Disability/Postmodernity

Tom Shakespeare is Reader in sociology at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne and Mairian Corker is Lecturer in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of Central Lancashire.

• Section I Theory: phenomenological investigation of the disabled body, Miho Iwakuma; inspiration - a psychoanalytic investigation, John B.I. Kelly; embracing the limit - language, politics and poststructuralism, Petra Kuppers; bodies in flux - space, time and disability, Janet Price; a postmodern disorder - encounters with molecular models of disease and disability, Jackie Leach Scully; a dialogue around disability and the social model, Carol Thomas; shifting the discursive constraints of disability - (f)or a non-foundationalist conception of impairment, Shelly Tremain; the "underdevelopment" of the sociology of disability in the majority world, Majid Turmasani and John Fish. Section II Culture: romancing the machine - an inquiry of our "high-tech and low-touch" society, Dona Avery; degenerates, cyborgs and other aliens - (re)defining disability in futuristic films, Johnson Cheu; fashion, fetishism and feminism - exploring disability discourses in contemporary culture, Helen Meekosha; the crooked timber of humanity - disability, ideology and the aesthetic, Anita Silvers; mapping the outer limits, Tanya Titchkosky; naming and narrating disability, James Valentine; designing for disability, camouflaging universals, Jim Davis. Section III Society: challenging the stereotypes - disabled children's perspectives and resistance, John Davis and Nick Watson; understanding disability in the Indian context - a post-structural approach, Anita Ghai; postmodernity and people with learning difficulties - changing the subject, Dan Goodley; disabling barriers and creative resistance in the search for sexual intimacy for men with cerebral palsy, Russell Shuttleworth; contesting madness and distress, Anne Wilson and Peter Beresford.

Disability/postmodernity does well to signal the emergence of a new postmodernist sensibility that has largely failed to emerge from the 'social model' approach to disability research. I found the book both engaging and enjoyable and thoroughly recommend it.