ABSTRACT
Disability was the product of a mind-set that understood impairment as the catalyst that undermined the architecture of perfection. Disability was disavowed as weakness and abjection, wound and contamination; the antithesis of the good life embodied in beauty, truth, reason, order and justice. Disability is a figure forced to huddle in the shadows of the statuesque demi-gods of beauty, truth, reason, order and justice. The dialectic of disability and non-disability is an internal schism that the latter uses to purify and strengthen its dominion. Non-disability–like whiteness–is an ‘unmarked category’, an ‘unexamined centre’, a supressed identity that attributes power to the ‘clean and proper’ bodies that represent the Western ideals of beauty, truth, reason, order and justice. Disability is always already an offence and, therefore, always good to mistreat. In the Reformation, the element of deservingness spun out into secular jurisdiction for disability welfare.
