, by Brian Watermeyer, London, Routledge, 2012, 254 pp., £80.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-41-568160-5
Brian Watermeyer has produced a book that clearly shows one can remain politicised, be fascinated by the body and theorise in new, exciting and challenging ways. This text indicates that disability studies might be understood as a commons in which to bring new theories and practices to life in ways that comprehend the complex conditions of disablism and dis/ability. Watermeyer’s book is an outstanding text that deserves to be read by researchers, activists and practitioners whose work engages with the politics and ambitions of disability. Watermeyer draws on his unique perspective as a disabled activist, researcher and clinical psychologist – writing from the context of South Africa – to bravely and powerfully explore the relationships between self-hood and ideology; psychology and society; unconscious and conscious experiences of a disabling world. He begins the book by arguing that we need to create a safer, more generous terrain of theoretical engagement with disablism while also acknowledging our righteous outrage. Words of wisdom we could all do well to keep in mind. Given Watermeyer’s profession, psychoanalytic concepts populate the text – including fantasies, trauma, splitting, unconscious, reaction formation, projection, introjection, and so on. Rather than allowing these terms to individualise or limit the politics of disability, Watermeyer considers the extent to which these concepts offer political usage. This, then, is a critical psychological text: a text mindful of psychology’s historical contribution to the pathologisation of disabled people, but also a book aware of the multiple offerings of critical psychological theories. Watermeyer provides a defence of psychology by demonstrating how this discipline can be used from those inside and outside psychology, including the social and natural sciences and the humanities (disciplines traditionally associated with disability studies). Watermeyer’s work is not unlike the radical writings of the Frankfurt School: rescuing psychology from the apolitical, mediocre, middle-class world of mainstream psychology and re-siting concerns in the socio-political and psycho-emotional context of disability discourse. Anyone new to the fields of psychoanalysis and psychology should not be put off by this book: this is an accessible read. Watermeyer has a number of aims that he helpfully clarifies and returns to, time and again, throughout the text. He seeks to consider the ways in which disability speaks to dis-quieting parts of our inner lives and encourages us to open up and relate to these apprehensions and unconscious ideas. Disability evokes wider cultural and individual fantasies that in many ways contribute to more conscious and overt practices of exclusion. His purpose is, in part, to ‘deliberately model an engagement with those realities which are often hidden and always complicated’ (6). He suggests that, through this model, disability researchers, activists and professionals can take a more courageous position: drawing on social and psychological theories that provide practical resources for ‘signposting the obscure terrain of unconscious disability symbolism, relational dynamics and internal experience’ (7). All this might sound rather heady, fanciful and complicating. But, as one reads, Watermeyer is at pains to ensure that any analysis of disablism must engage with the complex ways in which it works. His analysis remains admirably accessible, readable and stimulating. This is disability studies scholarship of the highest calibre: pushing the study of disablism into areas hitherto ignored. And he draws on theories that have either been placed on the outskirts of disability or rejected because of their apparent association with medicalising, individualising and pathologising analyses of disability. The key resource for Watermeyer is critical psychoanalysis. Indeed, he never lets an analysis of disability nor disablism stay on the level of the individual, the body or the psyche: instead, he is at pains to provide an analysis that always acknowledges the social, cultural and political. This is quite an achievement and is in no small part due to his extensive reading and knowledge of the disability studies literature. Those readers who associate their stance with the British social model of disability will find that this book often speaks to this materialist approach. Consequently, Watermeyer has no desire to reject materialism but he does seek to address this perspective’s tendency to occlude the psychological, psychical or experiential interiority. This book will also be of interest to readers outside Britain because it draws far and wide from disability studies literature across the globe, taking in theorists from North America, Canada and the United Kingdom as well as contributions from Indian, Africa and Latin America. This is a global text. There are many highlights. Chapter Five, for example, exemplifies a cultural turn with a consideration of the narcissistic self and the discourse of charity. Chapter Six takes up the invitation by authors such as Carol Thomas to psychologically theorise the psycho-emotional consequences of living in a disabling world. There were also challenges. I disagreed with some of Watermeyer’s arguments. For example, I struggled with his dismissive attitude towards post-structuralist ideas around the body (which, paradoxically, he uses and refuses throughout the text) and wanted him to engage with recent post-conventionalist understandings of embodiment that allow stories to be told through the body and culture. I also found some of his defences of the power of psychology and psychoanalysis to be, well, rather defensive! Indeed, if there is one thing we learn from Chapter Three, it is that much psychoanalytic research, past and present, holds some very damaging conceptions of impairment and disabled people. After finishing the chapter I was left wondering whether it really is worth hanging out with psychoanalysis. Nevertheless, even those moments when this reader and the author departed did not dissuade me from the view that this is a powerful book with some deeply politicised conceptions of the disabling world and its impact on psychological life. Watermeyer carefully introduces us to the language of psychoanalysis and psychology, offering the gift of new vocabularies for understanding and challenging the socio-cultural and psychological processes of disablism. Some readers will feel uncomfortable with the ambition of hooking up psychology and disability. They should not let these anxieties prevent them from encountering new theoretical terrain. Watermeyer exemplifies an approach to new studies of disablism that boast an open-minded and reflexive stance. © 2013, Dan Goodley URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2013.764105 -- Avinash Shahi MPhil Research Scholar Centre for the Study of Law and Governance Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi India Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
