Developmental Disability Otherwise: A Collaborative Zine

Other Scholarly Work (Faculty180)

cited authors

  • Monteleone, Rebecca

description

  • <p>Epistemic gatekeeping around scientific and medical knowledge has categorically excluded the embodied and experiential expertise of disabled people, most notably people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Without access to traditional markers of credibility, such as credentials, complex writing and jargon, and professional affiliations, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have had their knowledge and experiences ignored, invalidated, or dismissed outright. As a result, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have been subject to harms including institutionalization, reproductive sterilization, and legal restrictions on autonomy through constrictive guardianship arrangements. Such harms are often made under the guise of paternalism, with proponents arguing that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities must have decisions made on their behalf because the language, systems, and contexts they are embedded are too difficult for them to understand.</p> <p>This zine presents a radical alternative to medical and professional knowledge production about intellectual disability, rejecting the notion that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are not competent to participate in the construction of knowledge about themselves and their worlds. Written in collaboration with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and presented in plain language with explanatory images, this zine presents a social exploration of intellectual and developmental disability. Rooted in critical disability studies and disability justice, this project directly resists the epistemic injustice that has cast collaborative and prosthetic thinking as less valuable and reliable. The zine will include a series of contributions made by people with intellectual disabilities in response to the prompt, “what is intellectual and developmental disability/what does it mean to live with an intellectual and developmental disability?” Responses may look like prose, poetry, drawings, images, or other modalities. In addition to these contributions, the zine will include accessible introductions to philosophical, disability studies, and STS concepts that seek to characterize and address the systematic marginalization of disabled people, including medicalization and the professionalization of medicine, epistemic injustice, and disability justice, serving as a toolkit to radically reimagine knowledge production.</p>

authors

publication date

  • 2025

published in