“Nothing About Us Without Common Body”: Another Paradigm for Inclusion in University Education?

Abstract

This article problematizes the ethical dimension ignored by the knowledge on disability and the epistemes used to designate unmeasured power in the body in which it is imprinted, even with the achievements obtained by its political movements in recent decades and its capture by current devices of inclusion in Brazilian higher education. To this end, we resort to the genealogical method and the ethical problematic of the “indignity of speaking for others” enunciated by Michel Foucault to situate, historically, at what moment the political movements of people with disabilities assume this statement in some way and what are the limits of its effects of power in Brazilian higher education. We aim to critically analyze the internal tensions of such movements, the signs of evasion from the medical norm and social normality, intending to problematize the models of knowledge that were based on them, as well as highlighting the emerging powers of a common body like any other in their struggles for inclusive education and social justice. In this sense, we debate for the formation of a “common body” in higher education, constituted from the encounters of knowledge and differences, syndicating for the practice of radical alterity and the mobilization of the becoming -minority of the “people lacking” as a possibility of the emergence of another paradigm of inclusion.