Livin’ in the future: Conceptualising the future of UK disability activism through utopian, retrotopian and heterotopian configurations

Abstract

The article explores how the future is imagined through disability activism. It highlights how UK Disabled People’s Movement members, established and newcomers, envisage inclusive and accessible societies and what role disability activism has in realising such visions. To achieve this, conceptualisations of the future are mapped within a framework of three topias (places/worlds): utopia, retrotopia and heterotopia. These topian configurations provide a way to make sense of activist visions for progressing disabled people’s emancipation. The article argues that the UK Disabled People’s Movement currently produces two dominant conceptualisations of the future: a deterministic, radical overhaul of political and economic arrangements (utopia); and a return to ‘purer’ forms of disability activism produced by historical activists and their networks (retrotopia). Young disabled activists who do not align with such conceptualisations are denied opportunities to influence broad activist strategies and are, instead, relegated to opportunities that necessitate a youth perspective. Young disabled activist’s conceptualisations of the future can be best understood as the production of counter sites, which generate activities, politics and discourses around notions of inclusion, social justice and accessibility (heterotopia). These produce possible and preferable alternatives to the current ordering of the social world – with disability activism becoming spaces that encourage creativity of new ideas, new practices and new options against existing norms and inaccessible worlds.