Phenomenology and Physical Disability: for a Non-normate Body Policy

Abstract

Gaining disability among the areas of phenomenological reflection is urgent political action. The aim of this article is twofold: contributing to the debate about physical disability, from a particular starting point (i.e. the meanings of the real experience) and revealing the structures that socially inform the bodies in their relationships with others. Experiencing physical disability means living a compromised body. The compromised lived-body reorganizes, in fact, the experience of space, time, relationship with the self and with the others, the knowledge of the world and endures an inequitable and ableistic socio-cultural organization. In this context, the concept of disappearance is discussed. The compromised body disappears before a norm produced by the able bodies and is excluded from the shared project of a world-together-with-others. In this sense, the phenomenological reflection could rethink and support the social participation of people with a physical disability.