Disability and Colonialism ─ Disencounters and Anxious Intersectionalities

The mapping, control and subjugation of the human body and mind were core features of the colonial conquest. This book draws together a rich collection of diverse, yet rigorous, papers that aim to expose the presence and significance of disability within colonialism, and how disability remains present in the establishment, maintenance and continuation of colonial structures of power. Disability as a site of historical analysis has become critically important to understanding colonial relations of power and the ways in which gender and identity are defined through colonial categorisations of the body. Thus, there is a growing prominence of disability within the historical literature. Yet, there are few international anthologies that traverse a critical level of depth on the subject domain. This book fills a critical gap in the historical literature and is likely to become a core reader for post graduate studies within disability studies, postcolonial studies and more broadly across the humanities. The chapters in this book were originally published as articles in Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture.

Karen Soldatic is an international disability scholar at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Karen has extensive experience within the field of international development in post conflict zones. Her work brings together this rich field work to theoretically inform conceptual understandings of disability.

Shaun Grech is director of The Critical Institute, Malta, visiting fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, andeditor-in-chief of the international journal, Disability in the Global South (DGS). Shaun is also an activist and practitioner working with disabled people in extreme rural poverty in Latin America.