How can disability be redefined beyond conventional norms, transforming limitations into new possibilities?

Transforming a Disability Through Everyday Life Experiences by Anne-Lyse Chabert explores when disability begins and how it can be defined beyond conventions. Using her own experience, she examines metamorphosis as a strategy to overcome physical and environmental constraints. She analyzes disability through normativity, affordance, and capability. Real-life cases— a quadriplegic calligrapher, blind footballers, and an autistic person finding societal inclusion— illustrate how creativity transforms limitations into possibilities.

Anne-Lyse Chabert has explored vulnerability in disability since 2007, winning the 2015 Pierre Simon Prize for her research on the topic.

Transforming a Disability Throughout Everyday Life Experience

When does a disability begin? How can we define it other than through the prism of the current and conventional classifications? The author stresses that we give precedence above all else to the day-to-day experience of the disabled individual who reconstructs their relationship with the world in a different way. In order to approach the notion of disability, this author suggests using three conceptual spaces that constitute the background against which an individual’s life is lived out: (1) the organic space, examined in relation to the concept of ‘life standard’, (2) the technical space, that of perception and action, analyzed through the concept of affordances, and (3) the social and human space, which we examine starting from the concept of capability. The goal of this book is to highlight the everyday proof of resourcefulness that individuals can deploy within their environment. For this purpose, this work presents situations that include the following: that of a quadriplegic calligrapher who expects of himself the same artistic perfection as he did prior to his accident; that of blind children and teenagers who learn to play soccer and that of an autistic person who manages to carve out a role in society. The author challenges our customary way of looking at “disability”, and applies the first-hand experience of the author to broader philosophical issues such as the notion of care.

Redefining Disability

Taking a New Position on the Matter

Disability is the result of a discordance, a sometimes shockingly deep discrepancy between what individuals are capable of doing or being and what they or others expect of themselves. Yet it can also be a chance to advance towards a new order of being more in tune with their abilities, and one that may also influence their environment in return. From then on, several strategies may be used to set up new forms of balance. This leads one to think of fresh ways of considering the very notion of disability that has been so seriously and continuously devalued, even if implicitly.

Norms and Normativity: In Search for Organic Balance

Therefore, the issue is addressed in a totally different way, since disability will be an opportunity to question the “normativity” of an individual, to use the terms of the philosopher Georges Canguilhem: individuals learning afresh how to use their bodies, the very centre of their being, in a new way, sometimes, it is true, without even being aware of it. The author highlights the case of a tetraplegic calligrapher who learnt anew how to perform his art with the same outcome as before the accident that caused the paralysis of his limbs. He now paints using his mouth and his neck. His body has been able to reorganize in order to perform the same task in a different manner.

Affordances: The Balance between Living Organisms and their environment

In this chapter the author takes a general overview of the framework of “affordances” [whatever is available for a given person to use] and the history of that concept. It is only afterwards that she links it up with the subject of disability and the readjustments it calls for. The author illustrates what she says drawing on the account of how a blind football team was formed in Mali in 2021 and explains how the these young people were able to play football despite being blind and ended up finding unexpected fulfilment in this activity. Affordance being an invitation to act within a given environment, the individual who is injured at the outset can use other levers of “affordance” over and above what he can do or feel.

Capabilities: The States of Balance and Imbalance in Disabilities

In this chapter the author focuses on the meaning of capabilities, and the history of this notion coined in the 1980s by Amartya Sen. It is used in the first place to highlight the central fact that the GDP of a country does not measure individuals’ quality of life. It rather applies to the contrasts between whatever a given environment offers and what a given individual in that environment can take advantage of. And here the author links it to the subject of disability by highlighting once again how much a disability is the result of a lack of correspondence between the environment and the individual it surrounds. To gain in autonomy an individual must then act on his environment which to a greater or lesser degree lends oneself to fulfilling their needs. The author concludes this chapter explaining that there is perhaps a way to mitigate a disability so long as it is not a question of acting merely at a local level, but taking account of the entire environmental situation that of which can be acted upon.

Why this book matters today: Importance of the work in relation to the societal and scientific context

Whereas major legislation is still struggling to come up with a satisfactory definition of disability, the author of this book addresses the question and proposes a solution based on wide-ranging references, eclectic reading and original concepts, but also inspired by her very own personal experience, since she herself lives with seriously impaired mobility, as well as other inspirational situations of disability (a tetraplegic painter, blind football players, an autistic engineer). In the end, the author comes to a new definition of disability that is not merely an interesting academic feat but also provides readers with a wealth of ideas to counter the current discriminatory views of the non-disabled. On another level, in current research, drawing on individual and everyday experience, even in the humanities and social sciences, remains an innovative approach, and perhaps even more so in a field as specific as disability studies. This work supports the idea that collective knowledge can be based on people's experiences, and moreover that this methodology enables to develop analyses directly grounded in reality, which represents a sine qua non condition for the emergence of concrete solutions that can be implemented in the real and current world.

Students and scholars: Learning objectives

• Better understanding of the dynamics found in the environment in order to make it more inclusive.
• Question the situations where dialogue is lost between the individual and their environment.
• Consider capabilities as a tool that could allow us to rethink our way of living together.
• Consider the dynamics of care from the perspective of empowerment.
• Learn to surpass your own current limits, even when the initial predictions are not favorable.
• Allow a certain technical skill to develop from a phenomenon of distress.
• Overcome completely absurd discriminations

Chorégraphier sa vie: Anne-Lyse Chabert

Un projet documentaire

A short documentary that illustrates the themes of Anne-Lyse Chabert's two LPP books.