“Look at Me!”: The Public and Digital Political Campaigns of People With Disability During Chile’s Sociopolitical Crisis

Abstract

In a context of multiple crises, an important number of people with disability competed to participate in drafting a new constitution in a remote Latin American country. Their experience shows how the way of looking at disability is structured. Based on interviews with candidates to be members of the Chilean constitutional convention, the study examines how they react to contemptuous, deindividualizing, and assistencialist ways of looking that devalue, invisibilize, and cancel them. However, both on the streets and in digital networks, they deploy strategies to counteract this “distribution of the sensible.” An adaptative strategy seeks assimilation through a “we are not different” and “we are equally capable” response to looking. A second strategy, based on differentiation, seeks to build recognition of uniqueness, with candidates hoping to receive a look that recognizes them and allows them to position themselves as leaders to follow: “I saw you, I recognize you, I follow you.”