The Constitution of Impairment: modernity and the aesthetic of oppression

Impairment has been set aside in debates about disability dominated by the social model. This paper seeks to go beyond the Cartesianism which produces this neglect. It suggests that radical disability studies can prosper from a critique of modernity which entails a shift from its singular epistemolo gical origins in the critique of capitalism. The argument challenges the co ntention that the oppression of disabled people is reducible to social rest rictions which are the outcome of a sec of structural determinations. It su ggests that the oppression of disabled people is also umbilically linked to the visual constitution of impairment in the scopic regime of modernity. T he vision of modernity is impaired by the assumption that to see is to know , that is, by its ocularcentrism. In deconstructing the visual culture of m odernity, it is possible to demonstrate that the non-disabled gaze is a pro duct of this specific way of seeing which actually constructs the world tha t it claims to discover. Using the work of Sartre and, to a lesser extent, Foucault, this paper argues that impairment is constructed-not discovered-i n the non-disabled gaze. The invalidation and disfigurement of impaired bod ies is, therefore, not simply an economic and cultural response to them, bu t also arises in the mode of perception which visualises and articulates th em as strangers.