This article addresses the issue of the dual situation in which disabled people find themselves in modern society. On the one hand, people are increasingly grouped according to ever more precise labels. The political system demands this emblematic organisation. The article discusses the growth in the number of new, high‐profile organisations and how this relates to the political system in which such organisations are needed as ‘dialogue partners’. On the other hand, naturally one finds that in different social contexts there is some opposition to categorisation and labelling.
The strong profiling and articulation of disability are thus factors at the political level This article addresses in the first instance the new, politically distinct mode of labelling. However, there is also a discussion of the way in which individuals’ articulated descriptions of their own disabilities demand a response at levels other than the political.
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