Intellectual disability – towards the modification of theoretical contexts

Abstract

n this article, I deal with the contemporary contexts of the analysis of the intellectual disability phenomenon and the alternative proposals for theorizing presented by disability studies. I ask the question: what /who the dominant views and non-scientific alliances are for. I question the tendency to favour the medical approach in special pedagogy, which is the starting point as well as the reference point for the educational, rehabilitation, care and support practices it develops. I am not going to decide on the legitimacy of various approaches, I am aware of their historical and systemic conditions. However, I dare to ask a question about – as Miłosz Markiewicz (2017) described it – the limits of the definition of a Human. In view of the experienced diversity of human conditions, like the above-mentioned author, today I have a “problem with using the category of disability too easily” (Markiewicz, 2017, p. 23), and in particular, not often considered in relation to the methods of scientific analysis and theoretical contexts, the category of intellectual disability.