Einstein Forum

"At present, the best way to learn about disabled Germans views is to focus on the published papers where people express their views. I will do that, and focus on what activists from the disability rights movement, but will not examine self help groups for people with chronic diseases – I will just consider some special sources written by disabled people committed to the cross disability rights movement, I will examine the last 20 years. One could do a more historical approach, but as time is limited, I will concentrate on what I would like to call the “discourse pattern”. I will show you my plan, overview of the talk.
My theoretical perspective – draws on Foucault and Link, who developed the concept of “normalism”. In the second part, I will deal with the German bioethics discourse, two central arguments put forward by disability rights advocates – first I will call the historical argument (formulated in the beginning) and then the feminist argument, which developed in the 90s."

Excerpt from Anna Waldschmidt, Einstein Forum, July 20, 2004