Disability and Agency Redefined

The book is about inclusion in (inter)action. The focus was manifold: to introduce to disability discourse an original theory of human action that explores the relationship between disability and innumerable mediational means (e.g., technology, hypothetical narratives, non-narrative discourse and Yahoo chats); to advocate a disability theory that conceives of art, technology-related practices and discourse as mediated actions and not just as tools of representation or expression; to deconstruct how we traditionally conceive of the capabilities of those with disabilities and the roles they, their caregivers and mediational means such as computers play in their lives; to highlight how agency in practice is intertwined with and emerges from distributed actions divided among multiple social actors; and to illustrate the importance of conducting longitudinal, ethnographic analysis in disability studies that take into account the discourses and actions of all involved and which lie outside locally-situated interactions. I now turn to concluding remarks. I take the position that mediated discourse projects are not resources through which to bring about closure by providing finalizable answers, thus, resolving the intricacies inherent in social situations. In contrast, following Scollon and Scollon (2004), they are tools by which we open up the process of dialogue and interrogation with the underlying goal of bringing about social change.