The limits of knowing other minds intellectual disability and the challenge of opacity

Abstract

New care workers in Britain typically struggle to understand, on their initial encounters, people who communicate atypically due to their intellectual disabilities. But they are required to provide care that is attuned to these individuals’ desires and intentions. Why, then, does a care organization called L’Arche UK make it harder for carers to learn what is going on inside these people’s minds? I argue that doing so does not prevent the acquisition of essential knowledge, but rather trains new carers to relate to those with intellectual disabilities as opaque. This creates a more involved relationship that opens up the possibility of forms of status and intimacy otherwise closed to such people— thereby raising questions about the supposedly fundamental role that transparency and knowledge play in knowing others.