DISABILITY, DIVERSITY, AND DIFFERENCE: IDIOSYNCRASIES AND CONCEPTUAL DIFFERENCES

ABSTRACT: Since 1980, the United Nations (UN) has played a leading role in disseminating international guidelines against violence, discrimination, and deprivation of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Considering this, the Brazilian political and legal framework for inclusion has expanded considerably in recent decades, bringing transversal regulations in favor of specific identity groups, such as people with disabilities, women, and ethnic-racial collectives. Although they are part of the emerging agenda, when confronted by the complex framework of barriers and social exclusions, official inclusion and diversity discourses present idiosyncrasies and contradictions that can even camouflage political intentions, often disconnected from the struggles of the collectives focused by inclusion policies. In this context, this article aims to characterize conceptual differences between disability, diversity, and human differences. We conclude that the definitions and objects of analysis sometimes align with the critical perceptions of the discourse, while at other times reproduce the normative view of subjects-body-minds, camouflaging, often subtly, the asymmetric social construction of human differences in official rhetoric about inclusion and diversity.

摘要：自1980年起，联合国（United Nations，UN）一直在推广反对暴力、歧视及剥夺人权与基本自由的国际准则方面发挥主导作用。有鉴于此，近几十年来巴西的包容性政治与法律框架大幅拓展，出台了惠及残疾人（people with disabilities）、女性及族裔-种族群体（ethnic-racial collectives）等特定身份群体的跨领域规制。尽管此类议题属于新兴议程，但在面对复杂的壁垒与社会排斥体系时，官方的包容性与多样性话语呈现出特质性与矛盾性，甚至可能掩盖其背后的政治意图，且往往与包容性政策（inclusion policies）所覆盖群体的抗争诉求脱节。在此背景下，本文旨在辨析残疾（disability）、多样性（diversity）与人类差异（human differences）之间的概念分野。研究发现，分析的定义与对象有时会与该话语的批判性认知相契合，而有时又会复刻“主体-身体-心智”的规范性视角，往往以隐蔽的方式掩盖官方关于包容性与多样性的话语中人类差异的不对称社会建构。