Disability & Society

ISSN: 0968-7599 (Print) 1360-0508 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cdso20

Disability rights and wrongs revisited

Dan Goodley

To cite this article: Dan Goodley (2014) Disability rights and wrongs revisited, Disability & Society,
29:4, 659-661, DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2013.864874

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2013.864874

Published online: 10 Jan 2014.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 2359

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cdso20
Disability & Society, 2014
Vol. 29, No. 4, 659–668

BOOK REVIEWS

Disability rights and wrongs revisited, by Tom Shakespeare, London, Routledge,

2013, 296 pp., £24.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-0415527613, £79.89 (hardback),
ISBN 978-0415527606

The first edition of Tom Shakespeare’s controversial Disability Rights and Wrongs
(Shakespeare 2006) cast shockwaves through British disability studies. Disability
studies godfathers branded the book an act of treason that gave up on the political
ambitions of the materialist social model, replacing them with a conservative turn
to the realities of the medical model. A Review Symposium of the book, no less,
was published in the pages of this very journal (Disability & Society 2007, 22, no.
2: 209–34) and reviews were mostly disparaging. Personally, I really welcomed the
publication of Disability Rights and Wrongs. I felt it administered a necessary shot
to the arm of British disability studies; demanding researchers, theorists, activists
(and those that combine these roles) to clarify theoretical orientations, map our
empirical landscapes and illuminate our political priorities. Loathe or love
Shakespeare’s ideas, he has always been provocative and entertaining. In reading
his book I sought to embrace Watermeyer’s (2012, 9) generosity of engagement: to
read the text for connection rather than division. So in this second edition will
Shakespeare’s work create as many ripples through the disability studies world as
the first? My sense is that Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited will not be
deemed as controversial this time around for two main reasons, neither of which
should be read as a failing of Shakespeare.
The first reason is that this revised text reads more like a scholarly piece of work
than the first. The new text benefits from a close reading of the literature that
engages with the complexities of theory. This contrasts with the showboating of the
first edition that sought, I felt, to agitate rather than illuminate. Part I of the revised
text – ‘Foundations’ – has been totally rewritten to explore theoretical approaches to
disability and the politics of a disability identity. Part II of the book – ‘Applications’
– has chapters on prenatal diagnosis, cure and autonomy at the end of life (in keep-
ing with the first edition), and revised chapters build on earlier discussions of sup-
port, sex and love and friendship. There is a new chapter on violence and,
throughout, there is a welcome inclusion of people with the label of learning
disabilities. While I disagree with Shakespeare’s conception of learning disabilities,
I was heartened to find his foregrounding of the advocacy of people so-labelled.
Chapters 1–5 are really useful, as Shakespeare carefully unpacks materialist social
model perspectives, cultural disability studies perspectives and critical realist
perspectives. I appreciated, especially, the detail he gives to an account of cultural
approaches – where crip theory, studies of ableism and dismodernism all get a
mention – theoretical ideas that have often been dismissed without any adequate
theoretical justification (for example, Barnes 2012). At times, I felt Shakespeare was
too simplistic in his criticism; accusing materialist social modellists of holding a
Stalinist line while arguing that cultural disability studies are interested only in
660 Book reviews

discourse rather than the real stuff of everyday life. His critique of the utopian bases
of the materialist social model (‘a good idea that became ossified and exaggerated
into a set of crude dichotomies’[17]) reveals his own pragmatic rather than
revolutionary disposition. This is no bad thing, one might think, as he is keen to
make his work applicable across disability politics, theory and professional practice.
His pragmatism does, however, often appeal to compromise. Come on, he argues in
Chapter 2, there can never be universal architectural design that will include all
disabled people, get real! But many of us in disability studies and politics are drawn
to the field because of our utopian ideals and political ambitions. I am not being
unrealistic here (or perhaps I happily am). I simply want research and theory to push
the boundaries; just like disability activism has done for the past 40 years. While
Shakespeare is at times in danger of depoliticising theory and research through a
compromised appeal to the real, he does nevertheless present us with a text that
captures the political spectrum of disability studies.
The second reason that this book will have less impact than the first is that since
2006 disability studies has matured. Shakespeare can rest happily here knowing that
his own work has majorly contributed to the development of the field. Various
theoretical approaches have blossomed, including critical realism, phenomenology,
post-structuralism, post-conventionalism, psychoanalytic and post-human, while
disability studies has widened its brief to intersect with queer, post-colonial and
feminist agendas. Shakespeare displays an oddly ambivalent relationship with
disability theory and the act of theorising. On one hand he is keen to scope out the
range of theories that populate the disability studies landscape. On the other,
Shakespeare reveals his unease with theoretical language that might obscure,
confuse, alienate or mystify. He writes that cultural disability studies ‘risk being ossi-
fied into a fascination with theory for its own sake’ (71). Such anti-intellectualism is
disingenuous, especially when we read in Chapter 4 of his theoretical reasons for
adopted a critical realist agenda. Here he brings in luminaries including Bhaskar,
Honneth, Sen and Nussbaum and declares without any explanation that ‘I find the
Aristotelian virtue ethics approach particularly useful’ (73). So Shakespeare does
like (some) theory (and philosophy) after all. He is ‘unashamedly eclectic and
pragmatic’ in his theoretical allegiances (72). There is a time and place for theory
but clearly not from a theorist such as a Deleuze or a Foucault. This confused
relationship with theory is unfortunate. At times I am unclear whether or not
Shakespeare wants to be an activist, a practitioner, an empiricist or a public intellec-
tual. He is, I would suggest, all of these things. He is also a theorist. To distance
oneself from theory is a rather strange position to adopt, to say the least, especially
when this text is so theoretically polemical (something that I read as a positive rather
than a negative).
A further debate with the text that I enjoyed relates to Shakespeare’s
unproblematic appeal to objective empirical evidence of the real external nature of
the world. Time and time again, he argues that particular orientations (or more cor-
rectly, those that he does not agree with) are incapable of empirically testing their
theories. So biased materialist social modellists fail to recognise the clear objective
evidence that impairments are a predicament. And cultural disability studies fail to
acknowledge the factual reality of, for example, intellectual disability. As a critical
realist, he assumes that there is an object out there independent of the observer.
Hence intellectual disability is a real thing that gets caught up in the social
construction of ideas. But, when talk of discourse dies down, we are still left with
 Disability & Society 661

the pre-discursive reality of the mind and body. Such positivistic leanings around
the objective nature of reality and naïve appeals to empiricism failed to win
me over. I did, however, welcome Shakespeare’s willingness to prompt a wider
consideration of (the nature) of evidence.
Shakespeare has written a book that, like its younger sibling, will spark interest
and debate amongst all students of disability studies, whether they be practitioner,
activist or researcher. Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited comes out at a time
when the theoretical maturity of disability theory is evident and something that we
should celebrate rather than reject.

References
Barnes, C. 2012. “The Social Model of Disability: Valuable or Irrelevant?” In The
Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, edited by N. Watson, A. Roulstone and
C. Thomas, 12–29. London: Routledge.
Shakespeare, T. 2006. Disability Rights and Wrongs. London: Routledge.
Watermeyer, B. 2012. Towards a Contextual Psychology of Disablism. London: Routledge.

Dan Goodley
University of Sheffield, UK
d.goodley@sheffield.ac.uk
© 2014, Dan Goodley
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2013.864874

‘Don’t call me inspirational’: a disabled feminist talks back, by Harilyn Rousso,

Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press, 2013, 209 pp., £16.99 (paperback),
ISBN 978-1-43-990937-9

This memoir is one of the most vibrant, refreshing and important explorations of
the ‘lived experience’ of being a disabled woman that I have ever read. If, like me,
you enjoyed some of those promising anthologies that emerged from the 1980s
about disabled women’s lives, written in their own voices (indeed, Rousso edited
one herself) and enjoyed the Fe Fes project videos, then the time for this life story
by a single disabled feminist is long overdue, but absolutely worth the wait.
Rousso beautifully describes her life experiences and reflections on her time
from east to west coast in the USA (Washington to New York and Boston thus
far); she has an engaging humour that makes the book pacey enough to read in one
sitting or ideal to pick up in different places and re-read over time. Yet, through
this accessible contemporary chronicle, she also manages to demonstrate how
disability and gender connect and struggle throughout childhood, teenage anxiety,
love, body image, identity and womanhood, without becoming angst-ridden,
flippant or overly political. Refreshingly, this is not misery lit or inspiring supercrip
stuff, but Rousso pulls no punches either; she is honest about enduring struggles
and frustrations, such as disability not being engaged with by mainstream
feminisms and the internal struggle she experienced in constructing herself as a
practising psychotherapist. The reflections are immersive, but never self-indulgent.
Many of Harilyn’s experiences will resonate for disabled feminists who, like me,