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Beyond Normalisation and Impairment
Introduction
Since its inception, normalisation – and its reclassification as social role valorisation (SRV) –
has played a central role in shaping theories, policies and practice relating to learning
difficulties. In learning difficulties (in contrast to disability studies and the disabled people’s
movement in general) normalisation is still perhaps the key theoretical position. Despite a
controversial history, it remains the position of ‘orthodoxy’ (Deeley, 2002) (even if
misunderstood or inconsistently applied) in residential care (Deeley, 2002), supported
employment (Wilson, 2003), and day care (Henley, 2001).
Normalisation/SRV has been criticised (especially by proponents of a social model of
disability) for many reasons, and its theoretical underpinnings continue to be questioned (e.g.
Culham & Nind, 2003) and defended (e.g. Race, Boxall & Carson, 2005).
We broadly accept Race et al’s (2005) argument that criticisms of normalisation/SRV from a
social model perspective often overlook the nuanced way it is applied in practice and that
many laudable changes are attributable to these theories. However, we also follow Culham
and Nind (2003) in proposing that, whilst necessary in its time, the modern legacy of
normalisation is largely a force maintaining the status quo, and a theoretical deconstruction is
overdue.
Beginning with a brief restatement of the influential North American version of
normalisation/SRV (re)formulated by Wolfensberger (e.g. 1972, 1983) and a consideration of
some key criticisms, this paper will undertake a Foucauldian deconstruction of normalisation.
We argue that the theory founders on an unexamined and problematic individual-society
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Beyond Normalisation and Impairment
dualism, and the (hidden but implied) notion of the individual with impairments existing prior
to socialisation. Foucault’s work is key to addressing these problems and accounting for the
formation of subjectivity in relation to systems of knowledge within which impairments are
constituted. This approach has the ability to address a number of criticisms of the social
model of disability and it takes seriously Goodley’s (2001) timely call for a ‘challenging
epistemology’ that overturns ‘social-individual distinctions,’ and acknowledges ‘the
sociological core of living with the label “learning difficulties”’ (p.225).
Normalisation/Social Role Valorisation
Originating in Scandinavia in the 1960s (e.g. Nirje, 1969), normalisation embodied the ideal
that people with learning difficulties should enjoy ‘patterns and conditions of everyday
living’ as close as possible ‘to the norms and patterns of the mainstream of society’ (Nirje,
1969; p.181). The concern was to make as normal as possible the places in which people with
learning difficulties lived and worked, their education, leisure activities, and human rights.
Normalisation called for a move away from special treatment, isolation and
institutionalisation (Bank-Mikkelsen, 1980) towards ensuring that people with learning
difficulties enjoyed the same rights, freedoms and choices as non-disabled people.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Wolfensberger reconceptualised normalisation (later reclassified as
SRV) as a major principle in sociology (Emerson, 1992). It is now most associated with this
reworking, through which it represents the ‘the use of culturally valued means in order to
enable, establish and/or maintain valued social roles for people’ (Wolfensberger & Tullman,
1989; p.211). Wolfensberger argued that concepts of role expectancy, deviancy and public
perception should be central, reflecting his concern that certain groups in society (people with
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Beyond Normalisation and Impairment
learning difficulties especially) had devalued social roles. Their relative place in society and
the contribution they are deemed capable of making reflected negative ways of thinking
about them, and this has affected how they are treated.
Key concerns are individuals’ “personal competencies” to integrate with valued social circles,
pursue valued and fulfilling activities, have normal personal possessions, and so on, and their
“social image” in relation to the appearance of settings in which they live, the rights and
abilities they are credited with, their language, dress, personal appearance, etc.
(Wolfensberger, 1983). These factors affect how people are perceived, and the role
expectations thus placed upon them. Devalued groups tend to be cast into negative roles such
as ‘subhuman… an object of dread… an eternal child’ (ibid.; p.16), and these social
expectations cause devalued individuals live up – ‘or down’ (Wolfensberger & Thomas,
1983) – to them.
Normalisation/SRV therefore calls for the integration of devalued individuals into society so
they live in normal housing, have normal jobs and education and engage in a positive way
with socially valued activities, thus giving people a positive social role, enhancing their
personal competencies
and bolstering their social image (Wolfensberger, 1983;
Wolfensberger & Thomas, 1983). ‘Culturally valued means’ (Wolfensberger & Tullman,
1989) are required to enable this, entailing the use of services ‘from generic agencies which
serve the general public’ (Wolfensberger, 1972; p.45) rather than speciality ones for specific
groups – e.g. apprenticeships and on-job training in place of unnecessary work or gameplaying. This, it is argued, will transfer appropriate valued images and thus elicit competent
behaviour, skills and relationships.
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Beyond Normalisation and Impairment
This implies action on three levels: on the individual in eliciting positive and useful
behaviour and social competencies, and presenting and labelling people in a way which will
create positive roles for them – emphasising similarities rather than differences; on the level
of primary and secondary social systems, by using positively valued systems like schools,
work and normal community services, and ensuring that these systems are perceived as
valued; and on a societal level, including such things as the entire school system, laws and
rights, and combating negative social stereotypes (Wolfensberger & Tullman, 1989).
Normalisation generated considerable debate, but it was such a major influence on services
and policy that 15 years ago Tyne (1992) commented that ‘there is seldom a post advertised
in services for people with learning difficulties that does not claim adherence to
normalisation’ (p.44).
Criticisms – and deconstruction
However, normalisation and SRV have been subject to criticism from other positions. The
emphasis on avoiding negative stereotyping and promoting positively valued roles and
appearances has been criticised for assuming that conformity is ‘a condition of acceptance’
(Brown & Walmsley, 1997) into society. Normalisation/SRV actually imposes stricter
conditions of conformity and normality on “devalued” people – with the ideal of being more
than ‘merely neutral’ in ascribed social value (Wolfensberger & Tullman, 1989). It has thus
also been attacked for making the assumption that being “different” was less desirable than
being “normal” and that disabled people should strive to be other than what they are (e.g.
Morris, 1991). There have also been criticisms that the theories require that “devalued”
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people adapt to a hostile environment rather than challenging the thinking and policies
contributing to negative perceptions (e.g. Culham & Nind, 2003).
It should be noted that Wolfensberger (1983) saw these criticisms as a result of confusion
over normalisation, and reclassifying it as SRV was partly an attempt to distance it from such
allegations (Culham & Nind, 2003). Race et al (2005) point out that in practice
normalisation/SRV does not simply emphasise moulding individuals into socially accepted,
“normal” forms, but is more ‘nuanced,’ balancing ideals of decreasing devaluation and
respecting the choices of people with learning difficulties themselves. They also highlight
that actions relating to individuals were only one aspect of SRV’s multi-faceted approach,
and that change at a societal level is also important.
With respect to this defence of the theory, however, we contend that a (Foucauldian)
deconstruction of the theoretical position underpinning normalisation/SRV reveals some
fundamental problems with its conceptual foundations. This will highlight an important set of
problems to be addressed in theorising a position for understanding learning difficulties.
We will focus primarily on the status of the individual subject in the theory. Foucault’s body
of work can perhaps best be conceptualised as a history of ‘problematizations’ (Foucault,
1997a) of the ways that human beings are made into subjects. He explicitly wanted to do
away with the notion that the human subject is transcendental, with essential properties (or
potentials) conceptually separable from the social domain (e.g. Foucault, 1988b). This is not
to say that there is nothing about human beings that exists prior to their constitution in a
social context, and that our biology, for instance, has no effects. However, what Foucault was
concerned with, and what we are interested in here, is how human beings become subjects.
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Beyond Normalisation and Impairment
Foucault’s analyses demonstrated different ways that subjectivity is constituted in and
through specific systems of knowledge from which it cannot be conceptually separated, and
which create individuals as subjects of knowledge, position them as potential subjects of
power, and tie them to particular identities which they are obliged to recognise in themselves.
The individual as subject is not the ‘vis-à-vis’ of these forces. Subjectivity does not exist
conceptually prior to them, but is one of their prime effects; it is brought into being through
their articulation (Foucault, 1980).
Henriques et al (1998) draw on Foucault to argue that the social sciences commonly
(mistakenly) base theories upon a notion of the individual (as a potential subject of
knowledge) as conceptually separable from, and prior to, aspects of the social world within
which knowledge about him/her is constituted. It is precisely because this problematic
conception of individuals and the social world is reproduced in normalisation/SRV that a
Foucauldian analysis of the theories is called for. In normalisation/SRV the emphasis is on
social influences that act on the individual, limit “personal competencies”, impart roles and
shape behaviour, and on the ways that these competencies and behaviours subsequently affect
the social perception of devalued groups. Social conditions determine the scope of
individual’s self-concept, personal competencies and behaviour, and the displayed
competencies, presentation and behaviour of the individual in turn determine social
responses. Hence the need for normalisation/SRV to break this cycle, ascribe valued social
roles, and impart appropriate personal competencies, leading to positive social
representations and responses – replacing a negative cycle with a positive one.
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Beyond Normalisation and Impairment
This leads us to pose an important question: what is the individual in the theory? As we have
begun to discover, it exists primarily as an embodiment of socially-formed roles and
competencies that it then presents back to the social domain. The individual qua subject is
hidden, as indeed are any aspects of the individual not conceivable within an economy of
socialisation and presentation of roles, competencies and behaviours. Because the individual
in normalisation/SRV is largely hidden and not conceptualised as anything more than a
processor and bearer of aspects of the social, there is the possible conclusion that:
Handicapped [sic] people are not handicapped, that retarded [sic] people are not retarded,
and that every handicapped person could do and be almost anything if only provided
sufficient role expectancy and opportunity (Wolfensberger, 1980; p. 97)
Wolfensberger (1980) argued that this is a mistaken conclusion made only by ‘overzealous
proponents’ of normalisation, but it is directly related to the ways that normalisation
conceptualises individuals and processes of socialisation. It is perhaps therefore not
surprising that this conclusion has been common enough that Wolfensberger was obliged
explicitly to refute it. Implicit in his statement (but not actually stated) is the presence of the
individual with some form of impairment(s) (“handicap” or “retardation”) that prevent
him/her from doing or being ‘almost anything’ – or, more accurately (since nobody can be
just anything!) from being not “handicapped”.
This is a rather roundabout implication of the presence in the theory of an individual with
essential impairments that exist pre-conceptually, as part of biological “reality”. This was
later (also rather indirectly) restated as the notion that people with learning difficulties have
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Beyond Normalisation and Impairment
‘competency impairments’ (Wolfensberger, 2002) which impact upon their ability to make
appropriate, or sensible choices about their own lives – which (of course) everybody, having
learning difficulties or not, fails to do on occasion (Race et al., 2005). As Foucault shows us,
these impairments and the “impaired individual” are emergent as objects of thought only
within specific systems of knowledge. However, normalisation/SRV cannot acknowledge
their status as constructed and contingent because of the manner in which it conceptualises
them.
There is a paradox here. The pre-given subject with essential and unchallenged impairments
is implicit, but un-stated (at least until its status becomes problematic). However, the hidden
nature of the subject in relation to the social forces that act upon it leads to possible untenable
conclusions that must be co-opted – that socialisation of competencies, behaviours and roles
has an all-encompassing effect such that any “impairment” is conceptually absent (with the
possibility that “handicapped” people are thus not “really” “handicapped”). Attempts to
address this issue then rely on (re)asserting the conceptual existence of the individual with
impairments existing prior to socialisation. However, the existence of these unexamined and
essential “biological impairments” is problematic for normalisation/SRV in their potential to
gain precedence and thus provide an essential (biological) explanation of “impairment” that
would over-ride the social influences upon which the theory is founded. So, the presence of
an “impaired individual” is not explicitly present in the theory, and, when necessary, is
loosely (re)asserted through a definition of what the theory cannot claim or through a framing
of “competency impairments,” obliquely referred to and rather vaguely defined.
Normalisation and SRV are thus stuck on their constructions of the individual and the social,
whose constructed and problematic nature they are unable to interrogate or acknowledge.
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Beyond Normalisation and Impairment
This situation persists in the social sciences in general, Henriques et al. (1998) argue,
because:
Certain norms have become so much part of our common-sense view of reality that we
have been able to forget that they are the result of a production… they have become
naturalized as indisputably biological or social (p.22)
So, whilst normalisation/SRV emphasises social forces which devalue people and contribute
to oppression, it is unable to move beyond concepts of “impairment” or “difference” as
essentially, indivisibly biological, as a part of the pre-social “impaired” individual which is
implicit within it, but also conceptually problematic. The constructions of “difference”,
“handicap” or “impairment” are not acknowledged as such, but exist (albeit implicitly) as
indisputable parts of reality. This largely hidden, implicit nature of the individual and his/her
“impairments” and the conceptual problems associated with it is what gives rise to criticisms
that ‘nowhere is disability spoken of as something which could be valued in its own right’
(Szivos, 1992; p.126).
Given the focus on the negative effects of devaluation and limitation of competencies, the
implication of internal, pre-social “handicap” or “competency impairments” is also inherently
a negative one (hence, one might argue, its hidden nature). It is this that leads to the theories
being trapped in ‘hostility to and denial of “differentness”’ (ibid.; p.126). Despite its concerns
with the social problems of learning difficulties, normalisation/SRV cannot offer a contested
production of difference or impairment on which to base its aims. It therefore ends up
essentialising a negative conception of difference, in opposition to “normality” or “social
value.” This is a consequence of the theories’ inability to attend to their own constructed
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Beyond Normalisation and Impairment
positions, stemming from the conceptual confusions that we have been deconstructing here.
As long as these problems, raised by theories situated within an under-theorised dualistic
framework, are unacknowledged, a coherent social theory of individuals and learning
difficulties will remain elusive.
These criticisms may not seem substantively new, but we have aimed to demonstrate that
they relate to conceptual issues fundamentally embedded in the theories. This has
implications for how we are to propose ‘challenging epistemologies’ (Goodley, 2001) upon
which to base ‘inclusive social theories’ of learning difficulties. It is relevant to note, before
taking up this task, that these criticisms of normalisation/SRV resonate to some degree with
some criticisms of the social model of disability. For instance, it has been argued that the
exclusive focus on social influences in the production of disability ‘consigns the bodily
aspects of disability to a reactionary and oppressive discursive space’ (Hughes & Patterson,
1997; p. 328), and that impairments, conceptually distinguished from socialised disabilities,
remain medical or psychological problems ‘to be eradicated or rehabilitated’ (Goodley, 2001;
p. 209).
We shall not build explicitly on these critiques begun by others, but this paper should be seen
in the context of a growing set of challenges drawing on post-structuralist and other critical
writing (including Foucault, Deleuze and Guatarri, Bataille, and so on) to present new
challenges to the ways that disability is conceptualised – for example, Tremain (2000),
Goodley (2007), and others. We focus on normalisation because it retains a position of
orthodoxy in much practice relating to learning difficulties, and it has recently re-entered
discussion with its intentions and impact (if not always its interpretation and application)
being defended (e.g. Race et al., 2005; Wilson, 2003; Deeley, 2002; Henley, 2001). These
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Beyond Normalisation and Impairment
other critical moves, however, are an indication that the types of criticism we have made, and
the responses we propose potentially have a wider relevance beyond learning difficulties, and
mesh with work and criticism begun by others.
As Henriques et al. (1998) argue, Foucault’s work is key for overcoming many of the
problems discussed. For Foucault, the concept of a prior, essential subject is anathema – it
makes no sense to posit a social theory on a notion of subjectivity conceptually separate from,
and having primacy over, those systems of knowledge within which it is constituted(e.g.
Foucault, 1981, 1982). We therefore draw upon Foucault to return a concern for the
individual-as-subject to social theories, including his/her experiences and actions in relation
to his/her own life and social domain. This will include recognising the “truth” that
constitutes individual as subjects – as subjects of knowledge that define them, subjects acted
upon in particular regulated ways by others, and ethical subjects obliged to recognise the
“truth” in themselves and govern their conduct appropriately.
As we have argued, normalisation/SRV obviates about the “truth” of learning difficulties,
consigning it to the realm of pre-social individual characteristics as an ill-defined (biological)
“impairment” or “handicap.” Instead, we must recognise that the “truth” of learning
difficulties is not (or never was) simply ‘lying in wait’ (Foucault, 1972) outside of realms of
discourse or systems of knowledge, awaiting its discovery by biological or psychological
sciences. No, its emergence as “truth” takes place within specific delimited and historicallycontingent systems of knowledge, and is linked to relations of power, subject positions, and a
“cost” for people to tell and recognise it in themselves (Foucault, 1989).
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Beyond Normalisation and Impairment
One of Foucault’s (1989) questions was ‘how much does it cost the subject to be able to tell
the truth about itself?’ (p.355). For instance, at different times Foucault was concerned with
how much it costs the subject as delinquent or mad(wo)man or pervert to be able to tell the
truth about itself, to relate to the truth of their “condition” they are obliged to recognise in
themselves. This is an active process. Although Foucault often focused on how people are
positioned and constituted as subjects within forces not of their own making, he noted also
that they are not passive, but actively engaged in these processes themselves (Foucault,
1988a). This is an important realisation for our aim to return the subject to social theories of
learning difficulties – although, of course, it is not only in relation to “learning difficulties”
that people become subjects, and others have studied, for instance, forms of gendered,
racialised, and sexualised subjectivity (e.g. Doy, 1996; Marks, 1999).
Theorising subjectivity and “challenging epistemologies”
Foucault’s work, often seen as disparate, shifting and even contradictory, can productively be
thought of as unified by a concern with how people become subjects, and as comprising three
domains of critical inquiry relating to this question, which he concentrated on at different
times: (1) the domain of truth through which we become constituted as subjects of specific
forms of knowledge; (2) the domain of power through which we are constituted as subjects
acting upon others and acted upon by others in particular regulated ways; and (3) the domain
of ethics, ‘through which we constitute ourselves as moral agents’ (Foucault, 1997b; p. 262),
and assign meaning and value to our lives and conduct, governing them in line with particular
ideals.
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The domain of truth concerns how particular objects come to take a place in a system of
knowledge or discourse of truth, and the rules by which these objects form particular fields of
knowledge. Objects are not waiting, fully-formed, exterior to discourse for their discovery by
the discipline destined to know them. Rather, systems of discourse ‘systematically form the
objects of which they speak’ (Foucault, 1972; p.49). For example, learning difficulties is not
an essential pathology whose true nature resides outside discourse, or a “condition” about
which we can unproblematically amass absolute knowledge. It is a discursively constituted
object, related to concepts of “mental abilities” that emerge as particular types of problems at
particular times.
The domain of power is dynamically linked to that of knowledge. The ways that specific
forms of knowledge emerge render people knowable in relation to them. Particular aspects of
people are thus created of which power can take hold. These forms of knowledge and power
constitute what is desirable to be done with people, how they are to be understood, related to,
organized, and so on. Power, in its dynamic links with knowledge, therefore, is productive of
interventions into people’s lives, ways of relating to them, and ways of acting upon their
conduct. Power does not stand against its dialectical opposite of a sovereign, transcendental
subject whose nature it represses (Foucault, 1988b). The subject is constituted in and through
these very processes. Power categorizes individuals, attaches them to their identities, imposes
a law of truth by which they can be recognised as particular types of subjects (Foucault,
1982).
These critical domains have been drawn upon in posing critical questions about the framing
of disability in modern societies. For instance, Hughes & Patterson (1997) draw upon
Foucault to analyse how the body is constructed as a site of medical knowledge, Chadwick
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(1996) presents a Foucauldian challenge to formations of “knowledge” about disability in the
Disability Discrimination Bill and illustrates its links to power, and Allan (1996) and Yates
(2005) explore power relationships in education systems and care homes respectively.
As Allan (2005) comments, however, the third domain of inquiry is often neglected. This is
unfortunate, because, whilst all three domains have relevance for critical social theories, the
third is key for our aim of returning the individual qua subject to conceptions of learning
difficulties in which they are traditionally seen simply as embodying “handicaps” and/or
being devalued and impaired by social forces. It is here that a concern for the “truth” of
learning difficulties emerges through considering the cost for people to recognise it in
themselves, and here that individuals form understandings about themselves and their
circumstances, and in which they take an active role and struggle with or resist the forms of
knowledge and power which define them and direct them.
Foucault’s third critical domain examines the modes of action that individuals exercise upon
themselves. People are not merely passively positioned by forces of power and
subjectification. On the contrary, people relate to themselves in an active fashion (Foucault,
1988b). This domain of inquiry involves questioning how people constitute and recognize
themselves as subjects, how they assign meaning and value to their conduct and govern
themselves in line with particular ideals (Foucault, 1987). These ideals are not invented by
the individual; rather, they are cultural models which offer rules, opinions, and advice on how
to behave “appropriately”. Through them, individuals are able to question, observe, and shape
their own selves and their conduct.
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This allows us to examine how people are incited to constitute themselves as beings with
certain rights, responsibilities, obligations, and so on – to consider how the “truth” about
themselves is always co-constitutive of a cost for people to recognize it. We can begin to
consider how people align themselves with or resist particular injunctions and prescriptions,
how being deemed to have learning difficulties is co-extensive with a particular “way to
live,” and how people relate to and interact with these factors.
The perspective for applying this to the situations of people with learning difficulties is
influenced by the authors’ backgrounds in critical and social constructionist psychology.
There is a concern here for how forms of identity and subjectivity are constituted and
expressed through language, and Foucault’s work has been an important influence. We draw
particularly on a form of discourse analysis influenced by post-structuralism, which
recognises that what people say about their situation implicitly contains a picture of the social
world they inhabit and their relationships to it (e.g. Parker, 1996). Our analysis proceeds
through an interpretative process informed by Foucault’s domains of critical inquiry
(focusing here on the ethical domain) (see Yates, 2005).
The analytic focus is on how people relate to themselves as particular subjects tied to the
“truth” about themselves and to a range of moral imperatives for how to live, how and why
they govern their own conduct, and, crucially, how they might struggle with and/or resist
these issues.
A brief example will illustrate these points. The following extracts are from two (of twentytwo) interviews carried out with people with learning difficulties who had had recent
experience of community care accommodation in England. This formed part of the first
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author’s PhD thesis (Yates, 2002). The interviews were open-ended and conversational,
centring on opinions about life in care, the label “learning difficulties”, and changes in
accommodation and treatment over their lifetimes:
Anne: It’s your home, so it’s your choice… I stand my ground. I say, “I don’t like it” if I
don’t like it … I speak my mind.
[…]
I love J___, I can really spoil J___. I can spoil them all, but you cannot do that... I want to
go out and buy them something, but you can not do that ... it’s not your place… So, only
as far as you can go. If you want anything, you have to ask for it. If you want to go out
anywhere, you have to ask to go out ... In these sorts of homes you have to ask permission
to do things like this… I agree, because I like… to be spoke to as if I’m a human being…
but if I’m in the right, I stand up for myself.
Paul: I speak my mind. I can’t help it... the managers don’t like you to speak your mind.
It’s not heard of where they’re concerned. ...You have to fight for … what you believe is
right, but you’re just a bad boy, aren’t you, because you’re not being quiet?
I: So, you think you’re supposed … to be a good boy?
Paul: You’re supposed to be a good boy and be quiet… to just take what they give you,
and not say no. But I still don’t do it. I won’t do it.
One important point is how Anne and Paul talk about themselves in relation to imperatives,
proscriptions and ideals for behaviour. Both reference these things indirectly, through the
(effectively) general third-person pronoun you (‘you have to ask permission,’ ‘you’re
supposed to be good.’). They are thus referencing not merely themselves, nor (clearly)
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anyone in general, but anybody in this particular situation – anyone with learning difficulties
living in care. Through this device, they recognise a specific “place” – a specific subject
position – connected to (power) relationships with others, and to obligations to manage their
conduct in relation to particular ways to live. Thus, when “you” are a subject of care, “you”
have a specific “place” that “you” are obliged to recognise and conduct yourself in line with.
Implicit here is a form of subjectification in which “people with learning difficulties” are
conceptually divided from others. As stated, the general imperatives shaping acceptable
conduct that “you” must recognise as a subject with learning difficulties are not, despite the
use of a conventionally generic pronoun, applicable to all – the definition of a specific
“place” and the comparison between people with learning difficulties and their carers in both
accounts is testament to this. Being defined as a subject of care carries a series of imperatives
constituting a “place” that residents occupy. This “place” limits what they can legitimately
do, and delimits what can legitimately be done to them. There are links here between the
formation of subject positions and relations of power (Yates, 2005).
It is also clearly implied in Anne and Paul’s accounts that they are led to form relationships to
themselves in which they manage and govern their conduct in line with ideals relating to their
positions. This illustrates Foucault’s (e.g. 1982) later realisation that forms of power that
govern people’s lives become complemented by “self-government” in which people relate to
themselves in an active fashion. When governed in this sense, people are not forced or
coerced. Rather it is a matter of their aligning their activities and practices with the ends with
which government of their lives is concerned. Thus, both participants discuss their situations
and their conduct in relation to obligations for governing themselves. Anne comments that
although she would like to buy presents for other residents, she recognizes that this is
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something that someone in her position ‘cannot possibly do.’ Similarly, Paul says that
although he speaks his mind, this is something that someone in his situation is not supposed
to do, which conflicts with how “you,” as a care resident, are supposed to conduct yourself.
Although these accounts mention other people (care staff) in relationships of power with the
participants, it is important to note that their accounts report also the impetus to align
themselves with positions through which they can be governed as subjects of care, and
actively to govern themselves accordingly.
We must not fall into determinism here. Although these positions are not of their own
making, neither are they passive in relation to them (Foucault, 1988b). In both accounts, there
are two distinct ethical positions: one we have discussed, comprising ideals for governing
conduct in line with their position as subjects of care; and another through which they relate
to themselves as autonomous, “liberal” subjects with rights and imperatives to “speak their
mind” or “stand up” for themselves.
All the interview participants exhibited aspects of resistance to the direction of their lives and
obligations to govern themselves as care subjects. These ranged from expressions of
disagreement with some of the prescriptions and proscriptions on their conduct they were
expected to recognise as care subjects, through isolated acts of disobedience, to ongoing
‘battles’ or ‘fighting’ against their subject positions to claim rights of self-expression and
autonomy. The resistances were diverse and unpredictable, but can be conceived along a
spectrum. At one end is a broad acceptance and identification with the position of care
subject and acts of resistance only in specific areas that do not contest its essential legitimacy.
At the other end lie resistances which explicitly contest the legitimacy of the position of “care
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subject” which participants were led to recognise in themselves. Numerous shifting positions
lie between these extremes.
Anne and Paul illustrate the extreme positions of this spectrum. They relate to themselves and
their environment in very different ways, though drawing upon essentially the same ethical
technologies. Anne actively recognises and aligns herself with legitimate obligations to
govern her conduct in relation to her “place,” and the activity of speaking her mind or
standing up for her rights is situated firmly within this self-governance which defines its
appropriate limits. Paul’s account, however, sets out a tension between these two positions.
He positions being a subject of care and obligations to govern himself as such as being
unacceptable, and he draws on the position of being a self-expressing autonomous subject
(with rights) to disavow and contest it.
So, being defined as someone with learning difficulties takes place not only in the realm of
medical or psychological knowledge, but is connected to the production of subjectivities
through which people become subject to forms of power (Yates, 2002, 2005), and through
which they are led to recognise obligations to govern themselves. Individuals are active in
these processes, and both accounts show evidence of some tension and struggle (managed
differently in each) with forces that define them and through which they relate to themselves.
Discussion and conclusion
Foucauldian-influenced
deconstruction
has
demonstrated
that
the
principles
of
normalisation/SRV are predicated upon an unexamined and conceptually problematic
individual-society dualism in which there is the implied presence of (passive) individuals and
19
Beyond Normalisation and Impairment
impairments both existing conceptually prior to socialisation. The contingent nature of the
construction of such impairments and the conditions of their emergence are banished from
the theory, with the implicit consequence that they reduce essentially to the biological.
Foucault’s work can form the basis of a ‘challenging epistemology’ (Goodley, 2001) for
learning difficulties. This work comprised three inter-related domains of critical inquiry
relating to the ways in which human beings becomes subjects, all of which are important: the
constitution of people in systems of knowledge, their attendant creation as subjects of power
and projects of governmentality, and (the often-neglected third domain) the ways that people
understand and form relationships towards themselves and their own conduct. To return the
subject to theories about learning difficulties in an active manner, Foucault’s third domain of
inquiry is crucial. It is here, at the heart of everything, that there is a subject both constituted
as an object of thought within systems of knowledge(/power) and at the same time actively
engaged in their own projects of selfhood and struggling with the ways that their
subjectivities are constituted and power takes hold of them.
One important realisation is that a truly challenging epistemology for learning difficulties
cannot be based on predetermined ideals of normality and consonant directives and
proscriptions for people deemed to have “competency impairments”. No solution can be
imposed once and for all onto people with learning difficulties. The analysis of power,
subjectivity and people’s struggles means that there is always something potentially to be
done (see Foucault, 1997b). Discourses and policies based around “choice” and “quality of
life”, for instance, may improve things materially for marginalised groups in the short term,
but they cannot ever dissolve the types of problems discussed here. As long as people are
defined by their marginality as “having learning difficulties” – and they are consequently tied
20
Beyond Normalisation and Impairment
to a truth and a subject position as such – there will continue to be these types of “dangers”
(Foucault, 1997b) relating to power and subjectivity that people will struggle with in their
relationships to themselves and their world.
What is important is what people themselves struggle with regarding the “truth” that defines
them, and the connected ways that their conduct is directed and they are led to shape their
own lives. Foucault’s domains of critical inquiry allow us to highlight the tensions and
struggles that exist around these issues. It is through identifying the struggles in which people
are actively involved (rather than a concern made on their behalf for what is “good” or
“normal”) that important challenges emerge. One of the tasks facing people with learning
difficulties and those who work with them can thus be to open up the space for the expansion
of these struggles and to unsettle the naturalness of the contingent forms of subjectifying
knowledge which people confront.
This paper thus represents an opening rather than a finished position. Research with people
with learning difficulties about other areas of their lives might also be useful – for instance,
employment, day centres, transport, medical services, and so on. In addition, it should be
recognised that care staff also exist within relationships of power, subjectivity and selfgovernment, and an understanding of the forces that shape their identities and actions might
also be helpful. A significant challenge for future researchers and those working with people
with learning difficulties is to hand over the ideas and challenges this work presents to people
with learning difficulties themselves to direct and use research in productive ways. It may be
hoped that this focus might open the space for people with learning difficulties, and those
who aim to work with them, to explore these issues and find their own solutions.
21
Beyond Normalisation and Impairment
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