Merging critical disability theory with Post-Colonial hybridity theory: a widened lens and implications

Abstract

This article will briefly introduce the traditional disability studies project through the social model of disability and how its inherent theoretical limitations became the impetus to perpetuate a need to adopt critical disability theory (CDT) to expand the intellectual arsenal of the discipline. Being a reflexive inquiry that resists domination that oppresses people with disabilities, CDT’s reach produced work in conversation with other areas of critical social thought and inspired this paper to explore how post-colonial work – particularly Homi Bhabha’s hybridity theory – can be incorporated into CDT’s paradigmatic views of power. This paper concludes by addressing some of the debates and cultural implications that stem from conceptually merging CDT and post-colonial hybridity theory to frame how it can reimagine the possibilities and trajectories of a global disability movement.

Points of interest

• This article addresses the two main ideas in disability studies, starting with the social model of disability, which helped put forth critical disability theory.

• Critical disability theory suggests that people with disabilities are controlled by others using the idea of ‘impairment’ to justify their power.

• The article suggests that critical disability theory can benefit from an approach called post-colonial hybridity, which combines global North and South ideas to help represent people with disabilities in the Southern part of the world.

• The article also concludes by exemplifying how mental health and traditional healing practices are combined to support well-being. The authors encourage people studying disability to listen to different voices worldwide to understand how the world is changing.

Keywords:

• critical disability theory
• social model of disability
• post-colonial theory
• neoliberalism
• hybridity theory
• Global South

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).