Survival of the misfits : dependency care as a site for political representation
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: Political Science, Department of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Munawar, Sarah
issued: 2014-09-18T13:46:15Z
issued: 2014
related degree: Master of Arts - MA
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: From physicians advising families to pull the plug on the to-be-disabled, to the eugenics movement and sterilization laws, at the core of threats to the existence of dependents with severe disability are narratives of tragedy and misfittedness. Through this horizon, the embodiment of difference is ostracised as deviancy or deficiency and dependents living with severe disability are least recognizable as political subjects due to their structural positioning--casting relations of care to the margins of public accountability. What increases the risk of death, violence or injury is not the dependencies or corporeal embodiment of individuals with severe disability, but rather the lack of institutional support for relations of care--their primary means to sustenance. The multi-dimensional practice of care, as it arises from dependency and corporeal vulnerability, is a political resource through which dependents with severe disability can exercise a greater degree of authorship and self-definition in the democratic claims-making process. Central to this task is mapping the alignment between the values of attentiveness and responsiveness, at the heart of the ethics of care, and what democratic representation draws its legitimacy from: proximity and attention to the particularity of the represented. The shared perspective between dependents and dependency workers, looking out from a dependency relation, when mobilized in the process of representation, paves way for the empowerment of the dependent because it increases not only his self-esteem as an individual, but also, the performance of institutions of care--shielding dependents from the differential distribution of precarity. The process of representation, as exercised through the activity of care, must be as fluid as the move from wheelchair, to walker, to cane, to his one's own legs—whatever the shifts in capacities may be for the dependent, the dependency worker adjusts her care through attentiveness. This requires re…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/50403
note: i SURVIVAL OF THE MISFITS: DEPENDENCY CARE AS A SITE FOR POLITICAL REPRESENTATION by SARAH MUNAWAR B.A., The University of Toronto, 2013 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Political Science) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) September 2014 © Sarah Munawar, 2014 ii ABSTRACT From physicians advising families to pull the plug on the to-be-disabled, to the eugenics movement and sterilization laws, at the core of threats to the existence of dependents with severe disability are narratives of tragedy and misfittedness. Through this horizon, the embodiment of difference is ostracised as deviancy or deficiency and dependents living with severe disability are least recognizable as political subjects due to their structural positioning--casting relations of care to the margins of public accountability. What increases the risk of death, violence or injury is not the dependencies or corporeal embodiment of individuals with severe disability, but rather the lack of institutional support for relations of care--their primary means to sustenance. The multi-dimensional practice of care, as it arises from dependency and corporeal vulnerability, is a political resource through which dependents with severe disability can exercise a greater degree of authorship and self-definition in the democratic claims-making process. Central to this task is mapping the alignment between the values of attentiveness and responsiveness, at the heart of the ethics of care, and what democratic representation draws its legitimacy from: proximity and attention to the particularity of the represented. The shared perspective between dependents and dependency workers, looking out from a dependency relation, when mobilized in the process of representation, paves way for the empowerment of the dependent because it increases not only his self-esteem as an individual, but also, the perform…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2014-11
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0166970
language: eng
degree discipline: Political Science
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/50403