Disability Studies at the Crossroads of Critical, Feminist, Anti-racist Theories and the Issue of Change

Abstract

The chapter aims to highlight the critical character of the process of transformative change by focusing on the ways in which theoretical insights from critical, feminist and anti-racist theories are related to or can inform attempts to precipitate inclusive education reforms. The cross-fertilization of these diverse perspectives can contribute to highlighting the overtly political character of disability experience, with a view to encouraging a paradigm shift from a reductionist epis-temology to a trans-disciplinary approach to addressing the ways in which disability is inexorably related with other axes of difference linked to race/ethnicity, social class gender and sexuality. This kind of analysis is fundamental in envisaging alternative pedagogical discourses and modes of thinking predicated on liberatory theorizations of difference and diversity. As Slee (2010:168) so appositely puts it: ‘Inclusive education asks us to jettison linearity in our thinking, to invite new coalitions to the table to establish new parameters of the issues we are dealing with and directions for educational reconstructions.’ The politics of difference and diversity call for theoretical pluralism and conceptual openness so as to utilize a number of trans-disciplinary analytical tools to delineate the complexity and fluidity of social identities.