Screwing the Social Model of Disability

Abstract

The social model of disability represents the disability movements ‘big idea’, and since its formulation, it has received sustained appraise and critique. Despite its activist/scholarly currency, critics suggest the social model has experiential and theoretical limitations, and one fraught area is the split between impairment and disability. This article revisits and problematises the foundational splitting of impairment and disability that was itself informed by the sex/gender distinction in feminist scholarship. The sex/gender distinction, and the nature/culture binary, is increasingly critiqued by many, and I explore the implications this has for the impairment/disability distinction. Using historical and contemporary feminist/disability scholarship, I argue that impairment and disability are both discursively constituted, and that the impairment/disability distinction is no distinction at all—impairment was always already disability. These findings complicate the logics and goals of the social model, and I explore how the social model may be screwed to better reflect disability politics.

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