Disability, Media, and Technology
Call for Papers for a Special Issue of the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies
Guest editors:
Alan Foley and Stephen A. Kuusisto, Syracuse University. Syracuse, NY USA.
Deadlines
1 Sept 2012: Deadline for proposals
1 Oct 2012: Manuscript finalists will be informed
1 March 2013: Manuscript deadline
30 May 2013: Reviewer feedback and editorial decisions
Estimated publication: 2014
Summary
In this call, we seek articles that explore the cultural, social, and practical issues found at the nexus of disability, media, and technology. We encourage a variety of paper formats including empirical analysis, policy review and discussion. We welcome papers that are multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary in nature and that engage with the complexity and rapidly changing nature of technology.
Media and Technology
We take a holistic view of technology. There are multiple “layers” of meaning of the word “technology” (MacKenzie and Wajcman) and these layers should be considered in an integral manner. There are the actual physical components - computers, mobile devices, or assistive technologies. There are the procedures, activities, or organizational systems that incorporate these components. These may be such things as user manuals, or online protocols, but may also be manifested also in daily habits of users of the technologies. Finally, there is the technical knowledge that enables particular activities, the accumulation of knowledge that makes a practice possible. The lines between these layers are not sharp: devices can reify procedures; organizations are mutually constituted by their artifacts; and activities can be viewed as both knowledge and practices.
Detail
Telecommunications has an ongoing, critical role in the exercise of power and governance within postmodern society (Goggin and Newell 39).
Information is precisely the system of control (Deleuze).
The potential of technology to connect people and provide access to education, commerce, employment, and entertainment has never been greater or more rapidly changing. Communication technologies and new media promise to “revolutionize our lives” by breaking down barriers (Goggin and Newell xiii) and opening up worlds for disabled people (Ellis and Kent 2). Technology is often characterized as liberating - making up for social, educational, and physical barriers to full-participation in society. Particularly for people with disabilities, technology has been seen as a futuristic antidote for impairment. Through the wonders of technology, disability simply fades away or becomes inconsequential. Utopian fantasies about technology promise that “limitations can be transcended, and new freedoms found… [for] people with disabilities, [who are seen as] special beneficiaries” of technology (Goggin and Newell 110). Of course, we must point out a certain contradiction in putting ones faith in science to resolve or ameliorate the very problems that were created or constructed by science in the first place.
Yet, discourse on technology in relation to disability often focuses on the potential of assistive technology to replace human supports and promote greater independence. Certainly there is libratory potential, but some disability is socially created and the same social prejudices are often simply “reproduced in the digital world” (Ellis and Kent 2). That is, technology, like all of science, is inside culture - not separate from it.
The Problematic of [Assistive] Technology
Too often, discourse on technology in relation to disability often focuses on the potential of assistive technology to replace human supports and allow greater independence. Thus, technology that is disability focused or designed for disabled people is often “conceptualized as a form of ‘care’…administering to the biomedical/functional/normalizing needs of disabled bodies as commonly defined by service providers…and rehabilitative experts” (Campbell 52). These practices are grounded in normative, social, cultural, and economic practices, and, further reified in the design, manufacture, marketing, and implementation of technology. Many of the questions in which we are interested are not so much technological, but ideological. This is not to say there is no potential for “liberation” in technological advancements, but we cannot ignore ways that technology can and often does replicate many of the same social exclusions and normative thinking operating in the rest of society. As Ellis and Kent argue, we must address the “dangerous trend in digital design where socially constructed features from the analog world are migrated to the digital environment” (39). Disability focused technologies are “conceptualized as a form of ‘care’…susceptible to administering to the biomedical/functional/normalizing needs of disabled bodies as commonly defined by service providers, designers, retailers, and rehabilitative experts (52). In this conception, often the goal is “anti-dependency” and assimilation (53). All technologies – including disability focused ones - require maintenance. This fact of maintenance creates its own burden and can take on a life of their own - a fact that is often downplayed/ignored (Campbell).
In his essay Postscript on Control Societies, Gilles Deleuze introduces the notion of the control society - in which control is operative rather than power (i.e. Foucault’s disciplinary societies). Deleuze notes, “information is precisely the system of control.” Deleuze’sPostscript has been widely used as a lens for analyzing the Internet because of its clear applications to the form and function of the Internet. Flexibility is one of the core political principles of informatic control, described by Deleuze in his theorization of “control society.” This can been seen in the notion of distributed networks (like the Internet) which prize flexibility as a strategy for avoiding technical failure at the system level. In the context of disability, a defining concept of technology “designed” for disabled people is flexibility (e.g. in meeting technical, medical, or rehabilitative standards). Galloway notes that flexibility is a predicate of informatic control – a fundamental feature of Deleuze’s control society. We are interested in papers that explore some of the ways that technology creates unexpected and under-critiqued forms of control and exclusion of disabled people.
With these issues in mind, we seek essays that explore the paradoxical and contradictory intersection of disability and technology and that examine technology as a cultural practice grounded in normative, social, cultural, and economic practices, and, further reified in the design, manufacture, and marketing of technology which include (but are not limited to) the following:
Cultural analyses of technology and disability
Representations of disability and technology
Pedagogy, inclusive design and digital education
We are interested in articles that focus on these multifaceted meanings of media and technology and explore their relationship with disability. Our consideration of media technology includes, but is not limited to:
Works Cited
Campbell, Fiona Kumari.Contours of Ableism : The Production of Disability and Abledness. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Print.
Deleuze, G. “Postscript on the Societies of Control.” October 59 (1992): 3-7. Print.
Ellis, Katie, and Mike Kent.Disability and New Media. Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture. New York: Routledge, 2011. Print.
Galloway, Alexander R. Gaming : Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Electronic Mediations. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Print.
Goggin, Gerard, and Christopher Newell. Digital Disability : The Social Construction of Disability in New Media. Critical Media Studies. Lanham, UK: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Print.
MacKenzie, Donald A., and Judy Wajcman. The Social Shaping of Technology. 2nd ed. Buckingham [Eng.] ; Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999. Print.
Recent Comments