ABSTRACT
Contemporary intellectual disability politics simultaneously constitutes and restricts citizen-subjects. Since feelings of attachment and responsibility are hard to fit into a conceptual framework founded on individualism and procedural justice, the depictions of an emotionally ridden relationship with tenants point towards what is perceived as a limit of citizenship. The ideology of citizenship in present disability politics depicts the state apparatus as a constant threat of individual freedom. Although the support workers surely are exercising resistance, this is not resistance against the broader biopolitical regime of government. The ambiguous positioning of people with intellectual disabilities as being both entitled to citizenship and the defining others of citizenship is ultimately handled where a leeway to cope with the contradictory status of the group exists. A central point of the ethics of care is its critique of the presumed oppositional relationship between 'independence' and 'dependence'.
