171 Reappraising the Social Model of Disability: A Foucauldian Reprise William J. Penson Leeds Metropolitan University, UK Chapter 9 ABSTRACT The social model of disability is widely accepted as a contemporary and progressive way to understand the experience of disabled people and is also seen as a means by which there can be a response to the discrimination that arises out of impairment. However, this chapter argues that there has been/is a process of assimilation, which has claimed the social model of disability within a dominant medico-legal discourse. Using Foucault's work on biopower and docility this chapter exposes the human body as the means by which institutions and disciplines continue to define the experience of disabled people. The process of assimilation requires the propagation by medico-legal disciplines of a certain privileged knowledge of the body, which is presented in ways that suggest objective neutrality. Taking a focus on psychiatry we can see that disciplinary constructions of the body, impairment and disability are problematic. INTRODUCTION This chapter will problematise current disability theory with reference to a number of Foucault's texts but in particular `Docile bodies' (Foucault, 1975; 1991). The purpose of terming this chapter DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61350-183-2.ch009 a reprise is in recognition of the previous critiques that have been raised through applying Foucauld- ian theory in disability discourse and in under- standing the lived experience of disabled people (see Tremain (2009) for a particularly relevant coverage). This is most significantly applied in relation to constructions of impairment, the body and the mind, the primacy given to such construc- Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.