Understanding disability/impairment, inclusively: the case of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome

Whilst myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) has recently attracted high-profile media coverage, dominant accounts do not tell the whole story of how this group of disabled people came to occupy -albeit unequallysociety's fringes.This article, platforming some of the sidelined work of disabled activist-scholars, offers an understanding of oppressions confronting people with ME/CFS that is more inclusive of the politics impacting wider marginalised communities, offering possibilities for coalition-building with other social movements.Moreover, overlooked literature reveals intersecting power systems that differentially shape how ME/ CFS is experienced, promoting an understanding of disability/ impairment more inclusive of diversity.Inspired by the exhortation of Mike Oliver to record our own histories -lest they be written for us -this contribution seeks to challenge hierarchies and exclusions confronting the author as an academically-sidelined person with ME/CFS.Recently, high-profile coverage of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), partially motivated by the death and inquest of a young woman with this diagnosis in the UK (see Watson 2024), has brought renewed mainstream attention to this contested knowledge arena.The history of ME/ CFS is permeated with epistemic injustice (harms sustained by people as knowers) and wider social-structural injustices, shaped by hierarchies that include but extend beyond disability and gender (Kennedy 2012).Yet dominantly-situated knowledge-producers repeatedly sideline the epistemic contributions of marginalised activist-scholars, re-inscribing these hierarchies.As a person with severe ME/CFS, lacking academic credibility markers and writing on ME/CFS from under-represented perspectives, I have found myself relegated to the fringes of ME/CFS academic and advocacy knowledge spaces.Inspired by recent concerns raised over the politics of knowledge production within social