This is a guest post by Dr. Pranoo who lives in Hyderabad India and has worked as a gender and sexuality researcher.
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I would like to begin this post with a question: how would the architecture of our world change if it were not designed for so-called able bodies and minds? This is a question that was first raised for me in my Master’s class. As we learned about the phenomenon of subjectivity, of the tenuous yet ineluctable line between the normal and the abnormal, we learned also that the world is structured to enable certain bodies while other bodies must be fit in, ‘accommodated’ into its design through recourse to needs of their pathology.
Design for the so-called abled extends beyond its surfaces; it is not merely the absence of braille in our everyday spaces, the lack of wheelchair support or the many other accommodations in homes, workspaces and educational institutions that would make our living spaces an inclusive place catering to our diverse selves. More importantly, these designs extend into our language, the structure of our economy, our varied institutions reducing (dis)abled bodies to ‘other’ bodies. Bodies for whom space must be made because the current economic and structural conditions are not meant to cater to them. These structures create excluded bodies. It is as if the stairs, and by extension, economies that run in glass and steel monstrosities, say: “Thou shall not pass”. This is not incidental. By marking out (dis)abled bodies as different, our systems enable the pathologization and othering of bodies different from its ideal. These are iterated again and again by leaders and peacemakers as they strive to find ways to fit the (dis)abled into institutions that were never made with them in mind.
Consider, for a brief instance, the language we use to describe economic success: words such as ‘strong economy’, ‘robust markets’, even representations of economies, such as the raging bull on the NYSE, symbolise vigour and strength by which we measure the well-being of a society. Our descriptions of what constitutes a ‘good’, and dare I say, ‘healthy’ economy depends on ableist metaphors, so much so, that I find it difficult to describe ‘well-being’ within the terms of its discourse without reference to ableist language.
Within the present conditions, economic well-being has taken on a renewed fervour. As COVID made remote work a possibility, companies celebrated the possibility of working from home, providing erstwhile unproductive (dis)abled folks a chance to join the workforce. But recent RTO mandates and controversies around work— whether through Amazon’s efforts, or through the almost ludicrous commentary of self-proclaimed leaders such as Narayan Murthy— have dashed those hopes again. I am reminded of Bertrand Russell who, in his essay, In Praise of Idleness, writes, “the morality of work is the morality of slaves”.
The valorisation of work within our era must be seen as the demonstrative desire of an ableist economy: an economy that does not value rest or play, but demands the suppression of one’s creative and critical forces to the dictates of economic conduct fitting to slaves. Rest, under the present discourse, becomes the purview of the lazy or the pitifully incapable. Sadly, even leisure today is increasingly shaped by such ableism: the ability to travel or socialise, to attain financial autonomy for pleasures or the accumulation of goods and desires, are all driven by the concurrent co-option of workers’ leisure time and money into economic production.
One wonders under the force of such pressure, what would be the shape of our institutions if they were built around rest and recovery? How would systems change if accommodations were not a form of charity given with contempt and reluctance to the (dis)abled but a desire to imagine the world anew, shaped by its many bodies rather than built for its few?
I have no answer to this question. I imagine that in such a society, well-being would be measured not by statistics fed by corporate giants but the happiness and fulfilment of its many members, where the right to live is not determined by the capacity to earn livelihood. And words such as ‘strong’ to mark a positive state of affairs would no longer hold any meaning.
This post is a part of “International Day of Persons with Disability” blog hop hosted by Sakshi Varma – Tripleamommy. #IDPD2024Bloghop. Access all posts of this bloghop at https://tripleamommy.com/2024/12/02/beyond-barriers-amplifying-voices-for-inclusion-marking-idpd-2024/.
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