In this article we present the findings of a qualitative study where we explore the relationship between researchers and activists about their experience of producing knowledge in contemporary Latin American academic institutions. We use ableism as an analytical tool, understanding it as a logic of inaccessibility, discrimination and unfair treatment affecting people with disabilities. We conducted fifty-one interviews with researchers and activists in Latin America, unveiling how it operates in the region. After an analysis guided by a grounded theory enquiry strategy, we identify three elements: (1) (In)accessible university cultures; (2) Emotional labour and temporal subversions; and (3) Intellectual disabilities and politics of exclusion. Researchers and activists work with diffuse boundaries, raising criticism and resistance to the dynamics of scientific productivity, the historical exclusion of certain groups and the epistemological sovereignty of approaches such as biomedicine.
Authors: Constanza López Radrigán, Marcela Tenorio Delgado, Claudia Verónica Montero Miranda
