Shakespeare and Corker take the postmodern ideas of someone like Donna Haraway in her "Cyborg Manifesto" and apply them to disability in such a way that it makes the possibilities for all bodies—"disabled" and "non-disabled" alike—look pretty awesome.
Basically, Shakespeare and Corker break out of the kind of dualistic thinking that limits us in our modern, post-Enlightenment world. You know: normal/abnormal, well/sick, medical model/social model.
A postmodern view of disability recognizes and embraces the variety and the instability of all bodies. And it shows that the line between the disabled and the non-disabled is vague and slippery at best.
But, in reality, our postmodern bodies are all, to some degree or another, artificial. We tan. We dye. We straighten crooked teeth and we curl straight hair. We insert hair extensions and artificial hips; we affix fake nails and mechanical heart valves. The "natural" body, like the unicorn, just doesn't exist.
And instead of bemoaning that fact and of stubbornly holding on to our ideas of what is "normal" and what is "abnormal" when it comes to our bodies, Postmoderns—according to the authors—embrace the uncertainty of the body and relish the ways that we can change it as we need or want to. So we bedazzle our prostheses. We attach streamers to our wheelchairs. And we become the cyborg—part flesh and part machine.
Disability/Postmodernism invites us to think about how our modern technology is changing the way that we understand our bodies. If body parts wear out, we simply replace them. So what does that mean for our understanding of the human? And how do we use these technologies ethically? Should a runner with artificial legs be allowed to compete alongside runners with legs of flesh and blood?
And where does our capacity or our right to alter our own bodies end? Should a person be allowed to cut off his/her arm and leg, just because s/he wants to? At what age can we begin changing our own bodies? Should a 12-year-old be permitted to get breast implants? How about a 90-year-old?