Handicap et colonialisme

Disability and Colonialism: (dis)encounters and anxious intersectionalities

Call for Papers

Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies

Guest Editors: Shaun Grech, Manchester Metropolitan University & Karen Soldatic, University of New South Wales (currently Curtin) 

We are pleased to announce that we will be guest editing a special edition entitled Disability and Colonialism: (dis)encounters and anxious intersectionalities on behalf of the established refereed journal Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. 

The aim of this special issue is to position disability within the colonial (the real and imagined), through which to explore a range of (often anxious) intersectionalities as disability is theorised, constructed, and lived as a post/neocolonial condition. While postcolonial theory and associated fields (e.g. critical theory, cultural studies etc.) have engaged with race, gender and ethnicity in the exploration of themes of identity, representation, space, historicity and the neocolonial, they have almost wholly bypassed disabled people- paradoxically limited to the subjectification of the able-bodied, or rather disembodying colonialism. Westerncentric fields of study such as disability studies remain detached from the global South, the histories, contexts and cultures of these specific geopolitical spaces, and how disability is ontologically constructed and lived through a history replete with signifiers of power and empire and that frame the global. While some have adopted colonialism as a metaphor for the experience of disability (see for example Shakespeare, 2000), of colonized bodies by the medical profession, the colonial encounter per se, its creation of and implications for the disabled subject, remains inadequately theorised. In turn, disability is persistently removed from history and any contemplation of the post or neocolonial and efforts (discursive or material) at decolonizing these spaces and those within. 

The special issue aims to transcend disciplinary, epistemological, methodological, spatial and historical boundaries. Engaging indigenous, post/neocolonial, disability studies, critical theory, psychology, Latin American Cultural Studies, and a range of other perspectives and literatures, and prioritising voices from the global South, we invite authors to engage in critical debate around colonialism to explore a range of thematic concerns (not exclusively): 

 Colonial representations and the construction of the disabled body and mind

 The violence and disablism of colonialism

 Intersections of race, ethnicity, culture, gender and disability

 Empire and the domestication of bodies: globalisation, economics and beyond

 Disabled identities, metaphors and language, and their roles in subjugation

 From the colonial to the post/neocolonial: disability and contemporary lineages of imperialism

 Social identities and visions of disability

 Colonial medicalisation: identifying, labelling and ‘treating’ the disabled body

 The Christianising mission, biblical renditions and the disabled subject

 Decolonizing epistemologies, practices and lives: renegotiating power and contemplating global justice


We encourage authors to engage work on Southern theory and movements and approaches prioritising and promoting Southern epistemologies and counter-hegemonic knowledges emerging from struggles for justice.

Those wishing to submit an article, please email your full manuscript to both Shaun Grech (S.Grech@mmu.ac.uk) and Karen Soldatic (ajks123@bigpond.com). Please insert ‘Submission for Disability and Colonialism Special Issue’ in the subject line. Manuscripts will be sent anonymouslyfor double peer review, and comments and recommendations relayed to authors through the editors.

Articles should not exceed 8,000 words in length, and include a 300 word abstract. The journal style guide is available here. Manuscripts should be submitted by no later than: 1st January 2013.