A Response to Watermeyer and Harvey (2025)

This text responds to Watermeyer and Harvey’s (2025) article ‘Screwing with our Embodiment: A Response to Thorneycroft’s Re-Imagining of the Social Model’. In their article, they trouble an article that explored the impairment-disability distinction central to the social model of disability. They contend that my linguistic/discursive theorisation of impaired/disabled construction contributes to a ‘disappearing’ or ‘vanishing’ body that fails to grapple with its materiality. In response, they turn to phenomenology and critical realism to illustrate a material body that cannot be denied. My response is that such arguments rest on particular meanings associated with construction, performativity, and discourse that this article seeks to further clarify. Moreover, my text was not intended to dispute the materiality of the impaired/disabled body but to show how that body appears at all. Phenomenology and critical realism may be important for grappling with disabled embodiment, but it would be inapposite to invoke ‘somatophobia’ for those who pursue alternative theoretical trajectories.