Problems of Embodiment and Problematic Embodiment

Abstract

Using Judith Butler's notion that bodies are materialized via performances, "resignifying" disability involves a "democratizing contestation" of staircases because they exclude those in wheelchairs. Paleoanthropologist Maxine Sheets-Johnstone shows how consistent bipedal locomotion, together with the knowledge that we will die (upon which mutuality is based), are ingredients of our pan-hominid speciation, not contingent constructions. As axiologically important as contestation is, it forecloses the possibility of achieving a mutuality with others that is wonderfully possible. EPISTEMOLOGICAL STANDPOINTDuring the summer of 1997, a doctor told me that I would never walk again without great pain. I am now fully recovered. Initially using crutches for many months, and then using a wheelchair for another eight months, I discovered the genre of illness memoirs, which G. Thomas Couser calls "autopathographies," written by people who had faced or were facing health challenges and medical adventures (Couser 1997, 5). As a philosopher, I found these vivid accounts to be compelling in their focus on the questions that initially drew me into philosophy, questions about how to live. If these people, facing down death, disability, and the medical profession, could not only survive, but also find a revitalized agency in challenging or diminished circumstances, I wanted to hear about it. And if philosophy has anything to say to us about how to live well, then it has to be able to address these situations.Although I eventually recovered from my foot problems, I have an ongoing disability, namely, congenital hearing impairment, which I have written about