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From superabilità to transabilità: towards an Italian disability studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

Kate Noson
Kate Noson*
Affiliation:
University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, USA
*
∗Email: knoson@berkeley.edu
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Abstract

This article discusses recent academic and theoretical approaches to disability in Italy, situating them in relation to Anglo-American disability studies as well as within the Italian academic context, and sketches out the contours of an emergent Italian disability studies. The discussion centres on three terms that have emerged recently in Italy: superabilità (implying both ‘ability to overcome’ and ‘exceptional ability’); diversabilità (being ‘differently abled’); and transabilità (the desire for, or identification with, a disabled body by a non-disabled subject). The article considers the role of narrative in each of these categories, as well as the way that each deals with the question of limits. While discourses in each category construct or confirm a strong disabled identity, the article argues that transabilità might also be understood as the transcendence of identity on the basis of ability. This alternative understanding puts pressure on the question of identity itself and challenges the very need for narrative (re)construction.

Keywords

disability studiesmedical modelsocial modelsuperabilitàdiversabilitàtransabilità
Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 19 , Issue 2: Disability rights and wrongs in Italy , May 2014 , pp. 135 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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