ONLINE FIRST
published on September 13, 2023
Rhea Ienni
https://doi.org/10.5840/jpd202391220
Access Without the Demand for Explanation
Glissant, Disability, and the Right to Access Opacity
Within Western approaches to disability, the expectation for disabled people to ¡®prove our disability¡¯ is not only central for receiving access supports, but also for being accepted by those around us. Disabled people must make themselves intelligible to the able-bodied world under the threat of not getting one¡¯s needs met, exclusion, and violence. In this paper I argue that ?douard Glissant is important to bring into conversation with issues in disability studies for two reasons: First, Glissant¡¯s account of compulsory transparency illuminates the underlying colonial values that inform the assumption that we need to understand someone¡¯s disability in order to provide access and respect. Second, Glissant¡¯s argument for the right to opacity creates a potential avenue to rethink an approach to access that is not predicated on being fully understood or rendered fully visible by means of reductive, able-bodied categories: the right to access opacity.