Uppeldi og menntun - 01.07.2014, Page 95

Uppeldi og menntUn/icelandic JoUrnal of edUcation 23(2) 2014 95
Kristín Björnsdóttir, dan goodley & hanna Björg sigUr jónsdóttir
As the applause resonated from the delegates, as Samuel spoke sadly about his moth-
er’s words and later when Samuel’s mother refused to shake my hand, I was remind-
ed of the real struggles and conflicts experienced on a daily basis by many adults
with intellectual disabilities. Read from an insider perspective (see Moore, 2000), this
story could be viewed as a clash of ambitions and perspectives so typical of the lack of
match between self-advocates and their parents (Mitchell, 1998). Clearly, we have to
decide whose side we are on here, and for many this would mean aligning ourselves
with Samuel from a disability studies perspective. The story is read, one narrator over
another, as: the son seeking independence from an over protective mother; a clash
of agendas; parent-child; disabled-non-disabled. Read in another way, we may more
closely appreciate the complexities of human subjectivity and Samuel and his moth-
er’s toils with these complexities.
The writings of Deleuze and Guattari (2004) are helpful here, particularly the as-
sociated analyses developed by Allan (2004), Braidotti (1994), Roets and Goedgeluck
(2007) and Roets, Reinaart, Adams and Van Hove (2008). A Deleuzoguattarian analysis
views struggles for personhood not in terms of siding with a particular person, subject
or storyteller but as dynamic journeys across territories by human subjects who are
constantly nomadic in their travels. For Braidotti (1994), the nomad is involved in
transitions and passages, often uncertain and perhaps without pre-determined desti-
nations or lost homelands. Nomadism refers to the kind of critical consciousness that
resists settling into socially coded modes of thought and behaviour. The idealized
place for nomadism is a smooth desert: a go game, devoid of limitations, strata and
the blockages of creativity (see also, Goodley 2007). Hence, while Samuel’s mother
attempts to territorialize her son’s life in ways that might be seen as protective and
containing – perhaps overcoding at times – Samuel (her fellow traveler) offers ways of
deterritorialising her landscapes and reterritorialising other landscapes where possi-
ble locations include self-advocacy. The sense here, then, is of two travelers finding
and refinding new lands: we should always ‘have a small plot of new land at all times’
(Deleuze & Guattari, 2004, p. 178). Never settle, but move and continue. To freeze the
story, as I have above, leads to the danger of reading Samuel as an activist and his
mother as a protector. Alternatively, the analysis offered here allows us to think of the
story as a dynamic process: of dropping old and always finding new lands.
The carnivalesque story
My (Kristín’s) doctoral research project consisted of a combination of ethnographic
methods and narrative inquiry. Spending time with participants brought me closer
to them and altered the power relations. It also helped me to understand how people
use different ways of communication. Their storytelling was not always through the
traditional modes of narrating and was often misunderstood by me and by others
(family, friends and carers).
I volunteered as a camp leader at a weeklong European ‘youth camp’ for young
adults with intellectual disabilities in Denmark in 2006. I was supposed to support
five Icelanders who had been chosen by a local organization to attend this camp. I had