The History of Disability

Black bodies, white bodies; male bodies, female bodies; young bodies, old bodies; beautiful bodies, broken bodies - right bodies and wrong bodies. Historically, our bodies have framed our futures and explained our past; our bodies write our stories. But it is not our bodies per se which write the story; rather it is the way in which we, as a society, construct our bodies which shapes our history and our future. Bodily difference has for …

…of difference. Yet, at another level, difference is simply a construction of ideology, not a state of reality - since we are all interconnected and have flowing through each of us the same life force. According to Sarkar, "the force that guides the stars you too". Yet, the history of disability has been a history of seeking to construct hierarchical difference out of an essential reality of oneness. The challenge is to create the reverse.