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Niklas Altermark

Niklas Altermark

Associate professor

Niklas Altermark

Visualizing the included subject : photography, progress narratives and intellectual disability

Author

  • Niklas Altermark
  • Emil Edenborg

Summary, in English

By examining photographic depictions of subjects labeled as ‘intellectually disabled’, this article theorizes how photography performs the ideological function of producing narratives of historical progression. Recurrent representations of, on the one hand, a dark past of state institutionalization and repression and, on the other hand, the present as a time when intellectually disabled people are active, included and happy, function to locate oppression in a bygone era, which effectively obscures how power has transformed rather than disappeared. This relates to how the narrative break between the past exclusion and present inclusion conceals an inherent paradox in the constitution of intellectually disabled subjectivity; at the same time, members of this group are both included by citizenship and classified as lacking the necessary characteristics of the ideal citizen.

Department/s

  • Department of Political Science

Publishing year

2018-12

Language

English

Pages

287-302

Publication/Series

Subjectivity

Volume

11

Issue

4

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Palgrave Macmillan

Topic

  • Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalization Studies)

Keywords

  • Disability
  • Disability studies
  • Historical narratives
  • Narrative
  • Visibility

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1755-6341