Interrogating disability epistemologies: towards collective dis/ability intersectional emotional, affective and spiritual autoethnographies for healing

Abstract

Special education labeling ignores historical, emotional, spiritual, sociocultural effects of labeling Black and Brown students with disabilities. Utilizing critical disability studies, critical race theory and spiritual paradigm, we interrogate construction and expression of differences of Learning Disability and Speech and Language Impairment. We asked: How does being labeled with a special education disability category, as Black and Brown people impact emotional, affective, and spiritual development in and around schools? Reminded about our disability labels relationship to (re)production of racism and ableism, our counter-narratives deconstruct the normativity of racism and ableism in and around schools. Our findings illuminated how emotion, affect and spirituality played a role in our intersectional oppressions and non-normative construction of our differences. We call for collective emotional, affective and spiritual autoethnographies for change at the nexus of special education labeling and intersectionalities.

Keywords:

• Collective autoethnography
• high-incidence disabilities
• emotionality and affect
• spiritual paradigm
• critical disability studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

Notes

1 Throughout the manuscript, we fluctuate between the terms disabilities or disability and dis/abilities or dis/ability. By disabilities or disability, we mean that the terms are not socially constructed but bio-psychological and neurological that exists within the body of an individual. In turn, by dis/abilities or dis/ability, we mean the social, historical, political, cultural, economical and emotional construction of both ability and disability as opposed to the bio-psychological and neurological understanding of the term.

2 The medical-model of disability situates the impairment or the disability within the body, mind or spirit of the individual and needs intervention, control and intervention and attempts to normalize the individual.

3 By over-representation we mean the disproportionate amount of Black and Brown students labeled with high-incidence disabilities when they represent a lower amount of the overall population in a school. In other words, they are represented disproportionately in special education programs versus their White and Asian peers, when the latter students of color might represent the majority.

4 By under-representation we mean the under-identification of Black and Brown students in gifted and talented special education programs.

5 By emotion-laden talk Hernández-Saca (2016) means the emotion discourse that students engaged in as they were being interviewed for the larger qualitative study. Emotion discourse is situated within social practices and is indexed within the reactions, responses, opinions, etc. of people’s talk (Moir, 2005).

6 Due to space, here we are only able to review the cultural-historical and policy master narratives of LD. For the professional master narratives, please see Hernández-Saca (2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Hernández-Saca

Dr. David Hernández-Sácá is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Northern Iowa. He received his PhD from Arizona State University and MA from UC Berkeley. Dr. Hernández-Sácá is a former multi-subject teacher and his teaching responsibilities at UNI include undergraduate teacher preparation courses in the areas of post-school transition programming and issues and applications in special education. Dr. Hernández-Sácá’s research nucleus of his research agenda is problematizing the common sense assumptions of learning disabilities (LD). Dr. Hernández-Sácá’s three lines of research include: (1) the emotional impact of LD labeling on conceptions of self, (2) the role of emotion and affect in teacher learning about social justice issues, and (3) the role of affect and emotion in the transition plans and programming for historically marginalized youth with disabilities at their intersections of multiple identities and their families. Overall, Dr. Hernández-Sácá investigates these lines of inquiry as they relate to historical equity issues in general education and special education and current movements for inclusive education.

Mercedes Adell Cannon

Dr. Mercedes Adell Cannon is an Associate Director in the Office of Adaptive Educational Services at Indiana University Purdue - University Indianapolis (IUPUI). She received her PhD and M.Ed from IUPUI. Dr. Cannon is a administrator in the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and an adjunct faculty in the School of Education. She is also a former Entrepreneur of Just For U Salon as the Owner/Operator. Dr. Cannon’s taught strategies of educational inquiry and school counseling program graduate courses. There are three pillars to Dr. Cannon’s research (1) advocating for social justice and equitable resources for students with disabilities transitioning from high school to college; (2) disrupting and deconstructing the pathologization, disablement, and exclusion of disabled and marginalized students; (3) facilitating and developing self-awareness and an understanding of research, and she adds, teaching as a situated cultural practice, in order to engender the best possible environment for the educational success of all students. Holistically, Dr. Cannon examines these lines of inquiry in the context of sociocultural and sociohistorical experiences of Black and Brown women of color pursuing an postsecondary education.