Disabled people and subjugated knowledges: new understandings and strategies developed by people living with chronic conditions

Dr Ana Bê, Liverpool Hope University

Date: Wednesday 5 June, 2019
Time: 2.00–3.30pm
Place: Conference Rooms 1 & 2, Liverpool Hope University, UK


This seminar provides a contribution to our understanding of the knowledges and strategies developed by people living with chronic illnesses, based on an empirical study conducted in England and Portugal. Disability studies has historically (and rightly) focused on mapping out and understanding disablism. The way disabled people relate to their bodyminds has only recently featured in the literature. Adding to this work, Dr Bê argues that disabled people constantly have to negotiate codes about the body, based on normative notions, which she terms normative corporality. The knowledges and strategies developed by disabled people are often unnoticed, or devalued, as we tend to value knowledges of the body that come from established systems of knowledge, or from the bodies our society deems normative. The concern is that the subjugated knowledges of disabled people are in danger of being unacknowledged in futurity.

Ana Bê is Lecturer in the Department of Disability and Education and a core member of the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies at Liverpool Hope University. She has published in Alter, Disability & Society, and The Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies.

This seminar is part of the Disability Futurity series organised by the CCDS in collaboration with Carleton University’s Disability Research Group, Canada.

For further information please contact Prof David Bolt: Email:boltd@hope.ac.uk