Experience as Knowledge: Disability, Distillation and (Reprogenetic) Decision-Making
By Felicity K. Boardman
8 pagesBy comparing and contrasting these women’s accounts at two time points, this paper demonstrates the stark contrast between ‘lived experience’ of Spinal Muscular Atrophy and the various way(s) this experience was transformed into, and presented as, ‘knowledge’ through the processes of making, and accounting, for reproductive decisions. The analysis highlights that multiple, distinct and sometimes competing experiential frameworks are used to conceptualise SMA across time and context. However, rather than evidence of its fallibility, this finding highlights that ‘knowledge’ is an inappropriate vessel with which to capture and transfer ‘experiential knowledge’. Rather, we need to consider how to value such insight in ways that harnesses its inherent strength without leaving it vulnerable to the epistemological critiques attracted by labelling it ‘knowledge’.