Ignacio Calderón Almendros

Personal and social constructions of disability

Ignacio Calderón-Almendros & Cristóbal Ruiz-Román

Abstract

To speak of disability is, fundamentally, to speak of oppression. Disability is a social construction which questions, subordinates, invalidates, and steals the humanity of people who are stigmatised through labelling. This is a pervasive phenomenon, its breeding ground being the socialisation process; a persistent, incisive process which diminishes the possibilities for growth and transformation. The alienation is reinforced during schooling, when the stigma becomes internalised due to the legitimation of the process and the exertion of pressure.
However, individuals are not passive consumers of hegemonic interpretations. They do not merely adapt to these directives. Throughout their lives they generate responses and resistances, insofar as the prevailing order can be interpreted as a conflict which both subjugates and mutilates. Generated from emotions such as anger, these initial responses will necessarily become mechanisms of intelligent resistance, which may jeopardise the oppressive interpretations that dehumanise both school and society. As a result, the problem can leave the realm of the body, and education is then transformed into liberation by restoring hope: the future is never predetermined.

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Authors of this book

Roger Slee, Dan Goodley, Mel Ainscow, Peter Mitler, Colette Chabbott, Scot Danforth, Julie Allan, Emily Vargas-Barón, Florian Kiuppis, Rune Sarromaa Hausstätter, Lena Saleh, Jerome Mindes, Siri Wormnæs, Xavier Rambla, Jonathan Rix, John Parry, Sigamoney M. Naicker, Markus Dederich, Lani Florian, Ignacio Calderón-Almendros, Cristóbal Ruiz-Román, Judith Hollenweger, Tara Flood.