A Conceptual Framework for Defining a Proposal for Cultural Disability Studies Across Latin America

https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n57.02

Diana Carolina Vallejo Ortega
Clacso, México

Abstract:

This article sets a conceptual framework for cultural disability studies in Latin America, devising a journey that encompasses three moments: social studies, critical studies, and the consolidation of cultural disability studies. This article follows a theoretical-political and transdisciplinary approach to examine how the notions of coloniality, ableism, and performativity allow disability to be understood as a field of cultural and epistemic dispute, beyond biomedical and inclusive models. Drawing from Latin American critical traditions and cultural and decolonial studies, in this article we advocate for the need to acknowledge people with disabilities as epistemic subjects and agents of social transformation. Overall, the article presents a situated proposal that links theory and practice, recovering the political power of the disca body to challenge hierarchies of the human and open new horizons of knowledge and emancipation.

Keywords: disability, cultural studies, performativity, ableism, coloniality.