Abstract
This thesis examines disabled persons' opportunities to influence and change society. Doing so, by analyzing the disabled person's opportunities to act in society. The thesis is made in collaboration with Egmont Højskolen, and will serve as the academic foundation, for a new study programme, for the disabled students at the school, named #MakeItBetter. #MakeItBetter is a concept that aims to teach disabled people how they can act in society, and change it, for the better, through political acts and activism. To answer my thesis, I discuss what disability is, and unfold it, by discussing how disabeled people, in a lot of ways, are abnormal. Some have different bodies, some perceive differently, some have cognitive damages, with parts of their brain malfunctioning. This means that they talk and act differently than the way we would expect normal, rational political beings to behave. A lot of political decision making is done through very sophisticated institutions that disabled people cannot participate in. But this does not mean that disabled people aren't political or rational beings. I argue that disabled people are rational beings, that they are normal in an existential sense, meaning that all humans, disabled or not, are subject to the existential conditions of life. When we think of disabled people as beings who want happiness and love, we, as fellow humans, have a special obligation to help them pursue their goals. An obligation to listen carefully, to figure out, how actions we first thought were irrational, may be motivated by hopes and dreams. When we do so, as a society, people with disabilities can be political actors, changing the world.