Technology, the Body, and Disability: The Importance of Everyday Objects
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29105/diversia.v1i2.12Keywords:
disability, corpospatiality, technology, body, disability studiesAbstract
This text represents a theoretical model for understanding disability, emphasizing the relational dynamics between the body, space and everyday objects. Drawing on different traditions, it argues that disability is not solely a biomedical condition but a sociocultural and spatial phenomenon that emerges through the interaction between individuals, their environments, and the material objects that mediate in everyday life. The discussion examines how technologies and artifacts such as wheelchairs, canes, prostheses, and other mundane objects facilitate mobility and contribute to the construction of meaning, identity and social participation. Building on the notion of “techniques of the body through space”, the bodily practices configured through cultural contexts and spatial relations are explored. It also engages with disability studies and cyborg theory to question conventional boundaries between bodies and technologies, highlighting forms of intimacy, embodiment and mutual constitution. The writing concludes that technologies associated with disability should be understood not merely as devices but as assemblages of practices, knowledge, meanings and power relations embedded in specific historical and sociocultural contexts.
This perspective offers a relational framework for analyzing disability in relationship to space and social life.
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