Abstract
In the 1970s, disabled people and other marginalised social groups battled an exclusionary Global North university. Disability Studies emerged from those struggles as epistemologies shaped around a Westernised understanding of disability and inequalities, based on dialectic visions of progress and subjective liberation. Today, the advance of neoliberalism in universities, and its connection with colonial legacies, are embedded in different historical contingencies, and disabled students face new forms of discrimination. By merging analytical approaches from post-structural Critical Disability Studies and Epistemologies of the South, this article draws upon interviews with disabled students conducted in an Italian university to explore how neoliberal and capitalistic practices exclude certain knowledges and modalities of being university students. Through disabled students’ experiences, the article advances epistemologies that encompass processes of decolonisation and de-ableism of the university and argues for the Global North university to be an institution that can democratically reconcile polyhedral subjective possibilities of being.
Highlights
In the 1970s, disabled people and other marginalised social groups battled an exclusionary Global North university
Disabled people as a discriminated social group have a long history of struggles against an exclusionary university establishment
Drawing upon disabled students’ strategies and beliefs in a Global North university in Italy, I advance the possibility of enabling alternative epistemologies informed by ‘indigenous knowledge, which in many cases, is neglected or misrepresented’ (Chataika, 2012: 253), and that capture the diversity of those subjective experiences made non-existent by a capitalist and neoliberal conformation of the university
Summary
In the 1970s, disabled people and other marginalised social groups battled an exclusionary Global North university. Drawing upon disabled students’ strategies and beliefs in a Global North university in Italy, I advance the possibility of enabling alternative epistemologies informed by ‘indigenous knowledge, which in many cases, is neglected or misrepresented’ (Chataika, 2012: 253), and that capture the diversity of those subjective experiences made non-existent by a capitalist and neoliberal conformation of the university.
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