Disability, Intersectional Agency and Latinx Identity: Theorizing Latdiscrit Counterstories

This interdisciplinary volume links dis/ability and agency by exploring LatDisCrit’s theory and activist emancipatory practice. It uses the author’s experiential and analytical views as a blind brown Latinx engaged scholar and activist from the global south living and struggling in the highly racialized global north context of the United States.

LatDisCrit integrates critically LatCrit and DisCrit which look at the interplay of race/ethnicity, diasporic cultures, historical sociopolitics and disability within multiple Latinx identities in mostly global north contexts, while incorporating global south epistemologies. Using intersectional analysis of key concepts through critical counterstories, following critical race theory methodological traditions, and engaging possible decoloniality treatments of material precarity and agency, this book emphasizes intersectionality’s complex underpinnings within and beyond Latinidades. Through a careful interplay of dis/ability identity and dis/ability rights/empowerment, the volume opens avenues for intersectional solidarity and spaces for radical transformational learning.

This book will be of interest to all scholars and students working in disability studies; intersectional disability justice activists; critical Latinx/Chicanx studies; critical geographies; intersectional political philosophy; and political and public sociology.

Alexis C. Padilla is a blind brown Latinx scholar/activist and a Ph.D. graduate from the Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies department at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA. Dr. Padilla is also a lawyer, sociologist, and conflict transformation engaged scholar. His work explores emancipatory learning and radical agency in the context of decolonial Latinx theorizing and critical disability studies. His published contributions emphasize the activist/disability advocacy vantage point combined with actionable dimensions of inclusive equity research and practice. Dr. Padilla’s postsecondary teaching experience encompasses almost three decades. He has more than 20 years of engagement in advocacy and conflict resolution work with Spanish-speaking families and English Language Learning students with disabilities in various USA settings. Since spring 2020, Dr. Padilla has been affiliated with Phillips Theological Seminary to expand his research agenda and his activism scope into intersectional disability theology.