In this short video, Judith Butler explores the lived experience and some of the social and political dimensions of disability with Sanaura Taylor in a walk through the streets of San Francisco. During the walk they challenge the normative definition of the idea of walking and talk about how disability is often projected on to people by our stereotypical attitudes. One of the things that really moved me was their discussion of the normality of obtaining help from people. This feeds into one of the growing critiques of Western culture - and we see it coming through really strongly in health care, particularly when funding cuts are being made - and that is that we should not be looking … [Read more...] about Walking, disability rights and embodiment (video feat. Judith Butler & Sanaura Taylor)
Being critical
In yesterday's post I mentioned the Hybrid Pedagogy site and the work they had done to define what it means to be critical in education. As a critical physiotherapy network, it's probably important that we do the same thing and articulate how we think we are critical, because there are so many different meanings for the word, it could easily be misleading. Critical can mean: Intensive care and the physiotherapy that is given to people in life-threatening situations Critically and systematically analysing the quality and content of research articles These are almost certainly the approaches to criticality most familiar to physiotherapists today. The first is a very specialised field of … [Read more...] about Being critical
Check your privilege: Diagnosing cultural agnosia
Without wanting to sound like a pollyanna, I sometimes wonder if I'm not the luckiest man alive. I live in a beautiful country where human and natural disasters can often seem a long way away; I'm well paid for a job I love; I have ready access to fresh food and water; I'm healthy, and can fall back on public services that have reliably educated my children, emptied my rubbish bins, and generally kept the lights on. I live in a democracy where I can vote to bring about a change, I enjoy a free press, long hot summers, and TV channels that show regular baseball. There are billions of people around the world, who would give their right arm to be blessed with only half of these things. Bill … [Read more...] about Check your privilege: Diagnosing cultural agnosia
Embodiment, pain and disability – the latest edition of Qualitative Inquiry
Hot on the heels of yesterday's @physiotalk Tweet-chat about philosophy and physiotherapy, comes the latest edition of Qualitative Inquiry. For those of you who don't know it, QI has a strong focus on innovative and experimental qualitative material (follow this link to visit the journal's website). This month's edition focuses on the life and work of Laurel Richardson - a major force in areas like autoethnography (where the researcher's experience becomes the data) and creative writing as a research process. The papers are all about embodiment, pain and disability and have real application to physiotherapy practice. Ronald J. Berger, Carla Corroto and Julie White (2014). … [Read more...] about Embodiment, pain and disability – the latest edition of Qualitative Inquiry