Disability Studies Quarterly
Summer 2005, Volume 25, No. 3
<www.dsq-sds.org>
Copyright 2005 by the Society
for Disability Studies


Ditching Dualisms:
Education Professionals View the Future of Technology and Disabilities

Lise Bird Claiborne
Victoria University of Wellington
Box 600
Aotearoa, New Zealand
E-mail: lise.claiborne@vuw.ac.nz

Abstract

Small groups of educational psychologists, disability educators, and teachers with special education training were interviewed about the likely impact of new technologies for bodily enhancement on their future practice. New theories of embodiment (e.g. Deleuze, Grosz) consider human selves beyond bounded, individual containers. Such ideas also appear in popular media, because films often challenge conventional notions of character and time. To frame the research discussions, three short documentary films were created to present issues that raised questions about dualisms such as nature/nurture and natural/technological. Professionals reflected critically on nature and saw many parallels between different kinds of enhancement, whether mechanistic, chemical, or genetic. Questioning dualistic ideas about nature was also seen as having the potential to alter contemporary views of prosthetics, expanding possibilities for what it means to be human.

Keywords: new technology for bodily enhancement, theories of embodiment, nature/nurture, special education instructors

Introduction

Technology doesn't make me feel like a natural woman. But perhaps nature is not in my future. What are the possibilities ahead for human enhancement given the variety of new technologies? Goggin and Newell (2003) question the "hype" around the assumed benefits of new digital technologies, such as mobile phones, cochlear implants, and the Internet. There is a myth of endless progress towards a future in which disability will be overcome or even "erased." Goggin and Newell (2003) rightly point to a missing story: the ways technology is shaped by longstanding views of disability and society.

The problem is that accounts of the development of digital technologies, like those of the wheelchair and cochlear implant, overwhelming[ly] view such technological systems as being inherently good and evidence of society's progress. Rarely is a broader perspective on the creation of technology taken, acknowledging how it is shaped by the role of professional groupings and specialized knowledges, or the politics of technological systems (p. 9).

In this paper I discuss some research conversations I have had with professionals involved with educational support for disabled people1 about the likely impact of new technologies of bodily enhancement on future educational practice and life experiences of people who might or might not be offered access to them.

As Seelman noted in her historical review of policies regarding technology and disabilities, "Discrimination against disabled people in science and engineering is deeply embedded in scientific values, infrastructure, career paths, and policy. The research efforts of many disciplines must be brought to bear on the multiple problems discrimination has bred" (Seelman, 2001, p. 690). I think it is not only sophisticated science that has ableist views. Following the work of Foucault (e.g. 1977), such views are likely to be part of larger social discourses, the interlinked language and practices that together produce the object called "disability" that they supposedly describe (see also Fulcher, 1989). Popular media are part of the apparatus that creates particular views of the world, including particular views of disability and technology.

Popular media tend to portray new technologies in a dualistic fashion. "Nature" documentaries, e.g. on the "science" television channels, often portray "natural" bodies changed into superbodies by technologies presented as the inevitable result of modern progress. Many fictional films, such as Bladerunner (Scott, 1982) or Crash (Cronenberg, 1996; see also Kuppers, 2003), depict technologies more negatively, tainting nature with the artificiality of technology. Many writers have pointed to dangers with conflation of the natural with the normative; nature is difficult to define, changing with cultural discourses that maintain particular regimes of power (cf. Butler, 1993; Sedgwick, 1990). The present project explored professionals' views of the limited, dualistic portrayals of new technologies as either modern wonders or dangerous threats to the world of natural bodies.

A first move away from a simple dualism is to consider "third terms" (Kristeva, 1982) that blur boundaries between the exclusivity of supposed opposites. Prostheses are third terms that blur boundaries between our natural individual self and the world of "external" supports. Many disabled writers have described the experience that a prosthetic feels like an integral part of their own bodies (e.g. Sobchack, 1995; Wilson, 1995). A body "helped" by machinery is more than a hybrid defined by its dual constituent parts; a new form is created that shifts with the story being told. Each of us is a multiplicity of possibilities that go beyond any separation of human and machine. A Paralympian shot-putter, in this view, is not an individual person helped by high-tensile carbon-fiber legs, or a hybrid defined by dual constituent parts, but an athlete capable of multiple boundary-shifting performances.

My definition of technology for this study included bodily enhancements of all kinds, from electronic implants to chemical substances to insertions of genetic sequences to alter bodily appearance or function, without distinctions that would recreate a dualism between the natural/organismic and the artificial/mechanistic. The era of nanotechnologies now clearly propels us beyond Cartesian dualisms.

Genetic engineering brings us full circle to a re-definition of the prosthetic, as "errant" individual genes may some day be replaced by better ones, perhaps from some other species. Baudrillard (1994) first noted that genetic manipulation is a variety of prosthetic, arguing that in the search for a doubling of ourselves we have gone beyond looking for a better arm after amputation or a better heart after "attack", to recreate the body from the inside, looking to alter the supposed "inner" code of life itself.

It is the genetic formula inscribed in each cell that becomes the veritable modern prosthesis of all bodies ... the DNA molecule, which contains all information relative to a body, is the prosthesis par excellence, the one that will allow for the indefinite extension of this body by the body itself — this body itself being nothing but the indefinite series of its prostheses (p. 98).

Anything defined as a deficit can, in this view, simply be replicated offsite, with a little help from the communal pool of DNA.

The theoretical basis for my investigations comes from my fascination with philosophers such as Foucault, Deleuze, and Braidotti (2002), who have deconstructed Euro-Western assumptions about individualism and mind/body separation. For example, Elizabeth Grosz (1990) questioned language that posits the body as a container with inside and outside, something that resonates with Andy Clark's (2003) ironic description of himself as a "skin-bag". This fits well with Oliver's (1996) call for removal of ableist practices based on individualizing pathology. I think recent critiques of embodied subjectivity have much to offer Disability Studies. My own uncertainties provided some of the impetus for the research here, which describes my discussions with disability educators, teachers who work with "students with disabilities," and educational psychologists about the implications of bodily enhancement on future practice. I guessed that such educators would already be engaging with radical visions of embodiment, that is, outside normative conceptions about bodies and selves.

Organizing the Conversations

Participants

My search for participants with an openness to new ideas and positive regard for their educational practice began with my contacts in the education field, from community groups, former graduate students, and practitioners suggested by colleagues. Negotiations took some time to establish. New Zealand educational policies regarding "special education" have a focus on inclusion. Funding - and hence tendencies towards classification of disabilities- is organized into three main categories of moderate to high needs, moderate needs, and early intervention (see Ministry of Education, 2004).

I met with five groups, each of which occupied a different space in the special education or disability policy area. There were two groups of educational psychologists, a City Support and Rural Support group, each with three women who had graduate-level educational psychology training. A Disability Educators group consisted of three men who were present or former primary, secondary, or tertiary educators and had considerable interest and expertise in the field of Disability Studies. A Specialist Practitioner group consisted of women secondary teachers, tertiary educators, and counselors, all four of whom had an interest in youth issues around exclusion, alcohol, and/or disability. The fifth group of Resource Teachers of Learning and Behavior consisted of four women who had been selected for further postgraduate training to enable them to support teachers in their region in implementing inclusion policies.

My description of participants is only one story of many that could be told. Many educators in this study had complex views of disability from personal experiences of living with disability themselves or with their child. My own positioning changed during the interviews themselves, when one of the disability educators made a comment that did not assume I was able-bodied. At this point I felt my embodied position shift, no longer "passing" in my usual way, and foregrounding my recent hesitant, ambivalent efforts to become more active in the local retinally impaired community. I had a moment of panic in that discussion, feeling both a fraud for the privileges I can draw on to continue to pass in everyday ways and tremendous relief not to be reclassified back into able-bodied norms (e.g. by the usual comments from high-vision people about the need for reading glasses in middle age).

Created Documentaries

Conversations with participants were framed around a topic well trod in everyday discussion as well as in educational writings over the past century: the dualism of nature/nurture, i.e., the influences on the individual from sources "within" the individual (such as genetic inheritance) as well as those "outside" the individual in the environment. The dualism had also been a major theme in recent UK and U.S. televised documentaries about genetic technologies recently shown in Aotearoa New Zealand. Media examples from film, newspaper, and televised documentary were presented to participants in order to frame our conversations around themes from popular culture assumed to be part of everyone's experience, though altered to provide counterpoints to the received wisdom of dual fixities. Popular culture already presents many unusual portrayals of embodiment through changing, multiple, and fragmented characters and time-lines, making ideas from postmodern philosophy more accessible to a wider audience.

I created three mock documentaries, each of about 7 minutes, to raise issues about the dualisms of nature/nurture, natural/artificial, and organism/machine. Each documentary was an iMovie collage of film and still clips with my own voiceover narration as well as clips of me speaking to the camera. (For further information on the creation of these films see Bird, Cornforth, Duncan, & Roberson, 2005.) The structure of the three short films followed a sequence suggested by Julia Kristeva's description of historical changes in feminism (see Davies, 1989; Moi, 1985), focusing first on one side of the dualism, then on the other, before moving to third possibilities beyond. The first film focused on stories about nature, contrasting the wonderstruck versus threatening portrayals of genetic technologies in recent documentaries. The second film considered stories about nurture, focusing on the difficulty of differentiating between supposedly natural enhancers such as caffeine and illegal drugs that could invalidate an Olympic achievement. The third film considered new possibilities beyond the dualisms, focusing on prosthetic enhancement of the body with examples of cyborg characters from popular film as well as clips of New Zealand athletes at the 2000 Paralympic Games.

Procedures and Analysis

The documentaries included a number of open-ended questions about the implications of new enhancements and technologies for participants' current as well as future imagined practice. I facilitated the discussion around these questions. Each group met with me on two occasions for 90 minutes to 2 hours. Discussions were audiotaped and transcripts returned to each participant for alteration. Research procedures had received approval from my university's human ethics committee.

The group interviews were transcribed and returned to participants for alteration to remove inaccuracies or confidential information. Themes in the transcripts were defined with assistance of a qualitative data analysis program. The analysis then focused on the language that emerged in the discussions, using an interpretive paradigm influenced by feminist poststructural, cultural and queer studies questions (see Denzin & Lincoln, 2000), rather than on defining frequencies of responses in order to determine normative responses generalizable to a population of similar professionals. The views of this small sample of professionals were canvassed in order to provide innovative illustrations of professional reflection on issues of technologies and embodiment.

Discussion of Findings

Questioning Technologies

Discussions with practitioners covered a range of bodily enhancements based on a variety of mechanistic, chemical, or genetic technologies. Many participants made links between issues for all these types of technology, as indicated in the comments of an educational psychologist below.

Rosie: Well, today was actually really interesting. I think, just never thought of

Jenny:No

Rosie:ParaOlympics, you know Para Olympians with all of their technology, technological sort of specialist needs and specialist wheelchairs and specialist this that and the next thing. Haven't sort of thought of that as technology being questionable, you know what I mean? Yeah, as being part of that same broad thing that from, you know any sort of technology up to you know like genetic modification, so actually it was a good stimulus to thinking.

(Rural Support Session 2)2

This excerpt makes reference to earlier discussion about complexities and problems of genetic manipulation, seen by this group as given too much hype when there are basic community problems such as alcoholism and violence. The description of Paralympian technologies is distanced rather cavalierly in the above excerpt by words such as "specialist this that and the next thing," suggesting that all this "newfangled" technology is too farfetched to be of direct relevance. However, this is not the full story, as in the final sentence this psychologist considered that such technologies, usually taken for granted in a modernist sense (perhaps similar to having a new appliance), might also have hidden difficulties in their implementation ("Haven't sort of thought of that as technology being questionable"). In saying this, she acknowledged potential parallels between genetic and mechanic technologies ("being part of that same broad thing") and mentioned her own ongoing reflection ("a good stimulus to thinking"). This group of educational psychologists had reflected with some dismay on tendencies in their profession to expect young members of a socially marginal family to inherit the learning deficits or violent behavior of their elders. The statement above suggests their ongoing commitment to reflect on the intertwined implications for practice regarding drug use, social supports, prosthetics, and genetic interventions.

Problems in Defining the Natural

In all the groups there was discussion about the constitution of the natural body, with many professionals expressing some discomfort with the idea of an unambiguous, biologically-based "nature."

Bryan:You know, doing some pretty unsavory things and, and you know, like trans-species um

Jeff:so you think that

Bryan: xenome transplantation and that I think that just goes against nature and yet I, there's that part of me that believes in nature <laughs>

(Disability Educators, Session 1).

The final laugh suggests that Bryan acknowledged both some revulsion ("unsavory") at the thought of trans-species insertion of genetic matter into a human body, while at the same time pointing to his contradictory doubts about the sanctity of nature. The statement suggests a rather postmodern fragmentation into a self that observes rather skeptically another self that expresses a belief in nature ("there's that part of me that believes in nature"). These comments reflect a humorous both/and logic (Lather, 1996) that accepts the truth or authenticity of nature while at the same time undercutting it. This could be read as citing the writings of postmodern philosophers and feminist scientists that have questioned our normative, consensual views of the natural as a transparent aspect of reality (e.g. Butler, 1993).

Despite so much re-citation of the nature/technology dualism, particularly regarding "mechanical" prosthetics, there were often ironic or reflective comments that undercut the power of the natural as something to be taken for granted (see also later example). The disability educators treated technology itself as a third term.

Bryan:and the real interesting thing about, you know, cause you've, we've got nature nurture and technology. And the way we've been arguing, like I've been arguing has [...] come out on the human nature side of thing, but it's a kind of a socialised human nature, and it's where [does] this technology fit in, you know? Cause like you're saying technology, we could interfere with nature eh?

(Disability Educators, Session 1).

This group had been ambivalent about technological possibilities for disabled people in their discussion of issues for young people and experiences of technology in their own lives. In the quote above, Bryan had moved from his earlier use of nature as a transparent truth by using the caveat "but" before presenting a second meaning of nature ("but it's a kind of socialized human nature"), considering nature as already socially constructed, without a foundational origin (see also Denise Riley, 1983). His preference for the natural ("come out on the... human nature side") is weakened by the malleability and multiplicity of nature. Given this "socialized human nature", the "interference" of technology becomes more problematic, less of a taken-for-granted abomination of nature. Bryan asks with some puzzlement, "it's where [does] this technology fit in, you know?" This dilemma, that technology is both useful and disliked because un-natural, was not resolved in any of this group's conversations. Technology acted as a troubling third term that upset the easy dualism of nature/nurture.

Cyborgs as Teaching Assistants

There was an unusual take on the dualism of human/technology in the Specialist Practitioners group in response to the third documentary. A brief life history of the cyborg character, "Seven of Nine" from the Star Trek Voyager TV series had been presented. My voiceover described Seven's development from child of researchers studying the aggressively colonizing Borg hive to her own assimilation to the hive via bodily rewiring as a cyborg, followed by her recapture/rescue by human space explorers and partial reconstruction as human ("Though her outer appearance seems to be that of a conventionally beautiful woman, her appearance hides machine circuits that control her bodily functions"). Visuals portrayed Seven's transformation by crosscut clips of her dull grey face and body wired with various Borg circuits to a woman in a cat-suit with a few jewel-like implants on face and hands.

As it happened, one teacher had considerable knowledge of Star Trek narratives and, after viewing the documentary, reflected on her future educational practice in terms of the likely assistance she might receive from a cyborg assistant. This comment went much further than anyone else's in imagining a classroom situation enhanced by android beings, while at the same time reiterating a dualism between utopian and dystopian possibilities.

Mary: I think it's, the idea of machines and the fusion between humanity and machines. [...] It seems to become scarier when they actually take a human shape or a human form and then, but then you have characters like Data on Star Trek who are very sympathetic and, you know, kindly type machines who take a human form you can kind of think "oh well it would be okay" and [think] he's constantly striving to be human and to work to find out what, being funny is, and what humour is, and he can never quite find it. So he, you know, doesn't quite understand what it's like to be human. [...] Because I mean if somebody said to me, "oh you know Data's gonna come in your classroom and help out", I'd go like oh great. I'd be really excited by that. If somebody said a Borg was going to walk in the classroom <laughing>, you know a Borg, no, no thank you, you know. Cause they're portrayed as very threatening and will overtake you and subsume the human identity and, eat it up and then spit it out.

(Specialist Practitioners, Session 2).

In this quote Mary implodes the machine/human dualism in a way different to Bryan's nature/nurture/technology, warming to human-like machines (Data) but not to the machine as monster attempting to conquer humanity (Borg). This latter view of machines that might take over the world has a long history in film and literature, from the film Metropolis (Lang, 1927; see also Kuppers, 2003) onwards. This fear of going too far beyond the boundaries between humans and their helpful machines ("It seems to become scarier when they actually take a human shape") was also voiced in other groups. Mary's comments recreate a dualism of good versus evil cyborgs, repeating the citation of a battle between good forces of nature, aligned with (normative) humanity and the evil forces of soul-less machines incapable of coexistence with humans. The language of the quote above goes beyond this dualism, however, by shifting the boundaries of the human. Just as nature was not so easily separated from nurture or technology in Bryan's comment (above), so too to be human is no longer isomorphic with the human body and instead can include in its purview a friendly machine that is "becoming" human (cf. Deleuze and Guattari, 1987).

Technology Alters the Boundaries of What it Means to be Human

All groups discussed prosthetics after the third documentary. At first I was surprised that the Disability Educators group did not immediately discuss current technologies, because I had expected this group to be the most knowledgeable. Disabled people, a majority in this group, might be expected to have a more sophisticated engagement with technological subtleties in contrast to other groups with a majority of able-bodied participants. My reading of this difference in responses of groups was that technology was not "out there" in the future for this group; instead it was a ubiquitous aspect of everyday life. Just as research papers in psychology no longer discuss particulars of computers or applications, assuming that such technologies can be taken-for-granted knowledge, the Disability Educators spoke of technologies as useful, not useful, or not as useful as they had been advertised, rather than treating technology as the topic of the conversation. Because the documentary had pushed these (sensitive) issues onto the agenda for discussion, in the Disability Educators group aspects of technology were gradually incorporated into the flow of conversation, as shown below.

Neil: Well, I guess, yeah, any technology's going to be better than no technology. I know when I was, living here, some years ago and it was sort of, it was talked about that, you know, like they would be able to put some automotive parts into my arms to make them, you know to make them more functional and I turned it down on the grounds that, like a cyborg I suppose, you know there was things that they could do. And

Bryan: Tendon transplants you mean?

Neil: No it was bigger than that. It was actually, you know it was like <laughing> I don't know what it was. It was some sort of a [lip] it was [an] electric thing, it was an electrical pulse that they put under your heart or under your, in your system, and it enabled your hand to go, you know, to open and shut.

Bryan: Do you regret that now? Turning it down? Given that your circumstances have changed?

Neil: Yeah, yeah.

Bryan: Is it? Yeah, you see that's where I think that technology is, that kind of technology is really beneficial for the restoration of function and that.

(Disability Educators Session 2).

Neil's mention of technology offered to him is presented as an example rather than as a way to discuss "Technology" in the abstract. Neil used machine metaphors to describe the technology offered him ("automotive parts", "electric thing") as something to be inserted into his organic body ("automotive parts into my arms"). This metaphoric language strongly recreates the dualism of the natural/organismic in opposition to mechanistic/technological. (This may, of course, reflect the way medical professionals offered the options to him.) It is not surprising, given the strong division between human and machine implied in Neil's speech, that he might have opted against such bodily invasion. His reason, that it might turn him into a kind of being that he didn't want to be ("turned it down on the grounds that, like a cyborg I suppose"), fits the negative popular media portrayal of the cyborg. Neil's more sanguine change of mind about having such technologies ("Yeah, yeah") seemed to reflect a different view of technology and the human/machine divide in the light of his later experiences.

The last comment from Bryan (above) reflected a positive view of technology for the purpose of "restoration of function", a view expressed in many groups. All the groups debated defining the aspects of human appearance or function that would be "legitimate" (as one group put it) targets for technological enhancement. This issue is too complex to pursue here, given the many facets of this debate that were raised in interviews. To summarize briefly, however, there was concern expressed in most groups about how decisions about enhancements would be made. What kinds of enhancements would be made available, and to whom? Grave concerns were raised about the lack of voice of disabled students (particularly children) in current decision-making.

The disability educators continued their discussion above by raising the economics of disability, seeing disabled people as having less access to expensive supports such as technological enhancements.

Bryan: I think, if it was, got [to] the point [with] the enhancement of function, like we can put a, we can do something so that your IQ's really raised or you can see better or all that. The last people they'd spend it on would be disabled people, because they'd want to enhance able-bodied people first because society totally [considers] "we're not worth it", you know? Yeah, I reckon, if

Neil: yeah

Bryan: if we were considered worthy of things like that, we would have all that sort of stuff now.

(Disability Educators Session 2).

This group was the most skeptical about access to technology, though all groups had considerable concern about the amount of money and privilege that access to enhancement would require. Bryan's final comment about disabled people's likely lack of access to expensive technologies of enhancement also resonated with his comment in the first session.

Bryan: I think that, you know, the prize which they're holding out is magnificent and would be neat to go for. But I think that the prize they are holding out for us is so far away that they're looking, you know, they're using it [...] to sneak in other things <laughs>

Lise: Mm <laughing>

Bryan: if you know what I mean.

(Disability Educators Session 1).

The "other things" Bryan referred to at the end were, for example, xenotransplantation and other very expensive technologies that might be exciting for researchers but without clear benefit to people living with disabilities. The idea that such research might have a hidden agenda ("sneak in other things") struck a resonant (humorous) chord with me.

Later in the same interview Bryan made a more concrete suggestion about financial priorities for enhancements that might affect "disability and ill health."

Bryan:Yeah I, I just think that they're hold up this big prize which is a long way off.

Jeff: Mm

Bryan: And, I think that it's a con at the moment. Possibly the money going into that, it could be better spent removing the greatest cause of disability and ill health in the world and that would just be getting in decent water to people and getting good sewage removal, you know? and giving people, decent shelter.

(Disability Educators session 2).

All the groups expressed considerable doubt about the finance required for enhancements of any kind. The Disability Educators group expressed resistance to the media hype around the new technologies. Another group thought the values of the dominant ableist culture would be likely to influence definitions of legitimate enhancement goals.

Gwen:You know from our perspective it's better to hear, but it isn't necessarily better to hear or, you know, and the people in the wheelchairs, you know from our perspective it's better to walk, but in a sense, you know that, you know we do have to actually be careful of imposing what we think is the sort of superior way of being on people. And I always think that often people that will benefit from interventions like that are often the people that are already privileged. So then I wonder if you just get a bigger gap between the privileged and those who are not privileged.

(Specialist Practitioners session 2).

This excerpt shows the language of a reflective professional who has marked the dominant view as both her own and assumed to be that of others in the room ("from our perspective"). Her language assumes that everyone in the room is able-bodied but also that everyone has had training in special education from dominant ableist perspectives. Her words unsettle this dominant view from its taken-for-granted, normative position. Gwen's speech is fluid and unhesitant in describing views that fit New Zealand's contemporary policies on inclusion. This was not an unusual example; most educators in this study expressed such inclusive views.

The issue of economic privilege had also been mentioned in the practitioner group's first session. They had discussed the impact of technologies on their client group: students with learning or behavioral difficulties. Following the second documentary, they considered the impact of drugs such as Ritalin on their own practice, and linked this to a variety of other technological enhancements (including cochlear implants). Sarah made the point, reiterated in other group discussions, that much pressure for enhancement comes from parents who want their own child to succeed in a competitive environment.

Sarah: I mean I think it's absolutely on the cards, I mean that parents anxious to ensure that their students succeed will grab at whatever solution they can and it's happened, you know it's happened in the past, I don't see it. I think that's just seemingly human nature <small laugh> I can't believe I just

(all laugh)

Gwen: That was good!

Sarah: Yeah

(Specialist Practitioners Session 1).

The pressure on parents to provide extra resources for their child at any cost, as part of the requirement for being a good parent is reflected in a language of anxiety ("anxious to ... ensure that their students... succeed", "grab at whatever solution they can"). This group had expressed some scepticism about enhancement fashions, suggesting their own professional work in helping parents resist pressures to provide certain enhancers (e.g. cosmetic surgery for a child with Down Syndrome). The excerpt also alludes to economic issues discussed in all groups, that students in New Zealand would have a lower likelihood of having access to the most expensive enhancement technologies that might be available to people with private funds in countries such as the U.S.

The above excerpt also shows how reflective this group was about issues of nature, as indicated by their laughter. Sarah referred to the parents' eager advocacy for their child's success as part of "human nature," before immediately stopping her speech with a small laugh. At this point Sarah stopped her speech abruptly to reflect on how she had used an expression about human nature to which she really didn't subscribe ("I can't believe I just," presumably referring to making that statement), after which there was laughter from all of us about this slip back to a glib idea of human nature. Joining in the laughter, Sarah expressed agreement ("Yeah") to another participant's comment that seems to refer to her slip as one that any one of us could have made ("that was good"). The shortness of speech in this interaction also shows the rapport between all the participants in responding to each other's speech, often before a sentence was completed. Here, it is interesting to see these professionals catching themselves in their use of the word "nature," a little shift in the micro-political climate that could have interesting implications for future practice.

Reflections on Future Practice

Technology does not change in a vacuum. In the discussion with specialist educational support professionals, there was a wider focus on the likelihood of greater social change around the expanding uses of technology in future.

Rosie: But the stuff we were talking about, genetic modification and technology developing, I would hope that a whole lot of our other ideas of, you know, working with people and all the rest of it, would keep on progressing, you know, in a similar sort of way. So we're not just talking about technology and staying with everything else, our knowledge staying where everything else is. So that it would be part of a whole wider body of knowledge, I hope.

Barbara: Yeah.

Rosie: that we could draw upon.

Barbara: I guess my fear is that our way of developing that knowledge feels so slow in comparison to the gains that are made in some other areas and so when you look at it, you feel like you've been well and truly overtaken.

(Rural Support Session 1).

In this excerpt Barbara expressed a fear of technological change, that people have been "well and truly overtaken" by the speed of change. Rosie expressed a belief in the progress of human communication and thinking that will go hand in hand with the technological developments ("a whole lot of our other ideas ... would keep on progressing... not just talking about technology and ... our knowledge staying where everything else is"). None of the professionals said they had ever had a discussion with anyone else about the issues before this research project. I hope our research conversations contributed to their ongoing reflecting on these issues.

Rosie also reflected on links for practice between different kinds of technological enhancements in the final session, picking up threads from the first discussion from 6 weeks before. She considered current practice in dealing with overt and covert uses of the drug Ritalin and other kinds of technologies, imagining implications for future issues of enhancement, whether genetic or prosthetic.

Rosie: That's similar, that's when perhaps, you know, we with the new technologies and everything, maybe our work wouldn't change with the approach that we took, because they'd be coming with, they'd need X genetic modification or whatever else it is, just like at the moment they need Ritalin because they've got ADHD, and the work that we would do is say, "hey hold on, let's just look at this whole thing," and so the way that we would work wouldn't be different, because as we said last time, the way that we work might not be different, we're just working with different issues perhaps. Yeah.

(Rural Support Session 2).

The alternative approach to which Rosie alluded is that of a situational assessment with an "ecological" and "holistic" focus, in other words, a survey of the entire situation for a particular student to look at their social, medical, familial, educational, social service, and various other resources.

Overview and Ways Forward

This study uncovered thought-provoking reflections on future educational practice regarding new genetic, biochemical, and mechanical technologies, which were described briefly here. Educational professionals who support students under New Zealand's special education provisions (Ministry of Education, 2004) might have been expected to express uncertainty about new bodily technologies for their future students, especially since most had not discussed these issues with anyone before this study. However, instead, they considered various future possibilities from biochemical alteration to genetic modification (e.g. of a student's personality) as likely to reflect the same dilemmas of practice that they currently experienced. Foremost among these difficulties was their attempt to facilitate more complex analyses of contextual supports for students, rather than simply agreeing to requests from parents or teachers to provide quick solutions (e.g. surgery, medication) aimed at modifying a student's perceived "natural" characteristics.

A skepticism about the domain of the biologically "natural" body was accompanied by ironic laughter in most of the groups. A group of Disability Educators (not employed under special education provisions) took the discussion further by not only pitting the natural against technology as a false dichotomy, but suggesting a third term to unsettle the dualism, creating "nature nurture and technology." In their view, even the most avowedly biological form of human nature is itself socially constructed.

Cyborg subjectivities were considered by all groups after viewing film collages that included examples from popular culture. A group of Specialist Practitioners involved in support for students with difficulties considered the impact of a dualistic choice of helpful or destructive cyborg teaching assistants of the future, basing discussion on two film characters. For the Disability Educators the issue was more immediate. This group discussed how one person's positioning as a human being was troubled by medical intervention that held out the offer of an inner-body electronic implant to increase motor function. Insertion of such technology could be viewed as an alteration smacking unpleasantly of an alien intrusion and loss of a "natural" human subjectivity. The medical intervention was viewed initially as a machine invading the bounds of the natural body, thus fitting within a discursive understanding of the cyborg as negative and oppositional to the ("fully") human. By reframing such a dualism, taking a more contingent and skeptical view of what is inside or outside the skin-bag container, technological change fails to disrupt a fragile humanity. Contemporary philosophical ideas about embodiment give rise to new possibilities for our becoming that are not invalidated by an electrical circuit that assists arm, heart, or bladder muscle movement. Considering the framing of the natural/artificial dualism might make a difference to people who feel that they have impaired function that might be enhanced by a technological intervention. If the territory of the natural could be treated more skeptically, as evidenced in responses of many of the educational professionals here, we could continue to re-create our humanness without relying on a certain kind of packaging to announce an acceptable selfhood. This raises the unorthodox suggestion that the curriculum used in training medical professionals might benefit from inclusion of discourses and dualisms around nature and technology, with discussion illustrated by examples from popular culture.

There appears to be a lot on offer with new technologies, but then, participants in this research project were doubtful of claims being touted, of money being made for purposes other than benefiting people with disabilities, of access issues for enhancements that might replicate or expand current hierarchies of privilege, and of the likelihood that the same old discourses about technology might continue to be produced in future. Despite all these negatives, I was impressed by the collective wisdom of these discussions, with their suggestion of an ongoing critical engagement by professionals at the front lines of practice. This might go some way to meeting Goggin and Newell's (2003) call for a consideration of new technologies within the wider professional and community settings in which their possibilities of lived experience are negotiated.

Endnotes

1. I have followed British usage as described by Petra Kuppers (2003, p. 136), for whom "the term 'disabled' is embraced as a sign of a shared cultural and structural oppression."

2. Notation for the interview transcripts includes omission of repeated words (e.g. "that that") and non-words. Square brackets enclose unclear or omitted speech.

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