Cartographies of Difference: from the Invention to the Reinvention of Disability

Drawing on the contributions of Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari, this theoretical essay examines disability as a social construct traversed by power relations within capitalism, problematizing the binary hierarchies that organize social relations, such as the opposition between normality and abnormality. By interrogating the pathologization of bodily differences and the operation of ableism, we argue for the need to affirm difference as a relational and social category. To this end, we analyze the principal theoretical models of disability (biomedical, biopsychosocial, functional diversity, social, and Crip Theory), demonstrating how they remain entangled with power structures that seek to normalize and regulate bodies. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome, we propose understanding disability as a multiple, fluid, and interconnected phenomenon, engaged in an ongoing process of invention and reinvention. The essay contributes to the field of organizational studies by articulating post-structuralist critique with disability studies, mapping how organizational discourses and practices produce and govern difference and indicating possibilities for resistance and alternative forms of coexistence.

Keywords
difference; normality; disability; models of disability; organizational studies