The Cost of Counting Disability: Theorizing the Possibility of a Non-economic Remainder

Abstract

Critical disability studies begin from the perspective that whatever else disability may be, it is certainly constituted between people, between the perceiver and the perceived. Beginning from this interpretivist position has real consequences for research. Instead of regarding disability as a pre-constituted, objectively given lack that begs for aid, assistance, or help, we can regard disability as an inter-subjectively constituted situation that invites the researcher to consider how people orient to disability and make this meaningful. This chapter engages one such meaning-making situation, namely the ordinary and ubiquitous ways that disability is expressed as an expense.