Broken rhythms: a walk, a wheelchair, and disability discoveries

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Adam Davidson of University of South Florida, United States Abstract: I seek to bridge an experiential and representational chasm between people with significant disabilities and their caregivers by exploring the intercorporeal connections between my son and me on a walk through our neighborhood. Through the materiality of the wheelchair, I consider the embodied knowledge we share of the spaces we traverse and how the contours of those spaces shape our knowledge(s) of our bodies thereby informing my knowledge of disability as both a social construct inscribed on my son’s body and as a shared lived experience. Starting with Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the body as the “point of view upon the world” and utilizing his notion of “flesh,” I reflect upon the connections and exchanges between our bodies and with the world of our walk, all mediated through the simple technology of the manual wheelchair. The rhythms and anticipations, the obstacles and mishaps, and the transformation of the visual all give rise to knowledge of the disabled body, disability experience, and of disabling structures in the world. Through my contact with him and his chair and with the world, I discover my own experiential connections to his experience of disability. This phenomenological reading of our walk recenters the body in discourse on disability that often locates disability in social structures and institutions and risks marginalizing the lived experience of people with significant impairments. This work also offers a counter-narrative that foregrounds the interdependence and intercorporeality of caregiving and disability experience and opens up new possibilities for representation. Finally, my account reinforces phenomenological connections between the disabled body and the technologies that support and facilitate life and movement in and with the world. I challenge conceptions of technology as the new, digital, or innovative and reinforce the everydayness of fleshly contact between bodies and a simple machine. Biography: Adam is an adjunct faculty member in the Judy Genshaft Honors College at the University of South Florida (USF) and writer on disability issues and parenting. In 2020, he co-led a semester study abroad program for USF students to the University of Exeter. His educational and research background includes musical performance, popular music studies, cultural studies, and Christian theology. He teaches courses on knowledge and ethics, popular music, and walking and civic engagement. His current research interests include parenting and caregiving for children with significant disabilities, conceptions of fatherhood, and walking as a cultural and creative practice. Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds. The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast. About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/ About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/