Occupying Disability: An Introduction

Abstract

Inspired by disability justice and the fall 2011 “Disability Occupy Wall Street/Decolonize Disability” movements in the US and related activism elsewhere, we are interested in politically engaged critical approaches to disability that intersect academic fields—principally occupational therapy, disability studies and anthropology—as well as community organizing and the arts. The “occupy” international movements claim collective identities as does Occupying Disability: Critical Approaches to Community, Justice, and Decolonizing Disability. International disability movements claim disability as a collective identity rather than a medical category and recognize the political and economic dimensions of disability inequity as it intersects with other sources of inequality. Different political positions have evolved within different disability perspectives, all of which demand audience. Working with them and understanding them requires broader social critiques not usually part of most clinical educations. Some activists would not, as a matter of principle, engage clinicians because of their unfettered access to agency and operations of power. Negotiation of separatist consciousness is a stage to forming identities in many political movements. Yet we, as editors and authors strive to move beyond simple binaries: the goal is true participation, meaningful occupation, and disability justice.