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Lalita McHenry, "'Performing (Dis)ability': Progressing Beyond the Able/Disabled Binary" (with Anna Hickey-Moody) Central to a radical disability culture within disability studies is challenging negative representations of disability in art, popular media and history and exposing the fictional nature of the category "normal". The performing arts are an exciting context in which the limitations of prevailing discourses of disability are highlighted. This paper traces dominant discourses of disability, primarily the "social model", in order to contextualise contemporary struggles for artistic and cultural space. Performing artists who identify as being "disabled" make visible a body that has previously been seen to exist only through the gaze of medical abjection or through the historical constructions of the "freak". How then is disability performed in ways that address issues of exclusion and abjection and at the same time avoid perpetuating the very oppressive spaces that are under challenge? Live performing bodies are challenging representations of disability and offering alternative readings of disabled bodies. However, in the desire for visibility, the "disabled body" is often taken as an unproblematic representation. Drawing on performance studies, feminist and race discourses, I will draw attention to the complexities that arise with this kind of performance modality and explore what might be gained by problematising the disabled body itself. Biography: Lalita McHenry is currently writing a PhD thesis at the University of Queensland in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History exploring the ways in which the performing arts work as a site of intervention able to respond to the limitations of contemporary disability theory. She has worked in community arts and the disability sector for the past 10 years and has a keen interest in the burgeoning field of disability arts. |
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