Author: Clayton Lo
Source: Including Disability
Link: https://ojs.scholarsportal.info/ontariotechu/index.php/id/article/view/385
Abstract
This paper offers a comparative cultural and political analysis of disability terminology and the cultural narrative of citizenship across the Sinophone world, with a focus on mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. By tracing the etymological evolution and socio-political deployment of key terms such as cánji (殘疾), cánzhàng 殘障, and shēnxīn zhàng’ài 身心障礙, this study explores how disability is not merely a biomedical or legal classification, but a culturally embedded construct shaped by colonial legacies, socialist governance, and neoliberal reforms.
Drawing on Alison Kafer’s political/relational model of disability and extending it through localized cultural narratives, the paper introduces the concept of Sinophone crip genealogies to theorize the dynamic between transnational and trans-regional disability citizenship beyond Western-centric frameworks. Further, it examines how state institutions, legal reforms, and cinematic representations contribute to the formation of Chinese disability citizenship, an ambiguous status that both includes and marginalizes other disabled individuals and communities.
Through a transnational cultural epistemology, the study interrogates how Kafer’s political/relational model of disability contributes to the critiques of the universalizing tendencies of Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) global disability rights frameworks.