The Cosmopolitics of Dis/ability Experience – A Manifesto
Michael Schillmeier (University of Exeter)
Dis/ability experience can neither be reduced to a mere bodily/mental impairment nor understood in separation from it as a mere societal phenomenon. Rather, people with disabilities can be understood as cosmo-political actors that disrupt, question and alter the very understanding of what is seen as human bodies and minds, what is maintained, expected and performed as taken for granted, embodied and materialised social orderings. Drawing on empirical work about dementia and people with visual disabilities this lecture suggests a conceptual framework of disability beyond the split between social and biomedical accounts.
