ABSTRACT
Space, as conceptualized by Pierre Bourdieu (1989), is always relational and always an indication of social positioning. Symbolic of the often entrenched and violent social divisions that exist in a given society, space explicates the symbolic status or capital with which one is or is not attributed. Considering social space and subjectivity for people with intellectual disabilities, Rob Kitchin (1998) writes of the restrictions imposed on the spaces open to people labeled intellectually disabled; such restricted spaces and positionings keep labeled persons “in their place” and “out of place.” Here, we take up these ideas in order to build on earlier work, in which we reported on a research project involving a group of people with intellectual disabilities who critiqued, re-imaged, and re-imagined public photographs of people with intellectual disabilities (Fudge Schormans and Chambon 2010, in press). Approaching the project from the perspective of its value as or to autobiography, we dealt with notions of space and place in limited terms. Prompted by the musings of audience members and panel presenters, in this article we actively take up questions of space and place in our (re)consideration of the work done by this group of people with intellectual disabilities with visual imagery of people so labeled. We look, in particular, at the ways in which the group’s work with photographic imagery can be recognized as a political act of dissensus that begins to disrupt the ableist consensus about what are/are not acceptable spaces and subjectivities for people with intellectual disabilities.
