Intersectionality and Disability? Presence, Absence, and Interconnections in the Education Literature

• In Event: Intersectionality and Disability: “Nowhere and Everywhere at Once”

Abstract

Purpose: To explore how disability has and has not been approached through an intersectional lens, we offer a critical and historical overview of the education literature. We examine articles in American Educational Research Association (AERA) journals published over the last 25 years. This timeframe marks the passing of the Americans with Disability Act in 1990 and the rising influence of Patricia Hill Collins’ work on intersectionality (1986, 1989). The focus on AERA publications also acknowledges the association’s role in providing thought leadership on issues of import that extend across discourse communities.

Theoretical Perspectives: We drew from three theoretical perspectives: intersectionality, critical disability studies (CDS), and Foucault’s conception of discourse. First, we examined how disability has been taken up within intersectional perspectives. In following Collins (1998), we remained interested in how different identities “mutually construct one another” (p. 63). Second, we took up Goodley’s (2013) argument for the “centrality of disability.” As he articulated, “disability is the space from which to think through a host of political, theoretical, and practical issues that are relevant to all” (2011, p. 157). Third, we drew upon Foucault’s (2002) conception of discourse as being “made up of a limited number of statements for which a group of conditions of existence can be defined” (p. 117). When read in the context of CDS, discourse highlights the interplay among labels, accepted definitions, and methodology. Thus, Foucault’s perspectives allow us to identify intersectional approaches to disability, while carefully attending to what is absent or backgrounded. This, we suggest, is as much an issue of empirical content as it is methodological approach.

Methods: The methods in this study involve a critical review of the literature (Jesson, Matheson, & Lacey, 2011). Data were sourced from articles published during the last quarter century in the seven current AERA journals. We began with a review of abstracts that specifically make reference to disability and ability. Selected articles then were coded according to two categories: article type and intersectional identities. We identified if articles were empirical, conceptual, theoretical, and/or methodological in scope; this then informed an analysis of how notions of disability and intersectionality appear in the education literature. We developed tables and visual diagrams that illustrated how disability has been taken up across identities, and the degrees of absence, presence, and interconnection in the education literature. Alongside Foucault, therefore, visuals depict the pervasive discourses that continue to shape the meaning(s) and place of disability in education literature. After an analysis of areas of emphasis and silence, we suggest directions for future intersectional research that might bring disability into the fore.

Significance: Our review highlights not only the ways in which disability has been historically constructed in the education literature, but also points to its backgrounding or absence from many studies that claim to do intersectional work. Alongside Erevelles (2014), we think with disability to advance a “committed politics of accountability and access” (para. 1). Significantly, this contribution potentially expands who and what are represented in intersectional studies that promote equity in education.

Authors

• Emily A. Nusbaum, University of San Francisco

• Jessica Nina Nina Lester, Indiana University

• Jasmine Ulmer, Wayne State University