Disability and the Dialectics of Difference

Abstract

This paper re-theorises disability by asking the following question: within what historical, social, economic and political conditions does disability as an analytic of difference get constructed in a dialectical relationship with gender, class, caste and race? To respond to this question, I will first offer a materialist reading of the category of disability. I will then situate this discussion in an ethnographic study of a voluntary organisation in South India which provides residential as well as rehabilitational services for disabled children. Finally, I will discuss the politics of gendered 'caring work' and its implications for the continued production of marginalised difference. In doing this, I will thus demonstrate how disability can be re-understood as an ideological condition which is also structured by the same exploitative material conditions of capitalism as are race, caste, class and gender.

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