ABSTRACT
In September 2010, the local paper Sydsvenskan revealed that a person diagnosed with intellectual disability getting support in a group home in Malmo, Sweden, had lived with his arms tied behind his back for the last 25 years. The same notion of citizenship that provided the yardstick that classified inferior intelligence as a specific category of human beings is today figured as the vehicle of inclusion for this group. What intellectually disabled people share is the fact that their brains and capacities are perceived as different with respect to what is considered 'normal'. As a contribution to disability studies, the author's analysis provides the first book-length examination of intellectual disability from the theoretical perspective of biopolitics. Intellectual disability emerged as a distinct category, in the form we know it today, at the end of the 19th century and was consolidated as a specific administrative category.
