Disability, community and empire: indigenous psychologies and social psychoanalytic possibilities

Abstract

In contributing to this special issue of IJIE on inclusive communities, this paper explores the subjective heart and psychical workings of communities, which are firmly embedded in family, community and society. As countries all around the world are gripped by the rolling out of a psychology of the Global North – Empire – questions are raised about how different communities respond to the inclusion of disabled people. Our interest in communities, for this paper, relates to an ongoing project that aims to share understandings about disability, disablism and inclusion between the UK and Malaysia (http://www.rihsc.mmu.ac.uk/malaysiaukdisability). In this paper, we will attend to the psychosocial and emotional register of disablism and inclusion, bringing in social psychoanalytic ideas, to develop understandings of this register. We present stories from a Malaysian context, which raises local and global issues about the ways in which disability is manifested and reacted to. We conclude by remaining critical of the global dominance of a form of Empire described by Hardt and Negri – self‐contained individualism – in community life in minority and majority world contexts and argue for the need to seek out alternative models of self and other, for example ensembled individualism.

Keywords:

• disability
• community
• empire
• indigenous psychologies
• psychoanalysis