Rupturing Concepts of Disability and Inclusion

CHAPTER 2
to deny or inferiorise the experiences of different bodies - experiences which may
include pain and limitation. Therefore, by exploring the conjunction between differing
and excluded bodies such as those represented by women, people of colour, and
people with disability, a space could be opened for the articulation of a common
voice to redress structural exclusion.
According to Shulamit Reinharz, feminists choose multiple methods not only for
technical reasons, but to also reflect intellectual, emotional, and political commitments
pertaining to feminist concerns. 109 This means, that feminist researchers, combine
many methods so as to “cast their net as widely as possible in the search for
understanding of critical issues.” 110 Therefore, Reinharz states:
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Feminist descriptions of multimethod research express the commitment to
thoroughness, the desire to be open-ended, and to take risks. Multiple methods
enable feminist researchers to link past and present, “data” gathering and
action, and individual behavior with social frameworks. By combining
methods, feminist researchers are particularly able to illuminate previously
unexamined or misunderstood experiences. 111
Jeanne Braham describes how feminist writer, Jane Flax, also uses multiple
intersecting frames of reference to address questions of self, gender, knowledge
and power, that is to “stitch together fragments” of theories in such a way that they
interact and “converse” with each other. 112 It is worthy of note that fragments are
also most often the products of deconstruction. Colin MacCabe provides an
insightful opinion of Gayatri Spivak’s work when he states:
Deconstruction, for Spivak, is neither a conservative aesthetic nor a radical
politics but an intellectual ethic which enjoins a constant attention to the
multiplicity of determination. 113
As previously stated, the notion of inclusion as a multifaceted concept, is
oppositionally located with multifaceted concepts of exclusion. However, these
facets, representing many fragments of knowledge and many texts of understanding,
are not free-floating. They are embedded in particular spaces.
Therefore, to conceptualise inclusion commands the recognition that the concept
itself is spatially situated, and defined and determined by constructed boundaries.
This research asserts that this conceptual space is not only historical and sociopolitical
as has been commonly explored; but is, indeed, a socio-ethical space
which is signified, reflected and practised in different human encounters. These
encounters are within the private and public arenas configured by personal, interpersonal,
depersonal or impersonal interests. The private constitutes relationships
with families and friends; the public using social institutions such as human
services. However, in relation to people with intellectual disability often excluded
from society, there is a blurring of private and public when these private relationships
have been erased to be substituted by publicly-determined and controlled
experiences such as institutionalisation. Denied or diminished familial relationships
were attributes of the lives of Angela, Trudy, Simon, Desmond, Wally and Roslyn,
written about previously in ‘The Quilter’s Journal’. The lack of preservation and