ABSTRACT

In this chapter, we critically engage with the growing interest in decolonising discursive practices in disability studies to understand and situate localised disability practices of decolonisation. This involves processes of ‘epistemic de-linking’ from Eurocentric disability imaginaries, materialities and praxis, as we illustrate below. Through scholarly practices of complex navigations, the chapter examines the coloniality of disability and the localised praxis of decolonisation within emergent disability reflexive scholarship that are everyday acts of ‘epistemic disobedience’. In trying to sketch out how discourses in disability studies are often entangled in (re)producing colonial narratives, we will critically discuss the inherent ambivalences and ambiguities of decolonisation processes to counter the real potentialities of disability scholarly practices of decolonisation becoming an academic ‘buzzword’ to legitimise existing geopolitics of power and knowledge.