Abstract

I reflect on two aesthetics which are at play in the presentation of critical disability and development work in the global south. On the one hand, authors of critical texts commonly use very complex and abstruse language, which may make such texts relatively inaccessible to some disabled people in the global south. On the other hand, the ways in which development work in the south is portrayed sometimes emphasises methods of engagement which may seen to be infantilising. Drawing on my own experience in such engagement activities, I suggest that it is important to understand, and to subvert, dominant forms of representation.