ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects on the disability identity, as some parties treat the author as disabled and others treat him as only temporarily disabled. The chapter discusses the difficulties in defining disability as an identity, which is always in tension with diverse impaired conditions. The author defines disabled identity as a choice for people in terms of their empowerment and solidarity in the context of biological anomalies and social definitions of disability. He proceeds to present his socialization into this identity through an entanglement of social experiences, solidarity with the disability community, and engagement with disability discourses of diverse texts ranging from medical to activist. He also explains how he appropriated DS discourses in relation to his peculiar social position as a person from the Global South, from a war-torn community, and bringing a cultural and spiritual heritage from South Asia. His socialization involves traveling through diverse DS models as shaped by his changing experiences and relationships to lead to his own current position, which he labels a geopolitical model of DS. From this perspective, no one has disability; disability is produced by the changing definitions constructed by dominant ideological apparatuses and inflicted by structural inequalities and power differences. Disability is constructed by ideological apparatuses defined by the powerful to stratify social relations in their favor.
