Disability as Functional Diversity: Images of a social construction

Abstract

The Spanish Independent Living Movement (Movimiento de Vida Independiente) has adopted the concept Functional Diversity (FD) to replace Disability with the intention of pointing out that what configures them as a group has nothing to do with issues related to capacity –since this is a social category which depends on the historical and cultural context– but rather to the barriers to their full social inclusion. Their specific way of existing and acting, their specific way of functioning, has not been considered and, consequently, the real problem is their discrimination. Faced with this discrimination, people with functional diversity (PFD) have been fighting for decades questioning the models from which their vital reality and the very value of their existence are judged.

These models or views on functional diversity articulate the narratives in the fiction series and films. Thus, we may find characters that reproduce the ableist discourse that is so harmful to people with functional diversity; they are quasi-human characters because they lack something to be truly human. At the opposite narrative extreme, we find characters who are beyond human, heroes whose difference can become the only resource when facing very adverse circumstances. Finally, we find –still incipiently– some examples of characters with functional diversity who are simply described as some of the many possibilities of being a human being; in these cases, their diversity is linked to a discourse aligned with the human rights and the intrinsic dignity of every possible human being. We analyze some of these images of the social construction of functional diversity.