Body and otherness in disability

Abstract

The present contribution focuses on the human body from a special-pedagogy perspective. The 20th century witnessed a substantial reconsideration and revalorization of the human body due to psycho-motricity research (Le Boulch, 1971; LaPierre, 2001; Vayer,1992), to the contributions of neuroscience (Cambi, 2011; Rizzolatti, Sinigaglia, 2006), as well as to the study of brain-mind-body interconnections (Contini, 2006). The idea underlying all these investigations is that the human being should be recognized as a bio-psycho-socio-spiritual unit whereby the body is the subject which creates cognition by interacting with the world around. Within the realm of human disabilities, the old idea of a faulty human body (Zappaterra, 2010) has left room for a new conception whereby the human body contributes, in any way whatever, to the development of the self and the shaping of a person’s identity. The evolution towards this body-motricity-and-disability approach has been spurred by various studies on embodied cognition (Lakoff et al., 1999; Gomez Paloma, 2017; Shapiro, 2010; Varela et al., 2001) and on the continuous connections between body, action and knowledge which have enabled us to abandon the old linear/sequential view of the human body – now, the human body is what it is solely because it constantly relates to the others and the world around.