«Rossella must not sing». An ethnography of rehabilitation processes, between camouflage and agency

Abstract

This presentation takes inspiration from the observation of ordinary practices in the everyday life of a local health service for persons with disabilities (a daycare center in Rome for persons with disabilities, managed by the Italian national health service). By focusing on the epistemological foundations of rehabilitative discourse, as they emerge from these practices, we suggest that the normalizing tension present in occidental societies, central in the idea of the human person as «homo aequalis», has influenced the medical-rehabilitative model of disability. The latter is indeed more focused on an aspiration to similarity than on the promotion of difference. The ethnographic research developed within this local health center (2010-2017) allows us to highlight the historical, symbolic and biographical frames of current rehabilitative practices: these range from ableist tendencies, still common within
the socio-medical sector, to concrete attempts at promoting forms of identification and participation in educational activities, within a relational conception of «disability».