Why wear a prosthetics when you could become a superhero instead? Children, Prostheses, and a Few Reflections on How a Dictionary of Critical Disability Studies Can Enrich the Language of New Childhood Studies

Abstract

The article aims at revealing the potential of critical disability studies’ concepts (prosthetic power, visual activism) as tools in the analysis of disabled children’s experiences within the new childhood studies paradigm. In disability studies, the childhoods of disabled children are still marginalized, and similarly—in childhood studies, there is still not enough space for analyzing disability as social marker (compared to gender, race, and class). I start with three examples of 3D children’s prosthetics projects that serve as starting points for redefining what an artificial limb can become—a platform of play shared with others, a superhero’s attribute, and a tool for agency in co-designing (oneself)—to find how they resonate with theoretical and interpretative endeavors of critical disability studies. I then attempt to set them against the premises of new childhood studies and see—taking as an example disabled children’s childhood studies—what can possibly emerge at the crossroads.