This paper is an invitation to “put disability in mind” when doing anthropology. Thinking with disability provocatively and severely distorts our imaginative repertoires, our assumptions about what a body can and cannot do, our understandings of what it means to be a subject, our languages about equality, difference and hierarchy, our horizons of desire, our political horizons, our understandings of morality, our understandings of what is good, what is whole, what is complete, what is human, what is shared or universal. In the paper, we will address these issues through a journey through works and critical contributions of disability studies in anthropology, with a focus on Brazilian production and recent transformations in the universe of Higher Education.
Pedro Lopes @pedrrolopes is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of São Paulo, researcher at the Center for Urban Anthropology (NAU), the Center for Studies on Social Markers of Difference (NUMAS), the Study Group on Disability, Society and Culture (GEDESC/Unipampa) and the Kaleidoscope of Affirmative Action Project (UFABC/CNPq). His work mainly covers the following topics: anthropology, education, social markers of difference, disability, intellectual disability, gender, sexuality, race, accessibility, higher education, affirmative action, Brazil and South Africa.
Recommended readings:
LOPES, Pedro. (2022). Disability in the head: an invitation to a debate with difference. Anthropological Horizons, 28(64), 297–330. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-71832022000300011
MELLO, Anahí Guedes de; AYDOS, Valéria; SCHUCH, Patrice. (2022). Crippling anthropologies from the mediations of disability. Anthropological Horizons, 28(64), 7–29. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-71832022000300001
Instagram NAU: @naucidades.usp
Linktree NAU: linktr.ee/naucidades.usp