Dan Goodley: what disability teaches us about being human, social models, technology, interdependence, medicalisation and advice

Ben Yeoh Chats

Dan Goodley is a professor of disability studies and education at the School of Education, University of Sheffield. Dan co-directs iHuman, which sits at the intersections of Critical Disability Studies and Science and Technology Studies. iHuman is addressing ome significant questions of contemporary society including: what does it mean to be human?

Dan has written the thought provoking book: Disability and Other Human Questions.

We chat about who and how do we decide who gets to be human? I pose what thinking about the rights (or lack of) that Britney Spears has is relevant to disability rights thinking.

Dan wide ranging thoughts on what disability and other intersectional studies have suggested to him. These include:

Thinking about “ability” and what the social model of disability suggests. What a critique of idealising able bodies and able minds might mean.

What medicalisation means and how it is different to medicine.

How humans are interdependent and what that suggests about our relationships.

How technology is impacting Dis/abled humanness.

What being a Nottingham Forest Football fan has taught Dan.

And Dan’s life advice: Move from the object to embrace the subject.

Transcript and video are here. Dan's book here: Disability and Other Human Questions

Ben's Twitter is @benyeohben and Dan is @DanGoodley