• Publisher: *cf.
• 354 pages
• Author: Darja Zaviršek
• Original title: Hendikep kot kulturna travma: historizacija podob, teles in vsakdanjih praks prizadetih ljudi

This book is an insightful and original analysis of excluding the other in European space. It is written from the viewpoint of the excluded, the ones subjected to silence, the ones we publically do not speak about. By analysing various practices of producing the other, the book attempts to understand what marks the disabled, how they are produced as the others, and why this stigmatisation actually takes place. The author shows the continuity in the treatment of the disabled, but at the same time points out the epistemological break that took place at the beginning of the 20th century in Europe, bringing a qualitative change in the comprehension and treatment of disabled people. Through a historical, theoretical, and ethnographic analysis, the author reveals the ideological mechanisms with which body and mind are disciplined and shows that the conception of disability has no “support” in the nature of disability, but relies on power relations – even more, it realises them. Moreover, it shows how disability is literally formed in an institution.

About the author

Darja Zaviršek

Darja Zaviršek (1962) is a Professor at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Ljubljana and at the University of Applied Science Alice Salomon Berlin. She is the president of the East European subregional Association of the Schools of Social Work of the IASSW. Here research and publications are in the areas of disability and gender studies, critical ethnicity studies, history of social work education under communism.