Framing Disability in Portugal: Historical Processes and Hegemonic Narratives

Abstract

The perspective used to understand disability impinges decisively on the rights and lives of disabled people. The way disability is understood results from socially accepted and reproduced conceptions, which articulate with social and cultural dynamics that, in different historical and geographic contexts, mark the lives of those people categorized as disabled. Presenting a singular definition of disability is thus impossible. There are definitions that, by virtue of the hegemonic character have imposed themselves in different latitudes, resignifying or disputing the existing grammars. This multiplicity of grammars does not correspond to an equivalent range of life chances for disabled people. Throughout the centuries, disability has been reduced to the abnormalities and impairments of the body, and difference transformed into a factor of exclusion. In each historical moment, it is, thus, crucial to identify the hegemonic narratives of disability and to reflect on their impact on disabled people’s lives and life chances.