Impairment, failure, emergency: A review essay on recent trends in media and disability studies

Abstract

In this essay, three recently published books are reviewed: Diminished Faculties: A Political Phenomenology of Impairment, by Jonathan Sterne, Failure, by Neta Alexander and Arjun Appadurai, and In Case of Emergency, by Elizabeth Ellcessor. The essay argues that these three works contribute to the debate about media and disability by proposing a non ableist perspective – that is a perspective which doesn’t consider ability as a normative assumption – which affects both media theory and media practices. In this regard, the essay identifies three keywords which are potentially game changers in media studies: impairment, failure, emergency. Emphasizing the ‘normal’, ‘banal’ or ‘habitual’ character of these terms, the books here reviewed show how these keywords may enable us to go beyond the traditional idea of media as prostheses, and call for a different approach toward media and media studies: one which does not metaphorize disability but understands media as part of the sociocultural, political and economic context where a certain idea of ability and disability is both defined and materially enacted. An approach, therefore, that aims to deconstruct that idea.