Unimaginable Bodies

Unimaginable Bodies radically resituates academic discussions of intellectual disability. Through building relationships between philosophy, cultural studies and communities of integrated dance theatre practice, Anna Hickey-Moody argues that dance theatre devised with and performed by young people with and without intellectual disability, can reframe the ways in which bodies with intellectual disability are known. This proposition is considered in terms of classic philosophical ideas of how we think the mind and body, as Hickey-Moody argues that dance theatre performed by young people with and without intellectual disability creates a context in which the intellectually disabled body is understood in terms other than those that pre-suppose a Cartesian mind-body dualism. Taking up the writings of Spinoza and Deleuze and Guattari, Hickey-Moody critiques aspects of medical discourses of intellectual disability, arguing that Cartesian methods for thinking about the body are recreated within these discourses. Further, she shows that Cartesian ways of conceiving corporeality can be traced through select studies of the social construction of intellectual disability. The argument for theorising corporeality and embodied knowledge that Hickey-Moody constructs is a philosophical interpretation of the processes of knowledge production and subjectification that occur in integrated dance theatre. Knowledge produced within integrated dance theatre is translated into thought in order to explore the affective nature of performance texts. This book is essential reading for those interested in theories of embodiment, disability studies and dance. Cover Image: Ziggy Kuster, Gigibori: Invaders of the soul, Photography David Wilson ã Restless Dance Company

"Unimaginable Bodies" draws on the thought of Spinoza, Deleuze, and Guattari to confront medical and sociological categories of intellectual disability. This philosophical approach, coupled with Hickey-Moody's work with Restless Dance Company, promises to transform mundane sense(s) of ability and disability.--Professor Moira Gatens, University of Sydney.

'Learning Bodies’ addresses the lack of attention paid to the body in youth and childhood studies. Whilst a significant range of work on this area has explored gender, class, race and ethnicity, and sexualities – all of which have bodily dimensions – the body is generally studied indirectly, rather than being the central focus. This collection of papers brings together a scholarly range of international, interdisciplinary work on youth, with a specific focus on the body. The authors engage with conceptual, empirical and pedagogical approaches which counteract perspectives that view young people’s bodies primarily as ‘problems’ to be managed, or as sites of risk or deviance. The authors demonstrate that a focus on the body allows us to explore a range of additional dimensions in seeking to understand the experiences of young people. The research is situated across a range of sites in Australia, North America, Britain, Canada, Asia and Africa, drawing on a range of disciplines including sociology, education and cultural studies in the process. This collection aims to demonstrate – theoretically, empirically and pedagogically – the implications that emerge from a reframed approach to understanding children and youth by focusing on the body and embodiment.

This book provides an overview of dance movement psychotherapy for young people and adults with learning disabilities. Contributors from a variety of backgrounds examine their work with clients from across the disabilities spectrum, ranging from mild to complex needs. The book chapters present theory and practice relating to the client group and subsequent therapy processes. This comprises psychotherapeutic interventions, dance movement interventions, theoretical constructs, case study material, practitioner care, and practitioner learning and development related to individual and group therapy work. The logistics of a Dance Movement Psychotherapy intervention, the intervention itself and the ripples of influence into the clients’ wider socio-cultural context are discussed. This stance speaks to current research and practice discourse in health and social care. The book champions acceptance of difference and equality in the health and social care needs for people with learning disabilities whilst emphasising the importance of dance movement psychotherapy for people with non-verbal communication. Dance Movement Psychotherapy with People with Learning Disabilities: Out of the Shadows, into the Light will provide a practical and theoretical resource for practitioners and students of dance movement psychotherapy as well as allied health professionals, service providers and carers.

What would it mean to invite disability into dialogue? Disability in Dialogue attunes us to the dialogues of and about disability. In the pages of this book, we ask readers to consider the dialogic constitution of disability and to imagine its reformulation. We find the voices, bodies, social norms, visceral experiences, discourses, and acts of resistance that materialize disability in all its dialogic and enfleshed complexity: tensions, contradictions, provocations, frustrations and desires. This volume makes a unique contribution, bringing together authors from disciplines as diverse as communication, dialogue studies, psychology, sociology, design, rhetoric and activism. Because we take dialogue seriously, this book is designed to be brave as we examine the ways of being in the world that dialogic practices engender and allow, as well as beckon to continue. By way of a variety of frameworks, such as discourse analysis, dialogue studies, narrative analysis, and critical approaches to discourse, the chapters of this book take us through a polylogue of and about disability, demanding that we consider our own roles in bringing forth disabled ways of being and how we might, instead, choose ways that enable our common existence.

This edited collection investigates the myriad ways in which disability performance travels in a globalized world. Disability arts festivals are growing in different parts of the world; theatre and dance companies with disabled artists are increasingly touring and collaborating with international partners. At the same time, theatre spaces are often not accessible, and the necessity of mobility excludes some disabled artists from being part of an international disability arts community. How does disability performance travel, who does not travel – and why? What is the role of funding and producing structures, disability arts festivals and networks around the world? How do the logics of international (co-)producing govern the way in which disability art is represented internationally? Who is excluded from being part of a touring theatre or dance company, and how can festivals, conferences, and other agents of a growing disability culture create other forms of participation, which are not limited to physical co-presence? This study will contextualize disability aesthetics, arts, media, and culture in a global frame, yet firmly rooted in its smaller national, state, and local community settings and will be of great interest to students and scholars in the field.

Cartographies of becoming in education: A Deleuze-Guattari Perspective proposes a non-hierarchical approach that maps teaching and learning with the power of affect and what a body can do/become in different educational contexts. Teaching and learning is an encounter with the unknown and happen as specific responses to particular problems encountered with/in life. In this edited volume, international scholars map out potential ruptures in teaching and learning in order to conceptualize education differently. One way is through the multidisciplinary lens of MLT (Multiple Literacies Theory) in which reading is intensive and immanent. The authors deploy different aspects of MLT while creating and experimenting with ethology, teaching, learning, curriculum, teacher education and technology in relation to visual arts, music, mathematics, theatre, workplace literacy, second language education, and architecture. With the forces of globalization, digital media and economic re-structuring reconfiguring the social, political and economic landscape, societies require innovative ways of thinking about education. Cartographies of becoming in education: A Deleuze-Guattari Perspective is a response to problems posed by such forces. The problematic surrounding Deleuze-Guattari and education continues to grow. Diana Masny’s scholarship in this area is well known and appreciated through her many essays and books that develop MLT (Multiple Literacies Theory). Cartographies of Becoming in Education: A Deleuze-Guattari Perspective continues her effort to broaden the notion of education and show its intersections with MLT. The series of essays do this by forming a number of ‘entries,’ five to be precise: politicizing education, affect and education, literacies and becoming, teacher-becomings, and deterritorializing boundaries. Each ‘entry’ explores the way an MLT inflected orientation enables us to further grasp the creative inventiveness of the Deleuze-Guattarian tool kit that can be applied to areas of music education, ethnography, art, drama, literacy, mathematics, landscape ecology, ethology and teacher education. It is a vivid illustration of the cartography that maps the rhizomatic movements that are taking place by international scholars who are deterritorializing education as a discipline of modernity. I highly recommend this collection of essays to those of us who are continually asking how might education be rethought through the unthought. It opens up new territories. – Jan Jagodzinski, University of Alberta, Author of Psychoanalyzing Cinema.

This book explores why and how the personal creative practice of arts teachers in school matters. It responds to ethnographic research that considers specific works-of-art created by teachers within the context of their classrooms. Through a classroom-based ethnographic investigation, the book proposes that the potential impact of artist-teacher practice in the classroom can only be understood in relation to the flows of power and policy that concurrently shape the classroom. It shows how artist-teacher practice functions as a creative practice of freedom tending to the present and future aesthetic life of the classroom, countering the effects of neoliberal schooling and austerity politics. The book questions what the artist-teacher can produce within that context. Through the unique focus on artist-teacher practice, the book explores the changing nature of the classroom and the social and political dimensions of the school. It will be key reading for researchers and postgraduate students of arts education, critical pedagogy, teacher identity and aesthetics. It will also be of interest to art and design educators.