Making disability public in deliberative democracy

Abstract

Deliberative democracy harbors a recurrent tension between full inclusion and intelligible speech. People with profound cognitive disabilities often signify this tension. While liberal deliberative theorists sacrifice inclusion for intelligibility, this exclusion is unnecessary. Instead, by analyzing deliberative locations that already include people with disabilities, I offer two ways to revise deliberative norms. First, the physical presence of disabled bodies expands the value of publicity in deliberative democracy, demonstrating that the publicity of bodies provokes new conversations similar to rational speech acts. Second, the inclusion of people with profound disabilities necessitates a form of collaborative speech in which individuals make claims collaboratively. Habermas offers an ideal site to pursue this analysis because he recognizes the theoretical tension between inclusion and intelligibility and because his personal testimony reveals important insight into the lived experience of disability. Contemporary Political Theory (2012) 11, 211-228. doi:10.1057/cpt.2011.11; published online 26 July 2011Keywords: deliberative democracy; Habermas; reciprocity; disability; dependency The disability rights motto of 'nothing about us without us' (Charlton, 1998) speaks both to the long history of exclusion of people with disabilities and to deliberative democratic theorists' commitment to inclusion. Deliberative democratic theorists and disability rights activists see inclusion as a linchpin of legitimacy and as a method to transform participants' beliefs. Aggregate models of democracy, in contrast, fail to capture the political participation of people with profound emotional and cognitive disabilities who are either disenfranchised by law or prohibited from voting due to the severity of impairment itself (Appelbaum, 2000). Deliberative theorists' promise of inclusion, however, is threatened by their conception of participation as reasonable speech acts. By neglecting alternative modes of non-verbal and embodied communication, deliberative theorists disable the speech of multiple populations.Disabled speech affects persons who are refused the opportunity to speak because their mode of communication defies reasonable and coherent r

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