What the Hell are You? An Intercategorical Analysis of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Disability in the Australian Body Politic

Abstract

Critical disability studies has examined the intersections between gender and disability. Meanwhile, feminist analyses of the intersection between race, class and gender identities have developed important insights, but failed to include dimensions of disability. A wealth of literature deals with issues of health and illness from a cross-cultural perspective, but disability has been a much-neglected area. This paper will examine why gender, race, class and disability have developed as mutually exclusive areas of research and inquiry. It will argue that an intercategorical examination between racialized groups, disability groups and gendered groups in a period of colonialism and neo-colonialism in the Australian context can bring to the fore the ways dominant cultures produce and reproduce themselves. Issues of eugenics, population control, the constitution of the normal subject and exclusion of different bodies provide evidence of these processes.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Andrew Jakubowicz, David Hollinsworth and Leanne Dowse for helpful comments during the preparation of this paper.