Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Ableism (disability)'

Subjects designated by the neologism 'disability' typically experience various forms of marginality, discrimination and inequality. The response by social scientists and professionals engaged in social policy and service delivery has been to combat the 'disability problem' by way of implementing anti-discrimination protections and various other compensatory initiatives. More recently, with the development of biological and techno-sciences such as 'new genetics', nanotechnologies and cyborgs the solution to 'disability' management has been in the form of utilizing technologies of early detection, eradication or at best, technologies of mitigation. Contemporary discourses of disablement displace and disconnect discussion away from the 'heart of the problem', namely, matters ontological. Disability - based marginality is assumed to emerge from a set of pre-existing conditions (i.e. in the case of biomedicalisation, deficiency inheres in the individual, whilst in the Social Model disablement is created by a capitalist superstructure). The Great Divide takes an alternative approach to studying 'the problem of disability' by proposing that the neologism 'disability' is in fact created by and used to generate notions and epistemologies of 'ableism'. Whilst epistemologies of disablement are well researched, there is a paucity of research related to the workings of ableism. The focal concerns of The Great Divide relate to matters of ordering, disorder and constitutional compartmentalization between the normal and pathological and the ways that discourses about wholeness, health, enhancement and perfection produce notions of impairment. A central argument of this dissertation figures the production of disability as part of the tussle over ordering, emerging from a desire to create order from an assumed disorder; resulting in a flimsy but often unconvincing attempt to shore up so-called optimal ontologies and disperse outlaw ontologies. The Great Divide examines ways 'disability' rubs up against, mingles with and provokes other seemingly unrelated concepts such as wellness, ableness, perfection, competency, causation, productivity and use value. The scaffolding of the dissertation directs the reader to selected sites that produce epistemologies of disability and ableism, namely the writing of 'history' and Judeo-Christian renderings of Disability. It explores the nuances of ableism (including a case study of wrongful life torts in law) and the phenomenon of internalized ableism as experienced by many disabled people. The study of liberalism and the government of government are explored in terms of enumeration, the science of 'counting cripples' and the battles over defining 'disability' in law and social policy. Additionally another axis of ableism is explored through the study of a number of perfecting technologies and the way in which these technologies mediate what it means to be 'human' (normalcy), morphs/simulates 'normalcy' and the leakiness of 'disability'. This analysis charts the invention of forearms transplantation (a la Clint Hallam), the Cochlear implant and transhumanism. The Great Divide concludes with an inversion of the ableist gaze(s) by proposing an ethic of affirmation, a desiring ontology of impairment.

Autoethnography is a research method that relies on connecting personal narrative to larger social issues, using writing and/or performance to draw those connections for an audience and critique those issues along the way. Autoethnographers, in a vulnerable act, tell their own stories to make these connections and critiques, and ask their audiences to help them change the way society functions, to help achieve social justice by engaging with and helping to solve these issues. This project explores a specific autoethnographic work—The Wolf Inside, a solo performance piece dealing with the dis/ableist experiences of the author in their journey toward diagnosis, treatment, and good quality of life with systemic lupus erythematosus. It examines the implications of autoethnography as a method of educating audiences about invisible disabilities like lupus, confronting harmful dis/ableist behaviors, offering solutions to these issues, and functioning as a coping mechanism for the author/performer who lives with invisible disabilities.

The objective of this study is to investigate ableism and social support networks in the healthcare setting. Social support networks play an important role in combating emotional distress in healthcare. They provide disabled patients a method for defending against the negative effects of ableism among other stressors. By definition, ableism refers to perceptions that disability is abnormal and undesirable. Ten healthcare providers in central Florida (i.e., in nursing homes, rehabilitation centers, and primary care offices) were interviewed, using in-depth face-to-face qualitative interviewing. Participants were asked questions relating to the effects of ableist language on patients with disabilities as well as the role of social support networks in combating related stress. Throughout the process of data analysis, five major themes arose as most relevant to the research questions proposed: (1) Traditional Social Support, (2) Online Networks as a Source of Informational Support, (3) Concerns about Ableist Language, (4) External Sources of Patient Social Support, and (5) Accommodation and Accessibility. Results indicated a strong preference for traditional social support, as opposed to online support. Traditional social support is offered through accommodation of caregivers, availability of social workers, and creation of support groups. Benefits of online support networks are viewed mainly in terms of fulfilling the informational needs of patients with disabilities. Additionally, while some accommodations for patients with disabilities were described, these dealt primarily with alterations to the physical environment. Results showed a lack of attention paid to ableism in the healthcare field, particularly instances occurring in communication practices. Overall, there is room for improvement in the healthcare field concerning accommodations for patients with disabilities.
M.A.
Masters
Communication
Sciences
Communication; Interpersonal Communication

The three studies presented in this dissertation generated new insight about the attitudinal ableism experienced by people with mental illness, substance use, and physical disabilities. First, the purpose of study one was to synthesize existing evidence about the implicit (unconscious) biases toward people with mental illness. Extensive academic database searches were performed and 19 articles were selected for review. Main findings from the review indicated that 63% of the participant samples showed an implicit bias against people with mental illness. Further, the implicit biases were positively correlated with explicit desires for social distance in two studies and were not improved by interventions or prior contact in six studies. Second, the purpose of study two was to investigate potential mediators in the pathway between perceived stigma and internalized stigma among people with substance use disorders. A total of 125 individuals completed the survey packet. Results indicated that overall social support (particularly affectionate social support) and maladaptive coping behaviors were significant mediators of the pathway. Personality characteristics, overall coping behaviors, adaptive coping behaviors, emotional/informational social support, and tangible social support were not significant mediators. Third, the purpose of study three was to validate and expand upon existing research on the microaggressions perceived by people with physical disabilities. The third study was also an initial exploration into the applicability of Glick and Fiske's (1996) theory of ambivalent sexism in conceptualizing ableist microaggressions. Specifically, Glick and Fiske's (1996) theory was used as a framework for conceptualizing ableist microaggressions as examples of ambivalent ableism, characterized by hostility and benevolence toward people with disabilities. Twelve individuals with visible, physical disabilities were interviewed about their microaggressive experiences and the personal impacts of being targets of ableism. Participants' experiences were coded and categorized as representing hostile ableism, benevolent ableism, or impact on the target. Hostile microaggressive experiences included othering, victimizing, and desexualizing; benevolent microaggressive experiences included helping and infantilizing; and impacts on the target included passing/covering and internalizing. Finally, implications related to research, education, and practice for each of the three studies were discussed in the concluding chapter of this dissertation.

This thesis analyzes the concept of ”funktionalitet” (the dis/ability divide), normality and vulnerability in the Swedish Law on Support and Service to Certain Disabled People (Lagen om stöd och service till vissa funktionshindrade – LSS). LSS is the main rights law for people with disabilities and was groundbreaking when it came, but has since its legislation not been developed any further. Recent debate has shown that the law is not implemented according to its intentions. Through the use of discourse analysis and the theoretical perspectives ableism, intersectionality and vulnerability this thesis investigates the understanding of ”funktionalitet” in the legislation and the official government inquiry (SOU 1991:46) that submitted a proposal for the law in 1991. The main conclusions of the analysis point toward a conception of ”funktionalitet” as both depending on the power structure of ableism and as a diversity in humanity. The position as a person with disability is portrayed as a special (or pathogenic) vulnerability in order to claim special rights. Moreover the thesis briefly discusses how the position as a person with disabilities is denied other identificatory categories such as a person with a gender identity, sexuality and/or being a parent. These are topics for further research.

The magical fictional setting of the Harry Potter novels is not one separated from our own. It features the same nations and the same history as the real world. Its society is parallel to ours due to similar traditions and hierarchies, such as heteronormativity, ageism, racism, and fascism. Some of these are clearly problematised in the novels, others are not. While issues of racism and blood status are clearly at the forefront of the story of Harry Potter, there are layers to the conflict which reveal that there is more to the discriminatory dilemma than the issue of blood purity. This essay aims to investigate how teachers can use J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series to lead a discussion about othering and discrimination, focusing on the issue of ableism in particular. The goal when studying processes of othering in Harry Potter is not necessarily for the reader to identify with the protagonists. Instead, textual silences will be interpreted to investigate whether the othering of people like the readers themselves, an othering the reader partakes in when empathising with the protagonists, can be compared to ableism in the real world, and how teachers can use Harry Potter as means to introduce the idea of able-bodiedness as a social construct. By applying crip theory to the text, it can be stated that the division between the protagonist and his non-magical Other is based on ableist ideologies, which result in a positioning of the non-magical as disabled in the magical society. This position is maintained by naturalising the link between impairment and character flaws.

This thesis aims to investigate possible positions of identification for people with dis/abilities. With a theoretical basis in crip-theory it discusses the notions of power and deviance and its’ importance for the formation and reproduction of ideas around the concepts of dis/ability, ableism, deviancy and normality.

This thesis investigated a rupture in the U. S. legal tradition of punishing sexual crime, initiatedby The Community Protection Act of 1990 and the Sexually Violent Predator Statute, that defined the criminal subject as a sexually violent predator. Thus, with this definition was initiated a new legislative innovation. Effectuated as the following Sexually Violent Predator laws, it allowed for the civil commitment of sex offenders post completed sentence. A commitment scheme that has been subject to a vast criticism qua its severe deprivation of basic human rights and dismissal of Constitutional provisions. The investigation was composed as a content analysis of the framing of the journalistic production responding to these laws. A selection of 35 news articles was appropriated as source material. The method of content analysis was accompanied by a theoretical framework, scrutinising normative orders and claims of disability and able-ism. The analysis of the source material resulted in the identification of eight repetitive thematics. Their framing was presented and analysed in order to critically discuss the composition and execution of the Sexually Violent Predator laws.

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In spite of significant advances and increasing possibilities of social participation experienced by both women and persons with disabilities, the naturalization of their bodies remains as the main factor related to the permanence of practices of silencing and discrimination. In this doctoral research, the starting point is the observation that feminist movements, as well as the vast literature on gender issues, are fragile when it comes to the intersection with disability; in turn, most studies on disability neglect the female condition. Considering that gender and disability intersect as factors of oppression and discrimination that heighten female vulnerability and inequalities, the argument presented in this dissertation is that, in the case of women with disabilities, the process of precariousness of life occurs through the intersection of ableist and sexist structures. By establishing strong barriers to access to school, higher education, and to the full exercise of their sexuality, such structures place them in unequal positions in relation to men with disabilities and women without disabilities. Therefore, the purpose of this research, located in the area of Cultural Studies of Education, was to analyze the effects of ableist and sexist structures in the experience of inequality and multiple vulnerabilities of women with disabilities. Based on literature review and an empirical approach to the trajectories of women with disabilities, it discusses the precariousness of the life they experience from the perspective of ableism and gender inequalities. It uses the notion of trajectory proposed by Pierre Bourdieu, which emphasizes the individual action of certain subjects (habitus), in close relation with wider social contexts (fields). The narratives of the educational trajectories of Maria Aparecida Ramos de Menezes, Joana Belarmino de Souza, and Nayara de Almeida Adriano, professors with disabilities at Federal University of Paraíba, collected through interviews conducted in the first semester of 2016, seek to answer the research question: "How ableist and sexist inequalities appear in the educational trajectories of women with disabilities within family, school, and higher education?" Based on their narratives, which evoke my own trajectory as a woman with a visual disability, the analysis points at the common experiences of inequality lived by women with disabilities, which exclude them from participation in the public sphere and deny their right to autonomous choice and decision-making, within a sexist and ableist culture. However, the trajectories of these three women reveal that education makes it possible to breakdown such barriers and contribute to the educational and social development of other women with disabilities. By presenting the relevant contributions of feminist perspectives regarding a new understanding of disability, this dissertation aims at strengthening the debate about the transformation of able-normative mentalities, a still incipient debate in both movements of women and people with disabilities, in order to open new possibilities of empowerment and social participation.
Apesar dos significativos avanços e das crescentes possibilidades de participação social vivenciadas por mulheres e pessoas com deficiência, observa-se que a naturalização de seus corpos é fator principal da manutenção de práticas de silenciamento e discriminação. Nesta pesquisa doutoral, constata-se inicialmente que os movimentos feministas, assim como a vasta literatura em torno de questões de gênero, são frágeis quando se trata da intersecção com a deficiência; por sua vez, a maioria dos estudos sobre deficiência negligencia a condição feminina. Ao considerar que gênero e deficiência se entrecortam como fatores de opressão e discriminação que potencializam a vulnerabilidade e a desigualdade feminina, o argumento desta tese é que, no caso da mulher com deficiência, o processo de precariedade da vida se dá pela intersecção de estruturas capacitistas e sexistas. Estas estruturas, ao estabelecerem sólidas barreiras ao acesso à escola, à universidade e ao pleno exercício de sua sexualidade, as colocam em posições desiguais em relação aos homens com deficiência e às mulheres sem deficiência. Assim, o objetivo geral da investigação, situada na área dos Estudos Culturais da Educação, foi analisar os efeitos das estruturas capacitistas e de gênero na experiência de desigualdade e múltiplas vulnerabilidades de mulheres com deficiência. Com base em revisão de literatura e abordagem empírica de trajetórias de mulheres com deficiência, discute-se a precariedade da vida dessas mulheres, sob as perspectivas do capacitismo e das desigualdades de gênero. Utiliza-se a noção de trajetória proposta por Pierre Bourdieu, a qual destaca a ação individual de determinados sujeitos (habitus), em estreita relação com contextos sociais mais amplos (campos). Os relatos das trajetórias educacionais de Maria Aparecida Ramos de Menezes, Joana Belarmino de Souza e Nayara de Almeida Adriano, professoras com deficiência em atuação na Universidade Federal da Paraíba, colhidos através de entrevistas realizadas no primeiro semestre de 2016, buscam responder à pergunta de pesquisa: De que forma as desigualdades capacitistas e de gênero se evidenciam nas trajetórias familiares, escolares e acadêmicas de mulheres com deficiência? Com base em suas narrativas, que evocam a minha própria trajetória como mulher com deficiência visual, a análise aponta experiências de desigualdade vivenciadas pelo coletivo de mulheres com deficiência que, resultantes de uma cultura sexista e capacitista, as excluem da participação na esfera pública e lhes negam o direito de realizar escolhas e tomar decisões por conta própria. Todavia, as trajetórias dessas três mulheres revelam que, através da educação, é possível romper com as barreiras supracitadas e contribuir para o desenvolvimento educacional e social de outras mulheres com deficiência. Ao apresentar as relevantes contribuições das perspectivas feministas no tocante a uma nova compreensão acerca da deficiência, espero fortalecer o debate, ainda incipiente em ambos os movimentos, de mulheres e pessoas com deficiência, acerca da ruptura de mentalidades corpo-normativas, para suscitar novas possibilidades de empoderamento e participação social.

This dissertation contributes to the development of philosophy of disability by drawing on disability studies, feminist philosophy, phenomenology, and philosophy of biology in order to contest epistemic and ontological assumptions about disability within biomedical ethics as well as within philosophical work on the body, demonstrating how philosophical inquiry is radically transformed when experiences of disability are taken seriously. In the first two chapters, I focus on epistemological and ontological concerns surrounding disability within biomedical ethics. Although disabled people and their advocates have been quite vocal regarding their views on disability and in critiquing bioethicists’ approaches to issues that affect them, the interests, knowledge, and experiences of disabled people have had minimal impact on discussions within biomedical ethics textbooks. The risks of making problematic assumptions about disability are high within this subfield insofar as bioethicists impact practices within medical facilities, public policy, and, through student engagement with their texts in biomedical ethics courses, the views of potential health care professionals. All of these, in turn, affect the care provided to disabled people and potential/actual parents of disabled children. Chapter three raises ontological issues related to disability theory, examining the role of the impairment/disability distinction in framing discussions of the body as well as the status of experience. I discuss two approaches to incorporating subjective experiences of the body in disability, arguing that neither is sufficient. I examine debates within feminist theory on questions related to experience. I argue that a feminist phenomenological approach that builds on Merleau-Ponty’s work offers the best way to address bodily experiences in disability theory. The assumptions that disability theorists and Merleau-Ponty make about disability are often at odds. Chapter four points out the ableism in Merleau-Ponty’s use of a case study and considers some of the oversights within Phenomenology of Perception. In spite of my critique, I argue that his approach to phenomenology—with appropriate modifications—is useful not only for theorizing the experiences of disabled people but also for addressing other types of marginalized embodiment. Chapter five applies this method to body integrity identity disorder (BIID), arguing that combining Merleau-Ponty’s insights with those of disability theory allows us to address lived experiences of BIID and to identify assumptions about disability within research on this condition.

Master of Arts
Department of Communications Studies
Timothy Steffensmeier
Due to a rising interest for degrees in higher education, more students with disabilities have enrolled in the university system. Still, accessibility issues on campuses suggest institutions are not meeting the needs of students in the classroom or through curricula. This study examines current academic adjustments and the lived experiences of students with disabilities in order to understand the ableist Othering phenomenon in higher education. Qualitative research methods have been commonly used to investigate the “disabled voice”; however, triangulation of such methodologies has been criticized for reinforcing Otherness. This study used a phenomenological design implementing rhetorical agency for disabled students to answer open-ended questions in semi-structured interviews about their lived experiences. Consequently, such interviews created a platform for social change. The author also reflects on his own lived experiences as a deaf student in higher education. Findings include major themes such as a percolation of institutional hegemony, a re-appropriation of stigma through “voice,” and a call for inclusive strategies. Results indicate disabled students experience discrimination likely due to organizational tension in their university institution. Further, this study elaborates on proposed policy changes to college classrooms on large university campuses. Contributions of this study lie in implications for the future of qualitative inquiry, including how current research practices could undergo methodological reinvention to examine the ableist Othering phenomenon.

This thesis examines news representations of Canadian, American and Australian military personnel involved in military 'sex scandals'. I explore what the representations of military personnel involved in well-publicized sex scandals reveal about scripts of soldiering and militarized masculinities. Despite a history of systemic violence in the military, I ask how and why the systemic nature of militarized masculinities are able to remain invisible, driving representations to focus on the ‘bad’ behaviour of individuals? By engaging with feminist scholarship in International Relations, I present the longstanding culture of misogyny, racism, homophobia and ableism in the Canadian, American and Australian militaries, focusing on the ways in which militarized masculinities are guided by these violent structures, and fundamental to the military's creation of soldiers. My dissertation uses the tools of critical discourse analysis to unpack the ways blame is individualised in cases of sexual and racist violence involving military personnel, while the military’s ableism, rape culture and imperial militarized masculinities are commonly naturalized or celebrated without regard for how they are fundamentally violent. My thesis presents an intersectional feminist project that intervenes in emerging questions in the field of transnational disability studies, tracing how militarism, hegemonic militarized masculinities and imperial soldiering (re)produce categories of ability and disability.

The United Methodist Hymnal includes many hymns which make use of ableist language. This paper sets forth an understanding of disability and ability so that the ableist language in United Methodist hymnody may be identified and, when needed, addressed through suggested revision or omission. Putting prominent themes of disability theology and hymnology into conversation with one another, this paper addresses the theological anthropology present in particular hymns with a particular focus on the difference between healing and curing, the metaphors of disability as sin, and images of disability in biblical texts.

abstract: The purpose of this study was to trouble existing conceptions of disability that ground music education literature and practice. I sought plausible insights into how disability is experienced in, through, and/or around music by participants who are disabled persons/persons with disabilities (DP/PwD). Insights gained might allow readers to complexify and trouble taken-for-granted assumptions about disability. Questions included: (a) How do participants experience disability in, through, and around music? (b) What plausible insights related to disability can be gained by attending to participants’ experiences of disability in, through, and around music? (c) What plausible insights related to inclusion can be gained by attending to participants’ experiences of disability in, through, and around music? The inquiry approach was grounded in Buberian relational ontology, phenomenology, interactional theories of disability, and narrative. Seven DP/PwD participated in this study: (a) Erica, a 14-year-old diagnosed with a developmental disability of unknown etiology; (b) Duke, a drummer diagnosed with Williams syndrome; (c) Birdie, an abstract visual artist with epilepsy who used music to inform her art; (d) Daren, a b-boy/breakdancer diagnosed with Tourette syndrome, (e) Sienna, a legally blind social work college student who played banjo in a music therapy-based bluegrass band and participated in musical theatre; (f) Ice Queen, an undergraduate flute player recently diagnosed with Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); and (g) Culann, an adult counselor and music listener with ADHD and mood disorders. Data generation included conversational interviews, observations, artmaking, and serendipitous data. Data co-generated with participants were crafted into narratives of their lifeworlds, including description of their experiences with disability in, through, and around music and in other aspects of their lives. An envisioned conversation among all participants demonstrates the shifts and complexities in the meanings of disability and unpacks different ways participants describe and understand disability and the myriad roles that music plays in their lifeworlds. The final chapter of the study offers discussions and suggestions regarding thinking about and approaching disability (i.e., interactional theories, intersectionality, and identity), inclusion (i.e., belonging, suggestions by participants, and anti-ableist pedagogy), and research/writing.
Dissertation/Thesis
Doctoral Dissertation Music Education 2019

Friendship matters. Practical support, caring, moral guidance, enjoyment, improved health and greater life expectancy are but a few of its benefits. Despite living in a stigmatizing social environment where isolation is common among disabled youth, some disabled teens establish strong friendships. A nuanced understanding of these meaningful friendships from the perspective of disabled teens was constructed through this qualitative study. Teens aged 15 to 20 who self-identified as experiencing stigma due to disability were recruited from urban, suburban and rural areas of Nova Scotia, Canada. Each teen was involved in a friendship of at least six months duration and had a close friend (with or without a disability) who was also willing to participate. Seven boys and seven girls, all but one of whom were disabled teens, took part in the study. These seven sets of friends engaged in research interviews and participant observation sessions. Nine adults who witnessed the friendships develop over time were also interviewed. Preliminary coding was completed using Atlas.ti. This was followed by a deeper, critical approach to analysis which generated three inter-connected themes. The first theme outlines how stigma disrupts the friendships of disabled youth though a range of processes (labeling, stereotyping, status loss, separation) that arise from and contribute to ableism discrimination against disabled people. The second theme, finding a balance between adult support and surveillance, emphasizes the crucial role adults play in facilitating the friendships of disabled youth. The final theme, disrupting oppression to create enduring friendship, highlights the strategies used by these disabled teens to make and keep friends in a stigmatizing society. Strategies most often used that appeared to be effective for participants were disrupting norms about friendship, coming out as disabled, connecting through stigma, and choosing self-exclusion. Two strategies horizontal hostility and passing as nondisabled were potentially harmful to disabled youth and in some ways limited friendship opportunities. Ideas to counter the harmful effects of ableism while creating lasting friendships are addressed to disabled teens, to their families, to allies in the education system, and to the broader community.

This thesis is an occasion to examine how normalcy – as a phenomenon constructed in society and so not natural but human-made – is reproduced as a hegemonic ideal through oppressive portrayals of disability in literature. Many of the fictional texts I analyze reproduce the privileging of normalcy. I therefore work to disturb normalcyʼs hold through critical analysis of a wide variety of currently popular fiction for youth and adults. Combining interpretive inquiry and personal narrative, I bring forward new understandings of normalcy, disability and culture. Along with showing how normalcyʼs supremacy is upheld within the book industry, and critiquing texts that do disability as usual (through both survey and close analysis approaches), I discuss at length several literary works that write disability in anti-oppressive, anti-ableist ways. To close this thesis, I discuss my own transformation as an author and scholar through disability studies.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 1997. Graduate Programme in Philosophy.
Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 209-218). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ27325.

In this dissertation, I articulate what I call a personal-is-political ethics, suggesting that the realm of human affairs long called ethics is inseparable from that which is today normatively called psychology. Further, I suggest that these names for this shared realm are situated in different discursive traditions which, therefore, provide different parameters for possible action and understanding. In my exploration of what it is to be human, I strategically centre ethical transgressions, particularly those that are mappable onto systemic forms of oppression. I explore personal-is-political enactments of sexism, ableism, racism, colonization, classism, ageism, and geopolitics, including situations in which several of these intersect with one another and those in which therapeutic, pedagogical, or parenting hierarchies also intersect with them. Without suggesting this is ‘the whole story,’ I closely read people’s narrations of ethical transgressions that they – that we – commit. I claim that such narrations shape our possibilities for harming others, for taking responsibility, and for intervening in others’ lives in an attempt to have them take responsibility (e.g., therapy with abuse perpetrators and critical pedagogy). I work to demonstrate the ethical and political importance of: the impossibility of exhaustive knowledge, the illimitable and contingent power relations that are ever-present and give shape to what we can know, and the ways our possibilities in life are constituted through particular contact with others. I explore ethical transgressions I have committed, interrogating these events in conversation with explorations of resonant situations in published texts, as well as with research conversations with friends about their ethical transgressions and how they make sense of them. I tentatively advocate for, and attempt to demonstrate, ways of governing ourselves when we are positioned ‘on top’ of social hierarchies – in order to align our responses and relationships more closely with radical political commitments.