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The social model of disability as an oppositional device
- Authors:
- BECKETT Angharad E., CAMPBELL Tomas
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 30(2), 2015, pp.270-283.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
This article engages with debates about the UK Disabled People’s Movement’s ‘Big Idea’ – the social model of disability – positioning this as an ‘oppositional device’. This concept is adapted from the work of the art theorist and activist Brian Holmes, elaborated using insights from Foucault and others. The model’s primary operation is introducing contingency into the present, facilitating disabled people’s resistance-practices. The authors recognise, however, that the device can operate in a disciplinary manner when adopted by a machinery of government. Whilst the primary goal is to understand the character and operation of the social model, by providing a more general definition of an oppositional device as the concrete operation of technologies of power, the authors also propose a concept potentially useful for the analysis of the resistance-practices of activists involved in a wide variety of struggles. This concept may thus have implications for wider social and political analysis. (Edited publisher abstract)