WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES THE BODY MAKE? 61not necessarily mean that disability inheres in individual bodies. Assem-
blage theories of disability, like Rosemarie Garland- Thomson’s (2011) idea
of “misfitting,” articulate ability and disability in terms of differential cou-
plings of bodily capacities and built worlds.
If neurocognitive embodied mind theories see the environmental con-
text as a collection of stimuli, conditions, and physical objects that are es-
sentially similar for all human body- minds, or that vary significantly only
in evolutionary terms, Garland- Thomson addresses the ways in which the
environment is more and less functional for different body- subjects. She
defines disability in terms of how well and easily a body- subject engages
with the built world, a measure that shifts depending on the circumstances.
For her, “the materiality that matters... involves the encounter between
bodies with particular shapes and capabilities and the particular shape and
structure of the world” (594, emphasis mine). Mis/fitting, then, is not a
fixed condition or standpoint, nor a social construction, but an encounter:
“Fitting and misfitting denote an encounter in which two things come to-
gether in either harmony or disjunction. When the shape and substance of
these two things correspond in their union, they fit. A misfit, conversely,
describes an incongruent relationship between two things: a square peg
in a round hole. The problem with a misfit, then, inheres not in either of
the two things but rather in their juxtaposition, the awkward attempt to fit
them together” (592^ –^ 93).
She gives examples of encounters of body- subjects and the built environ-
ment to suggest how misfitting is socially organized and context- dependent,
while also being material. “One citizen walks into a voting booth; another
rolls across a curb cut; yet another bumps her wheels against a stair; some-
one passes fingers across the brailed elevator button; somebody else waits
with a white cane before a voiceless atm machine; some other blind user
retrieves messages with a screen reader. Each meeting between subject and
environment will be a fit or misfit depending on the choreography that
plays out” (595). Disability, then, inheres not in an individual body, nor in
its representation, but rather in a relation that is temporally and spatially
specific — a particular coupling of mind/body and world. Mis/fittings are
embodied events, assemblages of body- subjects and worlds whose mis/fits
are context- and interaction- dependent. How well an assemblage “fits” is
not determined only by biological properties, nor circumscribed by iden-