Putting Gino’s lesson to work: Actor–network theory, enacted humanity, and rehabilitation

Abstract

This article argues that rehabilitation enacts a particular understanding of “the human” throughout therapeutic assessment and treatment. Following Michel Callon and Vololona Rabeharisoa’s “Gino’s Lesson on Humanity,” we suggest that this is not simply a top-down process, but is cultivated in the application and response to biomedical frameworks of human ability, competence, and responsibility. The emergence of the human is at once a materially contingent, moral, and interpersonal process. We begin the article by outlining the basics of the actor–network theory that underpins “Gino’s Lesson on Humanity.” Next, we elucidate its central thesis regarding how disabled personhood emerges through actor–network interactions. Section “Learning Gino’s lesson” draws on two autobiographical examples, examining the emergence of humanity through rehabilitation, particularly assessment measures and the responses to them. We conclude by thinking about how rehabilitation and actor–network theory might take this lesson on humanity seriously.