Disability as a driver of change: depathologising the university

Transcript

What happens when we centre disability as a driving subject of intellectual, personal, and political inquiry? This question is testimony to the scholarly and also the political contributions of disabled people and their representative organisations.

Over the last five decades, disabled people, including people with physical, sensory and cognitive impairments, as well as neurodivergent folk, have made disability a personal and a political matter. That said, centring disability as the driving subject of inquiry is often underexplored in key institutions of society, including the family, education, healthcare, government, the workplace, places of worship, the arts and music.

Foregrounding disability brings with it a demand to re-imagine society anew. Of course, disability has always been part of history, society and culture. But as the disability scholar Tanya Titchkosky argues, disability often appears as an absent presence.

Disability is present as a recognised human problem, but absent as an authority in its own right. The thing is, our society tends to craft disability as a pathological deficit that requires cure, correction or rehabilitation. Rarely in public discourse is disability offered as a productive expression of human, intellectual, cultural, and political life.

And this negligent approach to the transformative potential of disability is apparent in the university. Many of us who work in universities like to envisage our departments, schools and research courses as liberal, transformative and radical spaces.

And yet, within these so-called radical contexts, disability is framed in deeply conservative ways as a pathological problem that the university tries to solve through policies and practices of management, bureaucracy, assessment and assimilation.

These typical disability responses that are sometimes framed as reasonable accommodations actually retell a familiar story: the disability as a problem and – is a problem to be solved as the university remains unchanged. But in contrast, embracing disability as a deeply intellectual source of authority can help us redefine and unpack how we live and work together differently in the university. Disability might feed into a wider practice of what I term depathologisation.

Depathologisation works in concert with disabled artists, disabled activists and disabled intellectuals whose politics have learned much from their own engagements with decolonising activists and post-colonial theorists. Depathologising the university creates conversations with Black scholars and others who have decolonised the university, and it pulls in disability politics as a key resource.

Depathologisation is therefore but one theory and practice, a praxis that sits with disability as the driving subject of critical inquiry and social change. So depathologisation reframes disability as a radical and disruptive subject that feeds into a wider community practice involved with contesting intersectional oppressions associated with ability, but also with race, with gender, sexuality, cast and class.

As many of us know in our own intellectual and interdisciplinary field of critical disability studies, whilst we might start with disability, we rarely end with just disability. So, what might it mean to depathologise the university?

First, we need to understand who is serviced by and benefits from the pathologisation of disability. We've got to do some serious work here to historicise, to politicise and sociologise the very idea of pathologisation. And we need to attend to the present as well as the past. Contemplating the reasons why disability as problem continues to be a common story of contemporary life. We know that certain industries, such as the pharmaceutical, the psychological, the psychiatric and the self-help feed off the very idea that disability is an internal human failing requiring an individual solution. When disabled people are framed as the problem, this leaves social and cultural institutions like the university untouched, unchallenged, and therefore unaccountable.

We need to depathologise our ‘common sense’ understandings of disability that we all carry around with us in our day to day lives.

Second, we need to get real about the university. Despite our claims of being transformative and radical, universities actually foster competitiveness, individualism, autonomy, and misguided notions of meritocracy.

Depathologisation demands a pause, a time to reflect and rethink the civic responses of the university. That is the university's accountability to all of the communities it purports to serve. Depathologisation invites us to pause, to meditate and reimagine the potential of the university, to also contribute to civil society, supporting, for example, the politics of disabled people. Those of us who work in the university, are the university and we all have work to do here.

Third, we need to ask how many students, staff, and visitors truly feel like they belong on our university campuses.

We know historically universities have been deeply racialised, classed in ableist spaces. They have privileged upper middle class, white and non-disabled students and staff. Today whose programs of diversity, equality, inclusion or those of equity, diversity and inclusion are being dismantled around the world. And universities are also facing existential and financial crises. Many staff and students feel precarious, they feel uncertain and they feel scared. Depathologising the university is needed now more than ever. It means aligning with disabled staff and student networks as key communities of institutions. It also means reaching out to one another to find new forms of connection, alliance and community.

Fourth, to truly embrace disability as essential subjects of inquiry. Funders, donors and policymakers must channel resources to feed the civic and civil aspirations of universities. Working in collaboration with disabled people's organisations is a must here. Bringing audits, accountability, scrutiny and responsibility – key elements of a wider depathologising praxis. I feel there's an urgent need for universities to mobilise their resources, but to mobilise those resources to reach out to their local, national and international communities. And in this sense, universities must work with disabled people's organisations to collaborate in research, critical inquiry, but also in education, knowledge exchange and public engagement.

Fifth, I think we should take some comfort in the fact that disability is no longer on the sidelines. Over the last decade, more and more people have been identifying as disabled or neurodivergent. Desiring disability identities unlocks further potential. A duty and a responsibility to the wider disability community. We must and can find support and solace with all this so that we can depathologise the university together.

And while a disability impairment or a neurodivergent identity is always a personal matter, we should not forget that the potential for activism and community this opens up is always a public matter. We cannot do this alone and we need each other to disrupt the university.

Finally, we should say with confidence that many disabled people and their non-disabled allies are already depathologising the university. The very presence of disabled staff and students in higher education is testimony to their activism and their resistance.

And other examples of depathologisation are occurring. These include the growing representation of critical disability studies. Literature in the reading lists of modules in science, in engineering, medicine, social sciences, arts and humanities. New forms of inclusive recruitment for university posts that affirm the applications made by disabled and neurodivergent folk. The tireless radical impact of disabled professional services colleagues as they work and bend university bureaucracy. The impact of disabled staff networks on their universities’ strategies and policies. The reach of disabled intellectuals in everyday discourse and also in the mainstream media. The support of funders such as the British Academy, the Wellcome Trust and UKRI to fund disability research projects. The higher concentration of collaborative disability research projects in universities that remunerate disabled people's organisations and work with them as partners, and the increased influence of disability theory on other forms of radical scholarship. And indeed, the many early career disabled and non-disabled researchers whose theorisation ethically, sensitively, thoughtfully work the hyphen of various intersectional projects.

Depathologisation brings disability from the edges to the epicentre of our world to reimagine the university.

We must share how disability is driving change in relation to curricula and research culture. While we might start with disability, we will never end with it - and intersectional work will always have the potential to open up the culture of the university: from a closed one serving the few to an open one affirming the many.

This is only a start. Much more is needed. But in these dangerous and distressing political times, depathologisation offers one avenue of hope and possibility. Rather than a problem: disability is an opportunity.

Dan Goodley as a Professor of Disability Studies and Education at the University of Sheffield.