Harm to Oneself or Others: Marked Bodies, Scholarly Taxonomy, and the Trappings of Rights-Based Interventions

• In Event: 34.072 - Disrupting Boundaries of Disability While Reimagining Educational Justice Landscapes: Contentions in Disability Studies in Education

Abstract

Objectives: This paper explores how Disability Studies interacts with ABA research, Special Education Practice, and Restraint and Seclusion Policy by tracing the evolution of the concept of “self-restraint,” a term from Behavior Analytic literature for a variety of “behaviors” in which a person restricts their own movement. I trace how “self-restraint” emerges as a new class of behaviors eligible for intervention, and how this marks certain bodies for restrictive practices such as restraint, seclusion and the use of aversives. This paper explores how rhetorical moves shape the educational landscape of disabled students, and attempts to expose mechanisms of control that are shaped by scholarship. By using “self-restraint” as an example, I respond to the taxonomies of deficit disseminated through Applied Behavioral Analysis in schooling for neurodivergent students and make critical links between Special Education practice and Disability Studies in Education.

Theoretical Framework: This paper engages semiotics as a way of understanding scholarly sign-making. I look at “self-restraint” as a signifier for an array of physical ways of being-which are codified through the use of this term, (and others) and marked for institutional violence.

Method: This paper begins with a conceptual argument-that “self-restraint” emerges in the ABA literature concurrently to adoption of Restraint and Seclusion legislation in many states. I use case-studies from the ABA literature to demonstrate how “self-restraint” is a nonce taxonomy for many (benign) neurodivergent bodily expressions, such as wrapping hands in clothing, or sitting on one’s hands. I then pivot to a policy analysis of R&S legislation, arguing that most state R&S laws allow for restraint in cases in which a person is a “danger to themselves.” Buttressing “self-restraint” as a new category of harm and the caveat of “harm to oneself” in R&S legislation, I make a conceptual argument about the trappings of rights-based interventions, returning to fundamental tensions in DSE.

Data Sources: Two case studies are explored. Both are examples of “self-restraint.” The data from each show that instances of “self-restraint” were shown to decrease SIB and pose no harm to students or staff, and yet were the focus of restrictive behavioral intervention. I also survey R&S in all states with existing laws.

Findings: Self-restraint, as a distinct category of behavior, legitimizes state violence by subsuming an even wider array of bodily assemblages into self-injury-a common legal justification for restraint, seclusion and the use of aversives.

Significance: This paper traces one specific failure of a rights-based intervention-as a proxy for others, demonstrating how power moves through and beyond law. I expose how quickly oppression finds ways to continue to operate, often through the use scholarly rhetoric, and how efficiently rights-based interventions are dismantled by our adversaries. Ultimately, I engage with the future and past of DSE, pointing to the future by demonstrating how we must think about strategy beyond rights, pride and law-into a revolutionary politics that begins from the disabled body.

Author

• Robin Roscigno, Rutgers University