Disability Justice: Reframing Hospitality and Revisioning Inclusion
Kristine C. Meneses, Ph.D.
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Abstract

One of the sectors in our society that has a long experience of injustice is persons with disabilities. It is their disability that is often seen, while their person/being is all together pathologized or medicalized. As a result, they not only experience discrimination, they are also stigmatized. They experience marginalization in all aspects of life, socio-economics, and politics. They are misrepresented in literature, media, and everyday conversations, when often their conditions are identified with negative associations, especially in metaphors, such as: “are you deaf,” “love is blind,” “he is lame,” and “this is insane.” This paper is an attempt to bring to the fore how persons with disabilities continuously experience injustice, even in the Church. Using the post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Leticia it will expose how the Church still carries a negative view about persons with disabilities as well and adopts the models of disability that it has internalized for centuries. Is the inclusion of PWDs in the Ecclesia considered authentic disability justice? To answer this, I attempted to enhance Rabbi Julia Watts Belser’s inclusion paradigm by using Jacques Derrida’s ethic of hospitality, which can be seen as virtue as well as a form of disability justice.

Year Published
2021
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