Bringing the Psyche back into Disability Studies: The Case of the Body with/out Organs

The article revisits a metaphor from Deleuze and Guattari, the body with/out organs, in order to consider possibilities for thinking of Disability Studies across the disciplinary lines of the Social Sciences and Humanities. Drawing on a narrative from a recently completed Economic and Social Research Council-funded project in England, and stepping back from a text that reported on this venture, the argument is that the metaphor of the body with and without organs allows us to capture the complex and affirmative psychical work of parents of disabled children, that it is possible to view parental narratives as productive and accountable in ways that contribute to recent re-assertions of the ‘psyche’ in Disability Studies.