Theoretical reflections on disability and sexuality: a critical-interpretive inquiry in Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper critically explores disability and sexuality through an interdisciplinary theoretical lens, drawing on Butler, Kristeva, Foucault, and Spivak. It argues that disability is socially reproduced through the mechanisms of representations, power and silencing rather than purely biological deficits. These theories are used to elucidate how disabled bodies are discursively framed as deviant, asexual and dependent in the society. Butler’s performativity shows how PWDs internalize these labels and reflects through intensified performativity and bodily embodiment. Kristeva’s notion of abjection reveals how disabled sexualities are rendered as unnecessary and threatening to the symbolic order; often producing disgust. Foucault’s analysis of deployment of sexuality demonstrates how medical, legal and institutional discourses regulate disabled intimacy and interpersonal relationships. Finally, Spivak’s concept of subaltern showcases how people with disabilities - particularly in South Asian contexts are still under the epistemic shadows of the dominant tropes and denied authority to speak about their desires and consent. This paper invites a deconstructed embodied way of rethinking the sexual citizenship that strengthens marginal disabled voices, their autonomy, pleasures and political agency.