ABSTRACT
The main objective of Rethinking Disability has been to give the emerging dis/abling practices their own voice in order to challenge any a priori form of fi xing dis/ability into a self-closed perspective. It allows one to turn away from general and rather unhelpful discussions concerning the nature of dis/ability and subsequent quarrels around the differences between impairment and disability. Rethinking Disability promotes a methodological and conceptual shift from exclusive perspectives (e.g. ‘the’ social, ‘the’ medical) towards inclusive differences that reveal the limits of either/or explanations of exclusive perspectives. Consequently, it moves away from global perspectives that highlight either ‘society’ and ‘politics’, on the one hand, or ‘the individual’ and ‘nature’, on the other, in order to understand dis/ability. Rather, Rethinking Disability advocates focusing on the heterogeneity of very local-enabling and disabling-practices that make up the very specifi c experiences of dis/ability. These local practices are always more complex than any global perspective of them. This is what makes Rethinking Disability an eminently political project. It insists on giving the specifi cities of dis/abling practices their own multiple voices by challenging any fi xed or hegemonic form of general perceptions regarding them.
