When "Inclusion" Starts Feeling Performative: What This Course Changed for Me By Ariktha

Before taking this course, I think I understood disability in a very surface-level way. I mostly saw it through the lens I had grown up around: accessibility ramps, inspirational stories, medical diagnoses, or the idea of “helping” disabled people. I never really stopped to think about how disability is also shaped by culture, systems, architecture, media, education, and even language itself. This course completely disrupted that understanding for me.

From Individual Problem to Social & Political Issue

One of the biggest shifts for me was realising how often disability is treated as an individual problem instead of a social and political issue. The lectures on anti-ableism and critical disability studies especially pushed me to question who spaces are actually designed for in the first place. I kept returning to one question from the slides:

Who is the university designed for, and who is left out?

That question stayed with me because the more I thought about it, the more I realised how deeply "normalcy" structures everyday life.

Accessibility as Afterthought

What really struck me was how accessibility is usually treated as an afterthought. Something added later. Something optional. The lecture on anti-ableist teaching discussed how access is often framed as a technical problem instead of a social justice issue. I started noticing this everywhere around me, inaccessible classrooms, crowded public spaces, professors assuming one mode of participation works for everyone, even casual comments people make without thinking.

I realised that many institutions celebrate diversity publicly while still expecting everyone to function according to one "ideal" body and mind.

Media Representation & Full Personhood

I also found myself thinking a lot about media representation. Before this course, I honestly never questioned why disabled characters in films are either portrayed as tragic, inspirational, or somehow "special." Priyam Sinha's work on Bollywood and disability representation made me realise how disability is often turned into spectacle or emotional content for audiences. Even films that appear progressive can still reinforce stereotypes.

Reading about Margarita with a Straw complicated my own assumptions because it brought together disability, sexuality, gender, and desire in ways mainstream Indian cinema usually avoids. It made me reflect on how rarely disabled people are allowed full personhood on screen, their stories are often filtered through pity, inspiration, or voyeurism.

The discussions around screenwriters, production culture, and "New Bollywood" showed how disability narratives are shaped through negotiations, industry pressures, and ideas of marketability. That made me think about how inclusion can sometimes become performative, where diversity is celebrated because it appears progressive or emotionally moving, not necessarily because systems have changed in any meaningful way.

Vulnerability, Power & Research Ethics

One of the most uncomfortable but important parts of the course was reflecting on vulnerability and power in research. The session on sensitive research really challenged the idea of the researcher as a neutral observer. I had never seriously considered how research itself can reproduce hierarchies: Who asks the questions? Who gets represented? Who benefits from the research? And who is spoken for instead of listened to?

They went up on the stage
started narrating us our own sorrows
but our sorrows remained ours
never became theirs.

— from Professor Satendra Singh's lecture

So much advocacy, policy-making, and even academic work still happens about disabled people rather than with them. The discussions around DPOs (Disabled People's Organisations) made this distinction much clearer for me. I had not realised how important disabled-led organisations are politically, especially in resisting charity-based or paternalistic approaches.

Ableism as Structure, Not Just Discrimination

Another thing this course changed for me was my understanding of ableism itself. Earlier, I thought of ableism mostly as discrimination against disabled people. But the lectures expanded it into something structural and cultural, a system that values productivity, speed, independence, and competitiveness above everything else.

That hit me harder than I expected because those values are so normalised in universities and workplaces that we rarely question them. Even burnout culture suddenly started looking different to me. I began wondering how many people are excluded simply because institutions refuse to adapt.

Disability Studies Meets Medical Humanities

I especially appreciated how the course connected disability studies with medical humanities. The distinction between illness as a lived experience and disease as a medical category was important for me. It reminded me that healthcare is not just about diagnosis or treatment, it is also about dignity, listening, and humanity. Some of the examples shared in the lectures about medical ableism were honestly disturbing because they showed how disabled lives are still often seen as less valuable.

Learning to Be Uncomfortable

At the same time, I do not want to romanticise this learning process. There were moments where I caught myself wanting easy answers or feeling reassured that "awareness" itself is enough. But this course constantly pushed beyond that comfort zone. It forced me to confront how deeply ableism is embedded not only in institutions, but also in everyday interactions, media consumption, education systems, and even my own thinking.

This course did not give me a neat conclusion about disability. Instead, it made me more aware of complexity, contradiction, and my own assumptions. But maybe that is the point, to remain critical, uncomfortable, and reflective rather than settling for simplified ideas of "inclusion" that sound good on paper but fail people in reality.

Critical disability studies asks us to rethink whose bodies, voices, and ways of existing are considered valuable. Once you start noticing those exclusions, it becomes difficult to unsee them.