Embodied Resistance and Epistemic Sovereignty: Rethinking Knowledge Production in Disability Studies

ABSTRACT This article develops a theoretical framework to examine how knowledge about disability is produced, legitimised and challenged within contemporary power structures. It poses the following question: How does the bodily experience of exclusion generate alternative forms of knowledge that challenge dominant epistemic structures? Drawing on critical disability studies, feminist theory and Southern epistemologies, the article introduces the concepts of ‘embodied resistance’ and ‘epistemic sovereignty’ as interconnected analytical tools. It argues that neoliberal discourses on resilience function as mechanisms of normalisation that individualise structural inequalities and shift the responsibility for inclusion onto people with disabilities. In contrast, embodied resistance is conceptualised as a set of situated, often subtle, practices through which people with disabilities maintain their autonomy within disciplinary environments. Epistemic sovereignty refers to the relational capacity to participate in shaping the concepts and interpretive criteria through which lived experience is understood and institutionally addressed. Thinking from the wound names the process through which embodied experiences of exclusion can inform critical interpretation, without treating suffering as a guarantee of knowledge. The framework is articulated through four dimensions—guiding, tactical, methodological and political—and the Chilean context is used as an analytical site to illustrate how inclusion can reproduce epistemic asymmetries despite formal advances in participation. In doing so, the article contributes to disability studies and broader social theory by repositioning embodied experience as a site of conceptual production and by clarifying the relationship between knowledge, agency and social behaviour.