Working within the tensions of disability and education in post-colonial Kenya: Toward a praxis of critical disability studies

This paper explores emerging and evolving critical approaches to inclusive education development work in the postcolonial, global South context of Kenya. Taking an ontoformative (Connell, 2011) perspective of disability, we view disability as a dynamic process inherently tied to social contexts and their fluid effects on disabled bodies. Thus, not all impairments are a natural form of human diversity, and many are imposed on bodies in underdeveloped countries through oppressive imported Western practices. In this paper, we present our work not as models of ‘what to do’ or ‘what not to do’ in development work. Rather we offer a reflection on the evolution of our understanding and approach to this work from being merely ‘progressive’ (while further exporting Northern theory), toward a more critical and self-reflexive approach. We hope this is a starting point in a dialogical process of mutual knowledge production between the global North and South that leads to better ways of conceptualizing and supporting people with disabilities in the global South.