This article combines the line of work that links disability and liminality with feminist dis/ability studies to analyse how the ‘disabled body‐subject’ is produced and subjectified during hospitalisation and post‐hospitalisation. This analysis is based on six bodily itineraries conducted with three men and three women with a spinal cord injury (five with tetraplegia and one with paraplegia) acquired during their adolescence. First, we interpret hospitalisation as a phase of ‘acute liminality’ in which the disabled body‐subject starts being produced as suspicious, expropriated and de/gendered. Secondly, we illustrate how discharge and the ‘return’ to the community entail the formation of several bodily assemblages that embody mal/adjustment. This leaves the subject in a state of ‘sustained liminality’ plagued with paradoxes and ambivalence. We argue that both liminalities lead disabled subjects to do an emotional work consisting of adjusting to situations of affective disablism while also opening up spaces of resistance regarding heterosexist and ableist mandates. We conclude by pointing out the potentialities of a two‐way dialogue between medical sociology and dis/ability studies.
Este trabajo pretende contribuir al diálogo entre las perspectivas críticas con los modelos individualistas de la discapacidad producidas en el contexto español y el anglosajón, así como establecer un puente entre estas perspectivas y la investigación cualitativa. Concretamente, propongo fundamentar este tipo de estudios mediante los Estudios de la Dis/capacidad (ED/c). Este enfoque anglosajón emergente explora el “complejo dis/capacidad” desde una perspectiva interseccional. Esto es, cómo los atributos asociados a la capacidad y a la discapacidad se constituyen mutuamente y son reproducidos simultáneamente por el discapacitismo y el capacitismo, así como por otros sistemas de diferenciación social. Este artículo propone doce preguntas de investigación teóricamente informadas a partir de los ED/c y dos de sus fundamentos teóricos (el postestructuralismo y el postconvencionalismo). Desde el postestructuralismo propongo entender la discapacidad como un dispositivo foucaultiano, cuyo régimen de inteligibilidad capacitista está conformado por los modelos individualistas de la discapacidad. Desde las teorías postconvencionales, como el posthumanismo y las teorías del afecto, propongo preguntarnos qué agenciamientos materiales y afectivos corporealizan al sujeto discapacitado, reproduciendo y/o subvirtiendo el dispositivo de la discapacidad. Concluyo apuntando que las nociones de capacitismo y discapacitismo pueden ampliar el diálogo entre campos teóricos y activistas que trascienden la “discapacidad”.
This essay contrasts the experiences of hospitalization and transition from hospital to home of people who have recently acquired a spinal cord injury (SCI) and the health professionals who work with them before and during pandemic-related restrictions. These experiences are analyzed through the theoretical frameworks of liminality and intersectional Critical Disability Studies. Drawing on narrative-ethnographic data collected in Spain, I illustrate that the rehabilitation hospital is conceived as a “parenthetical bubble-shell” the boundedness and permeability of which was radically altered during lockdown. First, I discuss how this transformed the way people with an SCI adjust to new ways of approaching space and time in hospital settings. Second, I explore how lockdown impacted key processes of “discharge preparation.” Third, I argue that the intersection between ability, gender, and social class modulates the extent to which exiting the hospital before and during the pandemic represented an ongoing crisis.
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