“The Empire of Validity”: Introduction to the Notion of Validism
The term "validisme" is the French translation of "ableism", a concept that emerged in the 1960s and 70s in the context of disability studies and activist movements for the rights of people with disabilities, contesting a biomedical vision of disability and promoting a social approach. In France, this concept first emerged in activist circles and is now found in academic publications that denounce an "empire of validity" imposing oppressive standards on people with disabilities and calling for a "devalidation" of the dominant model. An extension of wokism (the alliance of communitarianism with an obsession with domination), this notion joins other intersectional analyses on power relations and sparks debates within the academic world about the influence of activism on research.