ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that a discussion of existing tendencies within the field, one that makes explicit the assumptions that ground people methodological choices, would be a valuable addition to existing disability histories. The practice of writing historical narrative and making claims about the past gives rise to power dynamics that require constant negotiation, not to mention reflexive and reflective consideration. The insight that history writing is imbued with the politics and power of knowledge-making can readily be extended to frame counter-hegemonic and subaltern histories as acts of resistance and epistemic decolonialisation, as many postcolonial theorists have shown. While many historians have addressed Verstraete's full-length study pursues issues, it is still difficult to locate a concentrated discussion of the philosophy and politics of disability history that details the heterogeneity of these knowledges. These issues go well beyond differences in terminology and pose epistemological challenges to our assumptions about disability.
