ABSTRACT

Introduction The language of disability has changed in recent years. The de-regulation of the health and welfare services in capitalist societies, the development of social movements of disabled people, the continuing challenges to medical dominance within and outside the health care system, and the influence of post-structuralism and postmodernism have led to a situation in which many different ways of writing about disability have emerged, each with its own lexicon. Any discussion of the politics of disability and disabled bodies carries the possibility of transgression and controversy. There is no neutral language and analysis of language itself is central to any discussion of how we approach ‘disability’ (Zola 1993). Impairment and disability; illness and handicap; suffering and oppression; victim and survivor: the only uncontested terms are those which have been erased from the vocabulary; and even they are likely to be excavated by the archaeology of disability studies.