Black Women’s Knowing, Unruliness and the Radical Transformation of Inclusive Postsecondary Educational Spaces

Abstract

Philosophies of inclusion often operate on the premise that to be included in larger society, those who are deemed as different from the norm, who are defined as “unruly”, must be fixed or modified, “transformed or improved” to be embraced as acceptable. In the world of education, students with disabilities are thus evaluated, assessed, and found wanting; and their bodies and minds are rehabilitated, reformed, regimented, and ruled in an attempt to bring everyone to an agreed-upon center. The purpose of this article is to critically examine this normalizing impact of inclusion in the context of postsecondary educational spaces, by using an intersectional framework that references unruliness as commonality amongst multiple identities, and that centers the transformative power of Black women’s knowing. An exploration of Collins concept of visionary pragmatism, her focus on intersectionality and Hooks description of engaged pedagogy provides an opportunity to explore the ways in which Black women’s critical perspectives can inform and expand disability scholarship and educational practice at the postsecondary level by pushing beyond 2-dimensional ideas of inclusion, by setting up an expectation that within educational spaces lived experience is valued, that encourages an expansion of the imagination and ideas of able and asks educators and students to celebrate resistance to any norm that oppresses or marginalizes.