In this roundtable discussion bringing together Kenyan and US scholars and activists, we will discuss the necessity of acknowledging and uplifting disability histories and studies in the Global South generally and Kenya specifically. The privileging of Western narratives, histories and scholarship in the field has led to marginalization and erasure of distinct histories of countries located in the Global South and perpetuated the oppression of disabled people through the predominance of medical and paternalistic approaches. By illustrating the uniqueness of the Kenyan cultural, social, linguistic, economic, and political context, we argue for situated regional disability studies to counteract the violence produced by the presumed universality of North American theory and praxis.
