorically speaking, not ‘blind’. Rather, they configure the secure and cautious pragmatics of ‘care’ [Umsicht] that network heterogeneous entities into fitting ones.6 Ready-to-hand, mind, bodies, technologies, and objects assemble the ‘handi-net-work’ [Werk] of everyday life. Ready-to-hand, the handi-network of things reveals its own ‘nature/culture’ [Umweltnatur] by mediating humans and non-humans in highly specific and self-limiting7 ways. Moreover, the nature/culture of handi-net-work allows the eventfulness of mediators to become invisible; mediators become intermediaries. By making blind practices work, handi-net-works affi rm the normativity of blind practices through which ‘blind independence’ and ‘blind ability’ are possible. Ready-to-hand, these handi-net-works turn invisible; they become black-boxed. This means that ready-to-hand minds, bodies, technologies, and objects appear as accessible and connectable in order to live blindness without getting stuck in other practices that enact, or are enacted in, other natures/cultures. When merely present-at-hand [vorhanden], relations and things are disabling the readiness-to-hand of blind practices, it brings to the fore the conspicuousness of the event. Non-conspicuous times and spaces of blind handi-net-works mediate into the conspicuousness and normativity of nonblind times and spaces. This means that minds, bodies, and things may be present, but remain absent for the specific normativity of blind handi-networks: They provoke dependencies and disabilities given by the normativity of non-blind (e.g. visually attuned) natures/cultures instead. Summarizing: We have seen how confl icting normativities mediate between the readiness-to-hand or presence-at-hand of things and practices. If associations are badly put together, disconnected, or displaced from ready-to-hand situations, the very rhythms, the temporalities and spatialities involved are disrupted, questioned, and altered. Estranged, humans and

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non-humans alike become merely present-at-hand. This means, although dependent on each other, humans and non-humans don’t ‘understand’ each other. They become disabled and dependent entities due to the relations involved: Bodies cannot move, courtesy rules are broken, white canes and guide dogs become problematic tools that symbolize blindness, money cannot be read properly as money which won’t allow payment to be made, objects become obstacles to run against, minds are not able to think, and the senses are unable to feel or decide what is felt. Such a reading of ordinary acts has tremendous effects on how to approach the issues of dependence or independence and disability or ability. ‘Being’ dependent or independent and disabled or abled is not given by nature as some(-)thing present-at-hand. Rather, in/dependences and dis/ abilities turn into a multiple becoming of ready-to-hand and/or present-athand times and spaces of human and non-human configurations. Thus, dis/ abling practices are fragile passages between the readiness-to-hand and the presence-at-hand of things and practices. They do not refer to mere presentat-hand sources given by mental, sensory, or bodily skills on one hand and the properties of objects and technologies on the other. Rather, skills and properties are nothing but modes of mediation that unfold the possibilities of in/dependence and dis/ability. This is precisely what the parlance of the eventfulness of time-spaces is adamant about. The time-space as the event of ‘temporalizing spacing— spacing temporalization’ makes us aware that there is no such thing as dependence or independence, ability or disability. Rather, we encounter the constant movement between the readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand of contingent human/non-human objects and relations that articulate (and black-box) the associations of reference of the human social in everyday life. Enabling relations may easily turn into disabling relationships that again may turn into enabling relations. Such a reading takes the heterogeneous and multiple becomings of the human social into consideration and ‘free[s] us from the dogma that the human sociation which we know is a completely self-evident one’ (Simmel, 1997: 114). It brings to the fore the eventfulness of human association and how the normativity of societal orderings (e.g. sighted and blind people) is maintained or questioned and altered. Following the concept of time-space, readiness-to-hand relations are primordial to present-at-hand relationships (Heidegger, 1993). With it, Heidegger affi rms the different times and spaces of beings by the very process of affi rmation of time-space itself: Times and spaces are the effects of temporalizing spacing and spacing temporalization. Every being is already and always related ready-to-hand to others. Ready-to-hand with others, the event of time-space makes beings become visible (present) to others and invisible (non-present) to themselves. The question, then, of what being is, is not a question of being but a question of the event of associating the different modes of existence (present/absent) that make up the conditions of possibility of being in the fi rst

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place. By rethinking in/dependence and dis/ability as events, we enter the question of how in/dependence and dis/ability comes into being. Such an interest in the temporality of beings has to be empirical since temporality values the empirical as the only ‘contestable zone of controversy’ [strittiger Streitbezirk] of beings. I think an empirical philosophy of time-spaces offers a methodological alternative to traditional disciplinary research that takes either ‘the social’, or ‘the individual’, ‘the environment’ or ‘nature’, as the sole explanatory power of making the world present. It adds complexity to the religion of modernity that is primarily concerned with either/or di/visions. Rather, if we take temporality seriously, those abstract formulas of ordering are disrupted, questioned, and altered by the concrete practices of everyday life. Heidegger’s philosophy of the event affi rms the everyday life of such heterogeneous entities as people and things and their properties [Eigentum] by how, when, and where they (dis-)associate each other. Such properties, for instance, make present ‘blind’ or ‘sighted’ practices but, as we have seen previously, only through the other and with other mediators (e.g. money). Mediated properties are too empirical, too diffuse, too messy, too individual, and too complex to be fully explained by an abstract force such as ‘nature’, ‘culture’, or ‘the social’. This is the lesson disability studies can learn from STS and ANT in particular: Mediated properties object to global views of them precisely because they draw people and things together into the ‘contestable zone of controversy’ of everyday human affairs.

6

From Exclusive Perspectives to Inclusive Differences

By highlighting and unfolding the concept ‘inclusive differences’ of dis/ability this last chapter of Rethinking Disability suggests that disability is the outcome of historically specific, embodied human and non-human configurations fabricated within the conduct of everyday life. Inclusive differences question the attempt given by exclusive perspectives (modern religions as it were) that try to divide analytically, conceptually, or politically ‘disability’ a priori into an individual (natural) bodily impairment or a purely socio-cultural attributed disability. Applying the concept of inclusive differences, the domain of neither ‘nature’ nor ‘society’ can function as a disability’s self-explanatory force. Rather, inclusive differences highlight the connection between human and non-human relations that make up the different enabling and/or disabling scenarios of societal realities.

TRANSGRESSING THE ‘PERSPECTIVE’ VIEW ON DIS/ABILITY Concerns about dis/ability depend on the perspective from which they are viewed. Different perspectives enact disparate matters of disability. This is what the religion of modernity has been telling ever since. It is the social/ cultural perspective of disability studies that has put significant effort into highlighting the perspective dependency of disability: Disability cannot be unified into and from one perspective. From a social/cultural perspective there is no such thing as disability being a fi xed, ahistorical bodily or mental condition that somehow differs from normality given by nature. Rather, the focus is on societal processes and structures that bring to the fore the social embedding of disability (e.g. socially produced inequalities, dependencies, oppressions, etc.). Historically and culturally performed roles and conventions configure socially relevant practices and thereby visualize the very specificities of disability issues. Questions concerning disability, then, can be addressed and altered only by ‘society’ itself, since there is no innate or given ‘nature’ of disability (cf. Barnes et al., 2003; Barnes & Mercer, 1996; Oliver, 1996).

170 Rethinking Disability From the social/cultural perspective, other standpoints—notably the medical or technoscientific view—have been criticized for treating disability as a condition that lies outside the realm of ‘the social’ or ‘society’. It is argued that technoscientific and medical practices do not reveal the social origin but rather the troubled ‘nature’ of individual being that visualizes disability. Accordingly, disability is located within individual human bodies that do not match the standards set by the normalcy of non-disabled relations. Thus, according to the social model, defi ning and treating disability by technoscientific and medical means (e.g. assistive and rehabilitating technologies) promotes a model of human impairment that individualizes, naturalizes, and normalizes matters of disability. In turn, from such a stance the social fabrication of disability lies outside the medical and technoscientific operational sphere, since it is only individual bodies that can be diagnosed, treated, and rehabilitated directly and effectively, and not societies (cf. ICF, 2001). It is striking to see how both perspectives follow the same di/visions between the social and the individual or society and nature, although they are in a sense ‘mirror images’ of each other. From such a mere ‘perspective’ view, I argue that the differentiation between matters of ‘society’ and matters of ‘nature’ are treated as exclusive differences. To be sure this does not mean that each perspective does not acknowledge and incorporate the perspective of the other. The social/cultural perspective has discussed the importance of individual impairment as much as the medical model tries to recognize and integrate the social and cultural dimension of disability. However, for each perspective the viewpoint of the other gains importance only after the origin (social or individual, society or nature) of disability has been granted the primary mode of description. Only then are disability issues compatible, since they are comparable societal or natural issues. The danger I see in such strategies of exclusive differences produced by ‘perspectives’ that address disability as arising from either ‘society’ or ‘nature’ is the risk of naturalizing and purifying relations of disability— social or natural alike—as exclusive realities. It leads to a more or less abstract and infi nite discussion (re-)iterating exclusivist differences as, for example, between ‘impairment’ and ‘disability’, ‘the individual’ and ‘society’, which have been criticized and were thought to have been overcome. Generally speaking a strong—and abstract—di/vision between the ‘culture’ and ‘nature’ of disability is created and stabilized. Although such di/visions by perspective may help to identify one’s own (political, academic, conceptual, personal) position clearly and distinctively from others, it also sets clear and distinctive, rather hermetic limits of understanding how disability issues are enacted and practiced. Bearing this mind, I will suggest a move away from exclusive perspectives to inclusive differences. Contrary to the exclusivist view on perspectives, which bifurcates impairment from disability and nature from culture, the concept

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‘inclusive differences’ displays the societal evidence and experiences of dis/ability as the effect of concrete practices that are never purely disabling or enabling, about the disabled or non-disabled, never purely individual or social, cultural or natural. Such a shift refers to perspectives in the making rather than a mode of abstraction by perspectives. Inclusive differences of dis/ability refer to all ‘ordinary acts’ which (a) fabricate enabling and disabling (dis/abling) practices of human conduct, linking the senses and bodies with material objects and technologies, and (b) demand and constitute different social and cultural competencies, as well as enact different embodied and sensory capacities and skills that make up the experiences of different physical or mental impairments and related feelings, emotions, and affects. Thus, inclusive differences of dis/ability draw attention (empirically and conceptually) to the heterogeneous manufacture of societal life, highlighting a dimension long neglected (and still highly under-researched) by the dominant perspective view of both social sciences and disability studies: the crucial importance of the relations between human feeling, sensory and sensuous bodies, and non-human technologies, artifacts, and objects and how these relations make up dis/abling practices in the course of everyday life. Consequently, disability is not a single unity that is cut into social (society) and natural (individual) sides. Disability is not to be located inside nor outside ‘society’ or ‘nature’ but is the effect of emerging practices that make up, question, and alter what is societally considered and experienced ‘social’ and/or ‘natural’. This means that neither the perspective of ‘society’ (social model) nor the perspective of ‘nature’ (medical model) can function as a special domain of reality that allows the delimiting and fi xing of a universal explanatory mode of describing dis/ability. Following from that, the di/vision between the perspectives of ‘society’ and ‘nature’ does not explain but has to be explained by the very dis/abling practices themselves. In contrast to the perspective model of exclusive differences, the concept of inclusive differences crisscrosses all those discourses, which are still struggling with the abstract bifurcation of disability into cultural and natural, social and individual matters of concern (cf. Sheldon et al., 2007). The concept ‘inclusive differences’ offers an alternative, constructive reading of dis/ability that transcends the limits of either ‘critical social’ or ‘critical realist’ perspectives of disability.1 I call the concept ‘constructive’ instead of ‘critical realist’ since inclusive differences do not refer to a reality out there that can be directly accessed; rather, they address different realities as being constructed by the very different practices involved. My account also diverges from mere ‘social constructionism’ in that inclusive differences are heterogeneous (linking, for example, the human and nonhuman) and question the realm of the social rather than take it as the sole explanatory device of dis/ability.

172 Rethinking Disability HOW PERSPECTIVES SEE PRACTICES AND WHAT THEY MISS It is interesting to ask what are the general relations that bring to the fore inclusive blind practices. I will argue that due to their very heterogeneity blind practices become visible as disrupting, questioning, and altering the routines that dominate visual practices take for granted: • Blind practices slow down the commonality of social orderings given by visual infrastructures. • Blind practices, being highly indifferent to the modes of ordering of visual relations, introduce a different set of practices; this is why they become visible in the fi rst place. • Blind practices refer to sensory practices other than sight. These practices are poorly understood if seen as a matter of substituting or compensating vision. Rather, they make up practices that are more than mere practices of sight. I agree with the blind philosopher John Hull and other blind scholars that there is an abyss between sight and blindness (cf. Hull, 1991; French, 1999; Magee & Milligan, 1995; Michalko, 1999, 2002; Saerberg, 2007). Like them, I consider this chasm as the effect of inclusive differences and not as a grand duality or dichotomy of exclusive perspectives. The French have a word for this: partage. As Derrida (1996) stressed, ‘partage’ names a rather paradox relation. It means at the same time ‘participation’, ‘sharing’ and ‘sharing relations’, and ‘difference’, ‘cut’, ‘splitting’, ‘division’. ‘Partaking’ in visual relations, then, brings to the fore the very heterogeneity of blind practices that relate and do not relate to visual practices.

‘Partial sightedness’ Re-visited Understood like this, the common notion of ‘partial sightedness’ (low vision) gains a completely different meaning. It names the very practices of blindness themselves that are attached and detached from the practices of seeing: Blind practices become visible in visual cultures but refer to more than having difficulties in seeing. Accordingly, the common assertion that links partial sightedness primarily to low vision is only one (although dominant) view that equates blind practices with an exclusively visual perspective of them. The latter, however, misses the heterogeneity of blind practices themselves, which are always more than just the privation from a (visual) perspective of it. These tensions between the ‘vocabulary’ of the practices of blind people that are always more than visually related practices and the dominant ‘grammar’ of a visual perspective on blindness unfold the ambivalent experiences of blind people in visual cultures. Reflecting on his blindness, George, a 37-year-old man who is almost totally blind (‘since the age of 3 visual images have appeared as mere shadows, he says), stresses:

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Well, I think the problem is that we are brought up in the same world; we are taught to rely so heavily on our sight that people cannot imagine to live without sight ( . . . ) So being interactive with the world without vision is probably alien to a lot of people. But the reality is that you grow up with visual impairment ( . . . ) then you interact naturally. So you obviously have to pick up external factors that are around you in order to interact ( . . . ) I think you can. So it is quite funny, I was asked a lot by taxi drivers. First they say: ‘Are you totally blind?’ and I say ‘No, I’ve got some light perception’ and then they move on saying ‘what is it like to be blind?’ and then they say ‘Have you ever thought of being cured?’ ( . . . ) And to me it never gets to my mind. The only time it got to my mind was when I was younger. I liked to be able to see the people of my family. But it wasn’t really coming from me; it was coming from the people around me ( . . . ) We are brought up to believe that there is a cultural difference, so you need it. So it is all about fi xing the problem, isn’t it? George’s blindness is framed by living in a world of sight and visual perspectives. However, George has been blind since he was three and it is natural for him not to ‘di/vision’ worlds into the world of sight and the world of blindness precisely because he (being blind) remains partially connected to the practices of sight. For him ‘to pick up external factors’ is an obvious part ‘in order to interact’. George never felt the need to think of himself as being ‘different’. Still, sighted people around him make him a member of the blind or visual world; they force him to constantly reflect on his difference. He has been brought up to think of himself as blind and he is made to classify himself in interactions with sighted people. Indeed, as his experiences with his family and the general public show, it is the ‘sighted’ people that remind him of his ‘problematic difference’, a difference that demands decisions: He is either in or out of the perspective of vision and its di/ visions. The visual environment, as he notes, is all about fi xing a problem! This ongoing demand to draw clear-cut di/visions constantly forces him to undertake a kind of completion management of his identity that outsources the heterogeneity of his blind practices. George isn’t sighted nor is he totally blind, since he can perceive light and colors. When he tells people that he still perceives light or sees shadows they usually decide to dismiss this information by categorizing him as totally blind. Those views from the sighted perspective decide his status for him, since he looks blind to them. Once the problematic, mixed status has been cleared up, a solution to the problem is suggested: ‘What about getting cured?’ Getting cured? George had never felt the need to be cured. Cured of what? For George the question concerning a cure appears rather ludicrous. However, George has to admit that he was brought up thinking about it, even though he did not feel that this was his own need. Thus, George is continuously confronted with a (visual, di/visional) perspective that demands

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exclusive differences, clear and distinctive appearances, single memberships. As soon as these di/visions become ‘dazzled’ by the very practices of George’s blindness, the visual perspective tries to render them invisible. Thus, only such invisibility of George’s partial sightedness displays George as being exclusively different, i.e. blind, meaning non-sighted.

Local Practices—Global Views George’s experience shows how life within a dominant and global perspective (visual culture) continuously necessitates exclusive differences that demand a clear recognition of ‘his’ otherness. Following Robert Cooper, George’s story highlights ‘the visual imperative that orders the social world’ by keeping things apart to make them visible in the fi rst place (Cooper, 1997: 38). At the same time it renders George’s heterogeneous living invisible. His partial sightedness/blindness is very much enacted by means of the exclusivity of visual self-descriptions. Self-description, like compensation (see Part I), is a way to secure exclusive perspectives that clearly differentiate between self and other. As the social anthropologist Marilyn Strathern reminded us: [It] translates knowledge into a power-holder of a now familiar kind, a competence which acquires the capacity to effect further translations. . . . [Self-description] encourages social entities to proliferate. And like compensation, which defi nes the unit that can claim it, such description creates units radically distinct from one another. However similar the look to an outsider, self-description establishes the uniqueness of each through enrolling the radical divide between self and other. (Strathern, 1999: 196) Self-descriptions tend to be global views that compensate the complexities of local practices. George’s story narrates the very power of such a dominant and global perspective that demands clear-cut di/visions that have to compensate for the fact that (a) George sees a bit, not enough to see normally but too much to be called ‘blind’, and (b) he experiences and lives his ‘partial sightedness’ within, but highly differently from, the attitudes, practices, and infrastructures of the sighted world. George’s inclusive differences don’t fit but overflow the visual (or any other clear-cut) perspective. His story, then, is primarily about the very difficulties global views have with local practices where abstract definitions are often blurred and blended by the practices themselves. Like George’s story, local practices are often messy and don’t fit global views (Latour, 2002, 2005), and that’s why they generate disabilities in the fi rst place. The specificities of blind practices in dominant visual cultures reveal the general point I want to make: Local practices overflow the possibility of total, global framing of perspectives. 2 Following these practices one becomes

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aware that framing—that is, excluding what does not fit the frame—is hard work. In George’s case being cured from blindness appears the ultimate exclusion of (and from) blindness, although necessary to be included from the sighted perspective. As we know, visual perspectives defi ne, calculate, classify, measure, and display the heterogeneity of blind practices in a continuum from low to no vision. These measurements allow other perspectives (judicial, economic, political, etc.) to connect and reframe blindness with respect to their self-descriptive logics.

BEYOND THE POLITICS OF DI/VISION AND ABSTRACTION Following the inclusive worlds of blind people, this last chapter endorses a methodological and conceptual shift from the focus of framing (visual) disability from a perspective to the enactment of local practices, which are indifferent to, spill over from, and resist the limits and disclosure of common global orderings of single perspectives. Tracing the heterogeneity of inclusive differences unravels the very political forces or contexts of dis/ability. Thus, the politics of dis/ability cannot be separated a priori into exclusive differences like, for instance, social or non-social concerns (individual impairment and disability). Bearing this in mind, it remains an exclusivist political strategy to argue that ‘[d]isability and impairment are of course interconnected and the distinction between them less clear, but in order to identify political strategies it makes sense to separate the two analytically, treating them not as concrete objects but as abstractions’ (Sheldon et al., 2007: 210). Central to the concept of inclusive differences is that the political will not be achieved by separating impairment and disability ‘analytically’. Rather, the very separation, as well as the subsequent abstraction, is in itself highly political! Both strategies of separation and abstraction serve an all too global political and social perspective typical of a modernist understanding of dis/ability. As we have seen in Part I, these two strategies are most vital for setting up the religion of modernity. The latter divides dis/ability into rather abstract societal (disabilities) and natural (impairments) realms and, most importantly, the political is located only in the realm of ‘society’. Inclusive differences, on the other hand, question such modernist strategies of separation and abstraction. On the contrary, inclusive differences cannot be thought of without re-assembling ‘concrete objects’. Apparently, the very process of re-associating concrete objects is what the practice of inclusive differences is all about. Thus, my proposed shift informs a political but inclusive study of dis/ability that is not so much interested in the construction and maintenance of a social realm that secures a political standpoint but highlights the ways in which these frameworks,

176 Rethinking Disability standpoints, and perspectives are transgressed by the very dis/abling practices themselves. Obviously this has tremendous consequences for the social perspective of dis/ability studies. Rather than explaining dis/ability globally through the (political) social, the social has to be explained by the very local heterogeneous practices that are always more than social.

THE BLIND MAN AND THE CANE Within blind practices the white cane has always played a major role (Barasch, 2001; Bernidaki-Aldous, 1990; Bexte, 1999; Schillmeier, 2005). I will argue that the use of the cane specifies a central concrete object that will draw our attention to the complex inclusive differences of dis/ability. From the ancient Greeks we know that the blind seer Teiresias was given a cane as a compensation for being blinded by the Gods. We are also familiar with the story of Oedipus, who, after his blinding, was led by a cane (accompanied by his daughter Antigone) in foreign territories. Assisted by the stick the blind figure makes his way through history: the blind wanderer, blind poets and singers, portrayals of the blind in Christian narratives and art, Rembrandt’s Tobit, Brueghel’s Parable of the Blind, Traini’s Triumph of Death, etc. Philosophy’s elaborations on blindness could not do without the stick either, as we can see in Descartes’ drawing of a rather artificial blind man, holding two crossing sticks to cast doubt on the senses and to instead prove the geometry of sight. The narrative of ‘seeing with hands’ was commonly portrayed in the 17th and 18th centuries (Bexte, 1999). The beginning of the 20th century regarded ‘[t]he blind man’s stick ( . . . ) as an extension of his tactile sense organs’ (Javal, 1904: 14). In contemporary societies the image of the blind figure with a stick is widely used as a symbol to refer to general concerns of and for blindness (cf. the icon of the Royal National Institute for the Blind in the UK). Contrary to Descartes’ drawing—portraying a rather old, unmoving person—the RNIB icon suggests that with a personal cane living with blindness is easier and makes you mobile without having to have eyes to see (RNIB-homepage). Needless to say, throughout the history of visual culture the image has carried (although in quite different fashions as the two images just describedshow) the very idea of dependency and compensation: dependence on a stick that compensates for a lack of sight. However, there is another relation portrayed that speaks about a major topic of Rethinking Disability: It is the relation of a human body and a non-human object that reveals some of the specificities of inclusive differences. Being more than human-human relations, the image of the blind man and the cane is the image throughout history that displays the societal relevance of inclusive differences. This is my point: It is the history of blindness itself that reveals the very importance

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of the concept of inclusive differences. A brief look into the history of the blind man and the cane will make this clear.

ANCIENT STORIES OF INCLUSIVE DIFFERENCES As we have seen in Part I of this book, in ancient Greek cultures social orderings were negotiated through face-to-face (seeing/being seen) relations that defi ned people’s standing, reputation, power, and identity. Through face-to-face interactions the ancient Greeks acknowledged the cultural importance of light. Imitating the divine light via face-to-face (eye-to-eye) relations they carried out their mortal (human) relation with the immortals (gods). What made humans human, then, was the divine gift of light that enabled human beings to see each other. Through human sight humans became recognizable and known as humans: god-like but not equal to the gods. Humanity, then, was socially stabilized and reproduced through faceto-face interactions that in turn allowed the generation and performance of hierarchies and differences between humans. Hence, on the basis of the universal equality given by light and vision, humans were able to become and remain purely mortal and social beings: Face-to-face relations visualized the (social) ‘truth’ of humans since truth was nothing but visibility (unconcealment). It is precisely the image of the blind and the cane that brings to the fore the troubling effects blind practices introduced to the social order of ancient (human) visual cultures. Blind practices inserted radical difference inasmuch as they communicated with the non-human in order to see and know. Using a cane offered an alternative to the visual construction of socialness, which for the Greeks had been the only socio-cultural means to reassure them of being seen/known as human. The Greek culture of light generated socio-cultural heterogeneity and difference(s) on the basis of universal homogeneity dictated by the divine light and the perceived and practiced nobility of sight. Blind practices, however, reveal socio-cultural heterogeneity and difference(s) without the need for homogeneous face-to-face relations and without necessarily being dependent on humans. In effect, blind practices introduced highly disruptive practices beyond the respective limits of what had been considered human, social, and natural. What can we learn from the troubled socialness disseminated by blind practices in ancient cultures of light? I think it shows that social relations between humans cannot be understood merely as a relationship based on universal forms of sensory and social relations. Nor are social relations merely human actions but assemble humans, technologies, and things that stabilize or question the commonalities of societal reality. What we can learn from blind practices, then, is that humanity is more than human relations and society is more than social relations. The images of the blind and

178 Rethinking Disability the cane visualize our multiple sensory relations with humans and objects that configure inclusive differences in multiple, historically specific ways. The ancient image of blindness portrays the capability of inclusive differences to transgress what is considered the limits of the human, social, or cultural domain by linking the human with non-human (the cane, gods, etc.) and non-social (sensory practices other than face-to-face). Thus the image stresses not so much a homogeneous collective of ‘the blind’ but rather portrays the collective of human and non-human configurations that make up the specificities of practices disrupting, questioning, and altering the social, cultural, and political hegemony in place. Ancient Greek stories about blindness can be read as early but highly insightful dealings with dis/ability as inclusive differences and the difference they make, the abilities, disabilities, and sufferings. Moreover, it reminds us that disability isn’t a problem to be fixed by means of global perspectives (e.g. vision, humanity, the social, nature) but affirms its own highly ambiguous and individual set of practices.

CONTEMPORARY STORIES OF INCLUSIVE DIFFERENCES In the last section of the book I’d like to draw on contemporary practices of blind people and their canes. Canes have made a long journey accompanying the blind from the Greeks to our day. They are still in use; wooden sticks became white canes, individually adjustable white aluminum and carbon fiber canes. People use a variety of different canes, depending on their highly personal needs and their eyesight. Canes help one get on and walk around—a kind of travel guide: to cross a street, to be more mobile, not to get hurt by obstacles, to hear and feel their way. But not always. Sometimes the stick is used as ‘a symbol’: as a way of signaling to others that the person using it is blind. As a visible sign the cane suggests a set of courtesy rules and helps the blind person to travel safely within crowds without offending others. The stick also has a labeling and individualizing effect: it makes one visible as a blind person. I asked Mary, 62 years old, age-related macular degeneration: MS: Do you use the cane? Mary: Yes, your best friend, you know. It is a walking stick, a courtesy cane. If you carry a cane people will move away from you. I could not go outdoors without it. We are mates. Without the cane it would be very difficult. Like Mary, people using a cane have built up a special relationship with it: The white cane becomes a best friend, a mate, a kind of friendship, partnership, or even brotherhood. The white cane is quite useful—at least for a skilled person. However, it is not always the blind person’s favorite assistant. James, 56 years old, totally blind, glaucoma, says:

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I used to use a white cane. I used it more as a symbol than an actual mobility aid. When I was in school for example we didn’t have any specific mobility training. You know, there were times each day when we had to go out on the school grounds and go out for a walk. It was acceptable to go with another person. But you were also encouraged to go alone at times and, you know, it was expected that you would know the way around the local and more distant environment, the school itself and its grounds, and also the town. And at that time actually, guide dogs were a little bit of a um . . . ( . . . ) if you wanted a guide, it was thought to be a bit weak in some ways, and you were expected to cope without a dog. I think it is a completely wrong conception. It did have an effect on my life. I would probably have had a dog much earlier, had this not been seen like they did. And certainly it is much easier to cope with a dog than without one. But that does not work with everybody. With a stick, you know, you have to think about every step you take, more or less. Some people, like James, will not use a cane as it is difficult for them to walk with in the fi rst place. The cane enforces the ‘typical’ stop-and-go practices of blind people. The white cane visualizes and fi xes blindness: It marks them as disabled and narrows their independence. With a white cane blindness is easily recognizable by others, and in public spaces people feel more vulnerable with one. This is one of the main reasons why many people will not utilize the cane. Using a walking stick also depends on the area where they live and whether it is night. Many blind people do not use a cane at night as it refl ects blindness and often makes people feel more vulnerable. Thus, we can take for granted neither the utility of such a tool nor the type of relation blind people establish with it. The white cane enables and disables; it is an individual as well as a social object of dis/ability, a helpful technology, a useless piece of equipment, a friend, a symbol, a labeling device, visualizing and articulating blindness’ multiple differences. Let’s consider James’ remarks. For James the white cane has often been an impediment to conforming to social convention. James was brought up in a boarding school for the blind. Like every school, this school for the blind had been an important institution for the socialization and ‘production’ of (blind) individuals. As his comment makes very clear, James was taught not only about social roles, but also about his relationship to his environment, to technologies, and to society in general. As Strathern (1992: 123) has pointed out, English education in the 1950s (James’ school time) meant: The individual person was held to be the entity that was socialized, and existed in response to the demands of collective life and its values, molded by convention. The individual was socialized . . . into playing the role of individual. Socialization thereby subsumed the absorption of cultural values, including those of individualism.

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People were socialized as individuals and to be an individual meant avoiding the help of ‘others’—canes included. For a long time education for the blind aimed at producing such individuals. Even if the life in boarding schools was collective, they were trained to live ‘individually’ together, forced to prove that they were individuals managing on their own. In this context, assistive technologies were regarded as weakening the individual’s independence—one should cope without any help, human and non-human alike. As James noted, such enforced individuality has been highly impairing. The demand to act as a self-reliant individual made it very difficult to live with his blindness. At that time having a cane or a guide dog at hand would have made things much easier for him. George, 37 years old, totally blind tells us: I have a white stick. A symbol-stick. I have it with me but I don’t use it; only as a symbol. Well, only when I cross the roads. Well, we label things to fi x these things. We are told that the visually impaired behave in a certain way. I think we have to label them in order to get around with them; we give them a program of training in order to be given some kind of structure. The reality is that we are all different. So the way I get around the building isn’t necessarily the way other blind people get around. Well these programs saying: ‘This is how a blind person is doing XYZ” are only useful to give you some kind of structure. If somebody would tell me you need a cane to walk around the building I would ask ‘Why?’ Do you know what I mean? I don’t always use a cane. I don’t use the cane outside. George’s questioning of social conventions followed another direction: He challenged the idea that he had to use a cane just because mobility and orientation training suggested it. Both George’s and James’ cases highlight the difficulties for blind people dealing simultaneously with the specificities of their individual practices and the socially prefigured, standardized, and institutionalized views on blind practices. The latter often impose a fi xed form, which does not respect the variability of their blind practices. The importance of individual particularities can again be seen in George’s quotation. George always has the cane with him, but uses it rarely. When he does, it is not as a walking or mobility aid, but as a symbol to let others know he is blind, even if it is ‘just’ for the sake of crossing a road safely. James used the cane in the past, but at present he favors another ‘sensory extension’, his golden retriever. The dog allows greater mobility without having to always think about the next step. The dog is extremely helpful, whereas the cane is not, as it does not allow for James’ flow of walking blindly. For James the dog is an essential part of his blind practices, but, as he stresses, it does not work for everybody. Although I am not blind, I would not be able to use a seeing-eye dog, as I am allergic to dog hair. Thus, different blind people live in different heterogeneous relations (husbands

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and wives, friends, canes, dogs, at home, in town, are diabetic or not, etc.) differently and these differences make up the specificities of the inclusive differences involved. These practices can hardly be differentiated into matters of disability or impairment, ‘society’ or ‘nature’ if one doesn’t want to underrate the complexities of dis/abling practices.

7

Concluding Remarks

The main objective of Rethinking Disability has been to give the emerging dis/abling practices their own voice in order to challenge any a priori form of fi xing dis/ability into a self-closed perspective. It allows one to turn away from general and rather unhelpful discussions concerning the nature of dis/ability and subsequent quarrels around the differences between impairment and disability. Rethinking Disability promotes a methodological and conceptual shift from exclusive perspectives (e.g. ‘the’ social, ‘the’ medical) towards inclusive differences that reveal the limits of either/or explanations of exclusive perspectives. Consequently, it moves away from global perspectives that highlight either ‘society’ and ‘politics’, on the one hand, or ‘the individual’ and ‘nature’, on the other, in order to understand dis/ability. Rather, Rethinking Disability advocates focusing on the heterogeneity of very local—enabling and disabling—practices that make up the very specific experiences of dis/ability. These local practices are always more complex than any global perspective of them. This is what makes Rethinking Disability an eminently political project. It insists on giving the specificities of dis/abling practices their own multiple voices by challenging any fi xed or hegemonic form of general perceptions regarding them. The image of the blind person and the cane can be understood as the political—although highly ambivalent—relation in the history of dis/ abilities. It expresses the empowerment of practices questioning common socio-cultural and material orders and subsequent taken-for-granted global perspectives of the self and other. Introducing difference and heterogeneity into visual cultures, the practices of blind people and the cane make them politically pungent ‘others’ within visually dominated orderings. Moreover, with the use of a cane non-human entities become powerful political agents in human societies as well. The image of the blind person and the cane, then, can be seen as the relation that alludes to the ‘questionability’ and thus openness of what the human social is about. It is the history of blindness that enacts the questioning of the common modes of the social in visual cultures. The history of blindness shows how specific embodied, individual practices and the relation with objects and technologies play a central role in articulating the human socialness. For the ancient Greeks blind practices questioned what was ‘natural’ in human society, by showing that it involved more than just face-to-face human

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interactions. Consequently, the history of blind practices has underlined that neither the human nor the social nor nature can function as separate domains in explaining practices of dis/ability. This, so my argument goes, necessitates a methodological shift that focuses on practices of dis/ability where the social, humanity, and nature do not appear as single explanatory devices but have to be explained by the very heterogeneous relations of bodies, senses, and things. Understanding dis/ability, then, goes hand in hand with a movement from theory to practice, as Michael Oliver (1996) put it. It demystifies the artificial—or one may say political—separation between theory and practice. Theoretical concerns though should not be dismissed, but be seen as the effect of the politics of highly different and heterogeneous practices. When experiencing disabling practices we are in the midst of things where global perspectives are taken for the complexity of local differences—they include the heterogeneous ‘other’ by exclusion as a matter of homogenization or privation: Blind practices become a matter of visual impairment/disability. Moreover, Rethinking Disability compels the detached (social) scientific observer to reflect upon his/her own conceptual and methodological principles of observation. Thus, the very object of research is given a major voice ‘to object to’ (Stengers, 2005) the premises of social scientific observation. The concept of inclusive differences as developed here follows a methodology that, as Michel Callon has argued recently, ‘protects the issue [of disability] from the risk of being hijacked ( . . . ) by elites with no ambition other than putting it at the service of their own interests’ (Callon, 2005: 313). Broaching the issue of dis/ability consequently strives to reveal the normative practices where concrete relations of human and non-human others, differences and heterogeneities play a major public, democratic force challenging the exclusivity of global, fi xed, and hegemonic perspectives— our own included. Dis/ability enacts questioning and makes us rethink the human social.

Notes

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION 1. In that sense, Rethinking Disability adopts a philosophical ethos following the ‘fi rst principle of philosophy’ saying that universals explain nothing but have to be explained (cf. Deleuze & Guattari, 1994). 2. In his recent writings, Shakespeare (2006) adopts a critical realist stance that radically questions the fundamentals of the social model of disability and renders it outdated. 3. Paterson and Hughes (2000: 41–42) note: ‘As the debate began to develop, it became fairly clear that the social model had posited a body devoid of any historical or social substance. In doing so, it had, in fact, conceded impairment to medicine.’ Although it seems to be a straightforward critique of the social model, it falls into the same trap as the social model inasmuch as it divides the body into a socially constructed body that appears within society and its treatment by medicine that somehow seems to be located outside the social or society. 4. The book focuses empirically merely on physical and sensory dis/abilities. Obviously, dis/ability is more diverse than that and much has to be said about mental dis/abilities, learning difficulties, new and growing disabilities within an ‘aging society’ such as dementia, Alzheimer’s disease etc. The reader will also be disappointed if s/he is looking for instance for a specific intersectionality of dis/ability, e.g. a gender- and race-related analysis of dis/ability, s/he will also not fi nd issues of disability in art and culture addressed. See e.g. Asch and Fine (1992); Crutchfield and Epstein (2000); Gerschick and Miller (2008); Hillyer (1993); Joshua and Schillmeier (in press); Morris (1991, 1992, 1996); Shildrick (1997); Silver (1999); Thomas (1999); Wendell (1996, 1997); Zitzelsberger (2008).

NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 1. The modern discourse on modernity is very much about the contingency of facts; it refers to the crisis of representation. See e.g. Foucault (1990), Luhmann (1998). 2. Following the French philosopher and sociologist Gabriel Tarde we humans become social inasmuch as we imitate the non-social (Tarde, 1921). The process of imitation marks the difference as well as similarity with other nonsocial forms of repetition (biological, physical). We become social beings by imitation. Imitation introduces novelty to processes of biological heredity and physiological repetition by imitating them. Thus, the cosmology of being is a becoming that relates heterogeneous entities: ‘difference and repetition’

186

3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19.

Notes (Deleuze, 2001; Taussig, 1993). Human religion can be understood as human modes of social repetition (imitation) inasmuch as they imitate the value of the cosmological order in the performance of religion and religious practices. Cf. Simmel (1997: 124): ‘These categories are related to one another as are cogitatio and extensio in Spinoza’s philosophy: each expresses in its own language everything that exists, and precisely for that reason, neither of the two can invade the other.’ In the Heideggerian cosmo-ontological language this relation refers to ‘the fourfold’ concept [Geviert] which relates and so brings into being mortals, divinities, heaven, and earth. For a superb re-reading of the fourfold concept, see Harman (2002, 2009). Thomas’ book Sociologies of Disability and Illness offers an excellent read of the different and ‘contested ideas in disability studies and medical sociology’. Thomas shows very lucidly how disciplinary boundaries become religious. Her own account argues for an interdisciplinary understanding of disability instead, that, nevertheless, remains within the ‘social oppression’ paradigm of the social model of disability. Obviously, a ‘relation’ of entities can also come into being as a matter of nonrelating (cf. Schillmeier, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c; Strathern, 1996). ‘Religion’ cannot be thought of without the socio-history of religions. Still, this analysis is not thought of as part of an outcome of a religious faith— including its scientific variation (i.e. the sociology of religion). On the contrary, this study questions any attempt either to reduce ‘religion’ to any specific ‘religion’ or to sociologize ‘religion’. However, Rethinking Disability is an attempt to employ the notion of religion in order to rethink ‘the social’. It tries to unravel the religiousness of ‘the social’ as a metaphysical principle creating emerging orders by relating heterogeneous entities. On the thing as event see Heidegger (1957, 1969, 1981, 1987a, 1991, 2000a, 2000b). See also Harman (2002, 2009) who discusses the Heideggerian discourse of the relation of humans/things as ‘tool-being’. See also Whitehead (1978). Cf. Simmel (2006a, 2006c). See also Schillmeier (2009a). Obviously this is a ‘European’ way of thinking about religion. Cf. Simmel (1957: 213). See also Latour (2004, 2005), Lynch (1993). Émile Durkheim’s sociology and his understanding of society as a realm sui generis that is treated as a self-explicatory matter of fact is very much the effect of man becoming subject (cf. Durkheim, 1982, 2008). Deeply embedded into Nietzschean thought the German philosopher Hans Vaihinger has developed a philosophy of the as if. As if strategies function as fictional constructs that order reality. See Vaihinger (1922). Weber’s reading of the relationship between Protestantism and capitalism can be interpreted in that way (Weber, 1985). This is why religious people can say: God is all knowing. Latour (2005) has shown how the spatialization of ‘the social’ constitutes the default practices of the classical readings of the ‘sociology of the social’. Obviously, much has been written about the relationship between impairment and disability: Crow (1996), French (1994), Paterson and Hughes (1999), Thomas (1999) and Williams (1998) on the side of the social model, and for instance the current ICF scheme of the WHO (2001). Still, these accounts do not escape dividing disability into two different realities that relate. The same may be said about critical realist accounts of disability or the body as proposed by Shakespeare (2006) or Shilling (2005). Cf. Nietzsche (1978: The Gay Science, 353). ‘To govern, in this sense, is to structure the possible field of actions of others (Foucault, 1983: 221).

Notes

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NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 1. My account will obviate the Middle Ages. For an excellent discussion of blindness during this time see Barasch (2001). 2. On the art of ‘modern seeing’ see for example Bryson (1983), S. Y. Edgerton (1975), Panofsky (1927), Rotman (1987), and Simon (1992). 3. For Newton (1983) it has been highly important to improve the dioptric telescope to efface the colored edges in order to get sharp images and avoid fuzzy ones. See Böhme (1993: 134ff). 4. Heidegger (1987a: 58ff) describes the specificity of privation as a form of negation and lack. Each “Illness” is a phenomenon of privation [“Privations-Phänomen”], i.e. the privation of being healthy [In jeder Privation liegt die wesenmäßige Zugehörigkeit zu solchem, dem etwas fehlt, dem etwas abgeht’]. 5. As studies on stereotypes and attitudes have shown, the metaphorical and physiological meanings of blindness are often confl ated and create the very psycho-social dimension of ‘othering’ and marginalizing blindness. See e.g. Finkelstein (1980), Krähenbühl (1977), Monbeck (1973). See also Palli (2001), Schor (1999), Sontag (1990). 6. As I argue, the social model put ‘society’ as a metaphor for ‘disability’ and ‘oppression’. As one will see later, the very process of idealisation viz. metaphorization is a main invention of visual cultures to make things ‘human’. Blindness, on the other hand, is understood—next to many other meanings—as the lack of physiological sight and the very transgression of the human realm. 7. The quotes from Plato’s Rebublic refer to Benjamin Jowett’s translation. I also use The Republic to make clear that the discourse on blindness is deeply political. 8. This Platonic insight is still valid for John Locke’s epistemological reasoning that inaugurates modern religion. See later discussion. 9. The German translation for appearance [Aus-sehen] and standing [An-sehen] keeps the link to ‘seeing [sehen]’. 10. The sixth chapter prepares the reader for Plato’s famous cave analogy, which again celebrates the nobility of light as a perfect (inter-)mediator. 11. Contrasting categories include limited/unlimited, male/female, light/ darkness, good/evil. With Parmenides we fi nd that all things are made up of light and night (darkness); the association of the pair light/darkness with warm/cold makes the poles light/fi re appear as active, and night/darkness as cold and suffering. God as the light stands against the blind and furious powers of Evil (hyle). And it is the light that calms, limits, and bounds the self-destructive powers of hyle. However hyle swallowed the light and this is why we fi nd the dichotomy between the dead mass of hyle and the lighted soul as the material/immaterial that make up our cosmos. The world is good and beautiful when the immateriality of light reigns over the blind materiality of hyle. And the world appears dangerous and ugly if hyle, the material, the body reigns it. See Bremer (1976). See also Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy [Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie II] (1986: 527ff). 12. On heliotropes, metaphor, and metaphorization see e.g. Derrida’s essay titled ‘White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy’ in Derrida (1982a). 13. On Greek culture see for instance Vernant (1984, 1991, 1993, 2000). 14. Considering the importance of light and sight, the very lack of light and sight does play a crucial role in ancient Greek culture. Lennard J. Davies notes, that in ancient Greece ‘blindness’ played a more vital role than for instance deafness. See L. J. Davies (1995: 101ff). 15. See Vernant (1991: 36) on the importance and specifi city of the Greek body: ‘The Greek body of antiquity does not appear as a group of morphology

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16.

17. 18. 19.

20.

21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26.

27.

Notes of organs fitted together in the manner of an anatomical drawing, nor in then form of physical particularities proper to each human being, as though in a personal portrait. Rather, it appears like a coat of arms, and through emblematic traits presents the multiple “values” concerning life, beauty, and power with which an individual is endowed, values he bears and which proclaim his timē, his dignity and rank.’ For a discussion on scale see Strathern (1999: Chapter 10): Measuring makes the world available to the imagination in most interesting ways. That is because of the different kinds of relation it exposes. When what is being measured is independent of the means of measurement, we talk of the means of measurement as scales. Space is metered out as distance, so many yards or miles: it is because yards and miles do not change length as he or she goes that the traveller has an independent means of reckoning how far away home is. A quite separate operation is matching—house-prices against foodprices, for example. Here, part of the measurement is also what is being measured: one item valued in terms of another yields a ratio. (Strathern, 1999: 204ff) The French sociologist and philosopher Gabriel Tarde has argued convincingly that ‘higher’ senses like vision can be easier imitated than other senses. See Tarde (1921). Man is standing. ‘Falling’, then, has very much to do with becoming nonhuman. The non-infi nite plural of names that name blindness is important since it refers to blindness that has more than one and less than many names. It suggests and underlines the in-betweenness of blindness as being between the One and the many. Mortals are humans, unlike immortals (Gods), and quite different from the modern objects of knowledge and knowing subjects. The ancient Greeks know neither ‘subjects’ nor ‘objects’. Cf. Heidegger’s work which makes this point very explicit. On the relation between narration, myth, dogma, and ritual see Tarde (1921). See Vernant (1991: 20): In face-to-face society, ( . . . ) everyone’s existence is continually placed under the regard of someone else. It is in the eyes of the one who faces you in the mirror it presents you that the self is constructed. There is no consciousness of one’s identity without this other who, in facing you, reflects you and yet is opposed to you. Self and other, identity and alterity go together, are reciprocally constructed. Obviously, ancient Greek society has been an unequal society as well with all its powerful means of exclusion, marginalization, and punishment. In its radical form it meant either pure absence of knowledge (ignorance) or presence of pure knowledge (insight). Both forms of knowledge remain unknown for humans and to know this makes us human. See De Man (1971/1983). It marks another effect that shows how the religiousness of blindness itself, that relates different bodies, senses, and things, turns into a theme of the ‘religion’ of the sighted and the rational. Next to the negative attitudes towards the blind that are part of the effects of the metaphorization of blindness, visual infrastructures play a crucial role in disabling blind people. The latter has been a major concern for disability studies. For a re-reading of such a ‘social dimension of disability’ along the processes of how different bodies, senses, and things relate, see Part II of this book. For a detailed discussion of Berkeley’s account see Schillmeier (2005).

Notes

189

28. On the importance of the blank figure for social ordering, see Hetherington and Lee (2000), Serres (1991a). 29. The essay was fi rst published in 1690. The second edition introduces Molyneux’s problem. The fi fth edition, which is cited here, was published in 1706. 30. Such operations, carried out by eye surgeons, consisted in ‘using a needle to move aside the opaque lens in the watery medium so that it no longer lies in the line of sight’ (Degenaar, 1996: 58). 31. Molyneux published in 1692 his widely recogniszd Dioptica Nova. 32. See Plato’s Republic (1979), books 6 and 7. 33. Cheselden (1729: 447–450) published his fi nding, although he was ignorant about the riddle of Molyneux’s problem. 34. The surgery of cataracts viz. the recovery from blindness is also the theme in Diderot’s Lettre sur les aveugles à l’usage de ceux qui voient. Cf. Diderot (1749/1970), Paulson (1987).

NOTES TO CHAPTER 3 1. This idea goes back to ‘radical empiricism’ as outlined by scholars like Williams James (2003[1912]) or John Dewey (1971[1925]). ‘It is the union of passionate interest [and research] in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation’, as A. N. Whitehead (1967[1925]): 3) has put it. 2. The concept of ‘mediation’ is the key concept of Rethinking Disability as it follows the lines of argument provided in particular by scholars from the studies of ‘Science, Technology and Society (STS)’ and especially from ActorNetwork-Theory. See Part III. 3. ‘The distinction is one between what is experienced as the result of a minimum of incidental reflection and what is experienced in consequence of continued and regulated reflective inquiry’ (Dewey, 1971: 6–7). See also Whitehead (1978) on ‘symbolic references’ as the effect of ‘causal efficacy’ and ‘presentational immediacy’. 4. Cf. also George Herbert Mead (1972[1938], 2001[1932]), who argues that the socialness of things is apparent whenever things appear at the same time at different places (e.g. as a thought and as a thing, in law and in science, in economics and art, etc.). 5. As critical realism argues. For critical realism only in separating off two spheres of disability given by the body and by the society the changing history of disability is traceable (cf. Shilling, 2005; Shakespeare, 2006). 6. As subject-oriented, social constructivism argues, it is the subjective interpretation, perception, or narration of bodily impairment and societal issues of disability that articulates the social relevance of disability. 7. To produce voices and publicities that multiply dis/ability’s matters of concern and make a difference by it is—as I see it—the productive link between old and new ways of researching and conceptualizing dis/ability beyond theoretical preferences.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 1. See Schillmeier (2007b). 2. See Schillmeier (2007a).

190 Notes 3. On 15 August 1971 the US government, still affected by the Vietnam War, was forced to end the possibility of the state to converting dollars into gold at a fi xed rate. Gregory (1997) refers to it as ‘savage money’ that introduces the dynamics of ‘disorganised capitalism’ (Lash & Urry, 1987). See also Thrift and Leyson (1994). 4. I have shown elsewhere how the trans-local circulation and migration of viruses configure infected/ing bodies that cosmo-politicize the common social orderings (cf. Schillmeier, 2008a, 2009c; Schillmeier & Pohler, 2006). 5. Although most interfaces of cash machines in the United Kingdom have a Braille support, only a few blind people read Braille. 6. Callon (1986, 1991, 1998a, 1998b), Latour (1988, 2005), Law (1994, 2002a, 2002b), Schillmeier (2006, 2007a, 2007b). 7. See Callon (1991), Latour (2005), Schillmeier (2007a).

NOTES TO CHAPTER 5 1. ‘Das Ereignis ist die sich selbst ermittelnde und vermittelnde Mitte, in die alle Wesung der Wahrheit des Seyns im voraus zurückgedacht werden muß.’ 2. See Heidegger (1994: 388) where he argues for assemblages that bring together philosophy and empirical research. Empirical philosophy then means adding a controversy by following and bringing together the ways of thinking ‘Being’ [Seyn] and the ways of thinking and tracing ‘beings’ [Seiendes]. This is also a project advocated by Bruno Latour, although from within ANT. 3. Let us not forget that children are slowly introduced to money, and it takes them a while to obtain permission from proper calculative agents to use it on their own and without surveillance. Elderly people have difficulties again in dealing with the time-spaces of how currencies are used. 4. The past also becomes unknown by forgetting. It can affect good and bad passages as well. It may give time and space for the ‘future’ but it may estrange people from the ‘presence’ of the world (as it is the case with dementia; see Schillmeier, 2009d). 5. Obviously, the white cane does not work for all visually disabled people. For many of them, the white cane makes them feel independent and symbolizes or visualizes their disability in the fi rst place. For others the white cane is an ‘invitation to muggers’ (see Schillmeier, 2007a, 2007b). I will discuss this point later in the chapter. 6. Heidegger uses ‘sightedness’ and ‘blindness’ as metaphors for practices that enable or disable. Obviously, it is not about the everyday practices of blindness at all, since they can be—in Heidegger’s parlance—’sighted’ and ‘blind’. Hence, in order to address the very enabling and disabling practices of blind people I will use the conceptual division between ready-to-hand and presentat-hand to avoid any misreading. 7. These limits are not fi xed boundaries. They are constantly changing, as does the related ‘Umweltnatur’.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 6 1. Cf. Mike Oliver’s contribution in Sheldon et al. (2007). 2. On the relations of framing/overflowing see lucidly Callon (1998b).

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Index

A Affirmation, principle of, 31 of blindness, 46, 97–98 Association, human and non-human, 12, 14, 22–23, 72, 76, 77, 101, 104, 114, 120–121, 124, 144, 166–67, 187

B Barasch, M. 44, 70, 83, 176, 187 Beck, U., 10 Berkeley, Bishop, 40, 45, 79–81, 90–91, 96, 188 Bernidaki-Aldous, E.A., 42, 67, 70, 71, 176 Bifurcation, of nature 38–39, 107–08 Blindness and Everyday Practices 127-181 as dysfunction 44, 46, 82, 93 as mixing, blending 47 as more than one and less than many 49-69 as privation 44, 46 Metaphorizing of 46, 75-77 Modern 77-93 Non-modern 49-74

C

Dewey, J. 119–122, 189 Differences inclusive 16, 23, 107–08, 113, 118, 124, 169, 170–175, 177–181 exclusive 16, 107, 108, 112–13, 123, 169–172, 174–75 Dis/ability as Ge-stell 15 Social Model of 2–4, 6, 18–20, 96, 130, 169, Studies 6, 96, 185 Cosmo-politics of 115–16, 118, 148 Disabling Actor-Networks 143–144 Time-Spaces of, 155–167 Di/vision, 42–48, 57, 61–62, 65–69, 73, 74–81, 91, 93–97, 103, 109–110, 122, 157, 168, 170, 173–74

E Either/Or, 5–6, 10–11, 14, 17, 19, 21, 27, 30–32, 37–40, 42–43, 46–51, 61, 67, 68, 72–76, 95–97, 103, 109, 111, 168, 182 Event, 107–08 cosmo-political, 74–75 Experience, see Dewey 119–122

Callon, M. 127–30, 132–134, 138, 142, 144, 183, 190 Concept, conceptual thinking 6, 14, 101–114, 182, 183, of dis/ability 101–114, Cooper, B., 151, 174 Corker, M., 5, 96, 119, 130 Culture tragedy of modern, 23–24

F

D

God, 10, 26–35, 38, 44, 55, 67, 71, 80, 176, 177, 186 and the World 104–06 Goffman, E., 136–37, 151–153

Deleuze, G., 31, 164–65, 164–65, 186, Deleuze, G. & F. Guattari, 27, 101, 102, 103, 104, 185

Face-to-Face, 136, 149, in Greek society 63, 67, 69–71, 73, 74, 177–78, 182, 187, 188 Foucault, M., 9, 29, 39, 40, 45, 78–79, 81–83, 92–93, 108–09, 185, 186 French, S., 5, 96, 97, 130, 136, 157, 172, 186

G

208

Index

H Heidegger, M., 15, 19–20, 26, 31–33, 45, 51, 148, 155–57, 162–167, 186, 187, 190 Heterogeneity, 25–26 heterogeneous entities 13–16, 17, 20, 23–26, 33, 61, 67, 68, 69, 73, 95, 104–07, 120, 124, 144, 154, 156, 166, 168, 185, 186 heterogeneous relations 74, 102, 121, 128, 133, 134, 138, 154, 166, 180, 183 heterogeneous practices 69, 83, 127, 131, 148, 153, 176, 183 Hull, J., 97, 136, 145, 172

I ICF/WHO, 5, 131, 170, 186 In/dependence time-spaces of 155–161 Inscriptions disabling 134 Itio in Partes, 21–26

Mol, AM, 11, 127 Molyneux, M. 85 Molyneux‘s Problem 83, 85, 89–92, 96, 189 Money as translating and mediating relations, 128–130, 132 and sensory practices 129–131 as immutable mobile 132 earmarking 142 as mutable immobile 145, 151 Moser, I. 115, 117, 157 Munro, R. 76, 115, 127, 133, 153

N Nietzsche, F., 30–35, 48, 67, 68, 89, 186 Normalization, 40, 95, 117

O

James, W., 17, 121–22

Oedipus, 44, 69–71, 176, Oliver, M., 1, 3–4, 6, 18, 19, 93, 96, 104, 114–15, 122, 130, 169, 183, 190 One and the many 50–56, 74 Othering, 42–43, 75, 97, 187

K

P

Kleege, G., 76, 80, 97

Perspectives exclusive 113, 170–75 Plato, 50–58 Platonic Discourse, 64ff Platonism, 47, 49, 56–63, 65, 66, 68, 73, 81, 94–95, 98 Reversed Platonism, 48–49 Politics epistemological, 57, 83–84, 87, 90, 91, 93–94, 96–98 ontological 11, 12, 17, 57

J

L Latour, B., 20, 39–40, 78, 97, 108, 110, 123–24, 132, 134, 144, 155, 174, 186, 190 Law, J. 11, 127–28, 157, 190 Light Greek culture of 40–42, 47,64, 66, 68, 75, 77, 93, 177, 187 Locke, J., 40, 45, 82–90, 91, 92, 96, 187 ideas 84–91

M Matter of concern 71, 101, 113, 116, 118, 121, 123 Matter of fact 2, 9, 16–21, 25, 27, 37, 46, 71, 95, 101, 103, 104, 105, 113, 115, 116, 118, 121, 123, 186 Mediation, (Inter-)Mediation 13, 15, 16, 25, 30, 54, 61–62, 66, 68, 71, 74, 76, 96, 107, 117, 120, 121, 124, 132–35, 138, 140–41, 143, 146–147, 151, 153, 155–56, 159, 160, 163–167, 189 Medicine, modern see Foucault 92f Michalko, R. 97, 153, 157, 172

Q Qualities primary, 82, 88, 96–97 secondary, 82, 88, 96–97

R Religion of disability 14–5, 18, 20, 21 of modernity, 5, 6, 9–11, 14, 15–6, 19, 20, 21, 23, 26–30, 32, 33, 35, 39, 42, 43, 46–7, 51, 77, 79, 82, 84, 91, 95, 97, 104–5, 108, 157, 168, 169, 175, 186, 187, 188 of either/or 11, 14, 17, 19, 21, 27, 32, 39, 51, 76, 103 of the social (model), 15, 18, 107

Index Religiousness, 9–20, 25, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 38, 40, 73, 79, 104, 106, 186, 188

S Saerberg, S., 97, 136, 157, 172, Serres, M. 91, 133, 134, 138, 145–46, 189 Shakespeare, T. 1, 3, 6, 18, 37, 96, 112–13, 123, 130, 185, 186, 189 Sheldon, A., 175 Sight lacking see Locke 86–93 the nobility of 49, 68, see Locke 86–93 Simmel, G. 1, 13–4, 16, 22–26, 30, 129–30, 132–134, 138, 147–48, 158–59, 162–63, 167, 186, Space(s) dis/abling 127–154 of calculation 127–154 memorized and sensed 161–168 Stengers, I., 183 Strathern, M., 133, 164, 174, 179, 186, 188

209

T Tarde, G. 13f, 152, 185, 188 Things, disabling 20 Thomas, C., 5, 6, 16, 18, 185, 186 Tiresias, 44, 71–72 Translation, see Latour 124, 129, 130, 134, 143–44, 154, 159, 163

U UPIAS 2–3, 110

V Vernant, J.P., 63, 187, 188 Vision, 40–46

W Whitehead, A.N., 14, 30–31, 37–38, 101–105, 155, 189 simple location, 37, 102, 107

Z Zelizer, V. earmarking 142, 146