Critical Pedagogy of the Disabled in Legal Academy and Possibility of Emancipatory Script of Disability Movements: A Critical Note

Critical Pedagogy of the Disabled in Legal Academy and Possibility of Emancipatory Script of Disability Movements: A Critical Note

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Volume 16 Issue 3 ()

Is there a possibility of a critical pedagogy of the disabled in law schools where epistemic imagination is colonised by positivism? What would be the framework and trajectory of such pedagogy? The authors try to sketch the oeuvre of this pedagogy by exposing the inherent limits of disability studies and movements that seek their validity in the language of the neo-liberal market and state. In doing so, the paper highlights the intrinsic exclusionary nature of our legal pedagogy, law schools, and legal discourses concerning our disabled embodiment and our lived experiences that get pushed to the periphery due to this aggressive imposition of the positivist framework of pedagogy that gives its uncritical discursive support to neo-liberal agenda.  This endeavour necessitates going beyond the clearly delineated, orderly, definite, and precise domain of positivist jurisprudence and critically examine the prevailing liberal discussions regarding accessibility and reasonable accommodation.The authors juxtapose three figures of disabled embodiment, namely, Vikas Kumar, G. N. Sai Baba, and Stan Swamy, and their interaction with our judicial system to expose the limits of liberal legalism, its discourse, and limits of disability movements that have only middle-class concerns into their vision.

Cite as: Dr. Vijay Kishor Tiwari, Arjun Ghosh & Sushanth Gajula, Critical Pedagogy of the Disabled in Legal Academy and Possibility of Emancipatory Script of Disability Movements: A Critical Note, 16 NUJS L. Rev. 420 (2023)