ABSTRACT
Within the current drive to transform and decolonise psychology in South Africa, this chapter highlights one of the ‘other’ axes of identity that is arguably largely overlooked within this endeavour – disability. The chapter exposes how psychology, particularly in South Africa, with its unexamined assumptions concerning ‘expected’ identities marginalises ‘other’ psychologists – specifically, those along ability/disability lines. This autoethnography explores the experiences of feeling othered because of disability – in professional practice and academia. I am a disabled psychologist and university lecturer. The discussion draws on critical disability literature and the theoretical framework of biopolitical power to begin to understand the impact of silencing, stereotyping and oppressing in a profession that is supposedly transforming, postcolonial and inclusionary. My experiences of difference, deviance and defiance as an ‘other’ psychologist is shared, beginning a conversation in which the discipline's assumptions around compulsory forms of identity – not disabled, among others – are disrupted in productive ways.
