Disability as infra-critique: a compositionist approach to the election process in Denmark

• Published in: Journal of cultural economy 2017-05, Vol.10 (3), p.237-250
• Main Authors: Gad, Christopher, Dalsgaard, Steffen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: compositionism; detachment; Disability; elections; infra-critique; Local elections; Voting machines
• ISSN: 1753-0350; 1753-0369
• DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2017.1312485

This article investigates how disability can work analytically as a 'critique from within'. Our case is the accommodation of citizens with disabilities during the voting process in Denmark. Here disability makes explicit how Danish democracy is produced as disability rubs up against implicit, normalized and mundane infrastructures and practices. We investigate disability as critique in this sense of affording a both analytic and practical 'breakup'. To do so, we promote a 'compositionist' post-actor-network theory approach to disability and to polling and investigate what entry-point for critique this offers. We analyze an incident at a polling booth during the 2013 Danish Municipal election. This renders visible some of the complex socio-material processes through which citizens and the Danish state co-enact and co-authorize one another. We highlight how 'detachments' are vital to such processes and we examine parts of the historical background for the production of authority in the context of managing disability as exception during polling. In doing so we point out that as the organization of electoral processes evolves, new potentialities for infra-critique also emerge.