Dance, Medicine and Marginalisation: The Limits of Law

By Shawn Harmon

At our third InVisible Difference Symposium, ‘Beyond the Tipping Point? Dance Disability and Law’ (6-7 November 2015, in Coventry), a number of questions were raised in relation to the operation of law in the dance, and more specifically, the disabled dance setting. While some areas of law are much more pertinent to the practice of dance and the actions that dancers might take to protect their rights and income streams, the significance of the medical framework, it seems, should not be dismissed. It might be conceded that this framework – which includes medical education, medical law, and the vast medical architecture – is not so relevant as a legal standard-setter in dance (i.e., it does not directly influence participation in the creative process, ownership of dance, or the ‘mainstreaming’ of disabled dance), but it does sit stoutly if not resoundingly in the background.

Broadening the Medical Ethics Perspective Through Dance

By Shawn Harmon

Answers Too Easily Attained?
One of the fundamental questions that is asked through the field of ethics is: ‘How should we live?’ This question must also be central to medical ethics, or ‘bioethics’. However, we seem to believe that we have answered this question, and we have settled into a comfortable application of that answer across a range of clinical circumstances and technological deployments:

  We should live independently and autonomously, without coercion or interference, with few imposed duties and little sense of obligation, free to avoid risk and to vigorously protect our physical and emotional integrity against state organs, private entities, and individuals. 

While this is an oversimplification, the majority of substantive assessments will either explicitly or implicitly begin from a foundational proposition not far removed. The premise is not generally objectionable, but the lack of depth in our ethical reflexivity is disheartening. How have we embedded this premise so deeply that we proceed from it in most every medical and research encounter?