Spivak and Rethinking the Agency of Disabled Children

Abstract

Disability as a marginalised subject position is not conspicuous in Postcolonial Studies, although it does constitute a material presence and is a lived experience in the Global South. Disability Studies in the Global North often downplays social inequality and diversity that is a direct result of inequalities perpetuated by centuries of colonialism. This is problematic for indigenous populations that are disabled, as their ‘agency’ is left out in both the postcolonial and the disability narrative. This article examines the position of the subaltern that exists within subalternity, through the works of Professor Gayatri C. Spivak, and further aims to examine whether the space occupied by the subaltern is characteristically similar as a disenfranchised group to that of disabled people. Spivak’s method of affirmative sabotage and deconstruction in postcolonial studies will be used to rethink the position of disabled children to conclude that the subaltern and the experience of impairment are similarly ‘disabling’, and that disabled subaltern in treaties such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child cannot actually speak.