I JUST WONDERED IF I CAN DO THINGS ON MY OWN AND DON'T HAVE NOBODY TELL ME WHAT I CAN AND CANNOT DO. I KNOW BETTER:LETTERS TO THE WORLD FROM INSIDE OF A SEGREGATED SHELTERED WORKSHOP

The segregation and exploitation of people oppressed by the label of intellectually disabled is pervasive and commonplace but underinvestigated academically. This article enacts an interrelational method to interrogate the cultural practices and dynamics that are used to subjugate based on categories related to intellectual capacity. In order to explore moral exclusion and structural violence the words of a woman captured through published letters from within a sheltered workshop (factory-like spaces of exclusion claiming to support people with disabilities) are intertwined with the scholar activist’s stance of the author. Along with the examination of these abusive practices, this article is inspired by the radical possibilities contained in the published letters from the author within the sheltered workshop, as the writer of the letters envisions desire as a form of resistence and as she reimagines subjects as agents. In place of conclusions, the article generates difficult questions cradled by uncomfortable reflexivity about power and academic exploitation in the name of activism.