Event that just happened last week as part of the series Bodies: Linked Events put on by the Center for Performance Studies at UCLA.

The event featured a panel discussion called “Choreographing Disability” with Petra Kuppers - on faculty at U of Michigan in Performance and Disability Studies - and Victoria Marks - on faculty at UCLA and teaches choreography in the World Arts and Cultures department.

The event also featured AXIS Dance Company - a dance company that features disabled and non-disabled performers.  It says that the dance company will “change the way you think about dance and the possibilities of the human body forever.”

California has a lot going on with disability studies, activism, and advocacy.  It’s great to see conferences and events that all center themselves on the body and its infinite possibilities.  In this conference, it becomes apparent that even the disabled body has infinite possibilities - it is not limited necessarily.  However, i am not exactly sure if i like the use of the term “differently-abled.”

The terms used to define disability are controversial and hotly contested.  Should we say “handicapped” or “impaired”?  “Disabled?” Or should we more broadly talk about bodies as “temporarily-abled”?   Temporarily-abled is an intriguing term.  it implies the changing state and temporality of all bodies, not just “disabled” ones.  “Differently-abled” still can stigmatize those that stray outside the boundaries of the normal.  We “differently-ableds” are not “normals” to borrow from Erving Goffman, author of Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity.

I guess i can see the logic behind using the term “differently-abled.”  It tries to imply a positive rather than the negative image the prefix “dis-” creates of these different bodies.  Dis- can mean “opposite of,” “lack of,” “apart,” “asunder” and more.  It implicates the individual to the realm of the negative.  However, i am not quite certain that “different” doesn’t do just that also.  Different does not necessarily mean just “different;” it can mean much more than that - there is more weight to the word that just simple comparison.  Difference can mean foreignness, unusual, not ordinary.

How does these terms really stray from dis-?