Reviewed by Kate Champlin
Content Warning: Graphic references to systematic abuse, state violence, war, sexual violence, and trauma
Kazemi’s remarkable work draws attention to issues that are underdiscussed in the disability community. These issues have been relatively overlooked for two reasons. First, Kazemi considers disability in Iran. Disabled populations in the Middle East are often overlooked in discussions of both the global north and the global south. Second, Kazemi specifically examines disabilities inflicted by state violence or economic inequalities. Moreover, her painstaking and sensitive work offers us a critical framework through which to consider these tragedies. As Kazemi suggests, these disabilities are both negative examples of biopower and aspects of the disability experience. Disabling Relations is a necessary, groundbreaking, addition to disability studies.
Kazemi’s work is grounded in the act of witnessing. She defines this political act as providing “context and corroboration” for those who have shared their experiences with her (173). As a child in Iran, Kazemi personally spoke to disabled, and often neglected, war veterans. As an adult living in Canada, she has spent more than sixteen years in movements demanding justice for former political prisoners. Her allies in this community included political prison survivors and the families of those who did not survive. These haunting shared experiences are what drove Kazemi to write Disabling Relations. Kazemi has also conducted extensive interviews with wounded survivors. She feels that she “cried, laughed, and died” along with her interview subjects (xvii). Although she resists terms like vicarious trauma, Kazemi admits that the interviews have changed the way she relates to herself and the world. As she puts it:
The world changes in the [survivor’s] eyes, from a relatively benign world to an extremely dangerous one, in which incidents like rape and torture transpire. In my case, ever since I started conducting interviews and immersing myself in their stories, I apprehend sudden explosions to take place in my face. I expect my oven to explode for no apparent reason. I expect my car to explode. (184)
Kazemi offers readers a relatively new concept—wounding—to help us conceptualize the stories that she has collected. As Kazemi suggests, disabilities caused by state or economic violence cannot be separated from the injustices that create and sustain them. She uses this concept in discussions of disabled veterans of the Iran-Iraq War, punitive limb amputation, gender-based acid attacks, and madness caused by torture in Iran’s political prisons. As Kazemi suggests, all are acts of biosovereignty, state actions aimed at enforcing power through the bodies and bodyminds of the population.1
Kazemi differentiates the lived experience of a wound from the experiences portrayed in most disability studies texts. These texts have generally discussed disabilities that spring from accident or biology. Consequently, many texts often describe the disability experience in terms of unlearning ableism, fighting discrimination, and demanding accommodations. The lived experience of a wound is often far more complex. Many wound survivors live with extremely traumatic memories–in addition to their struggles with social stigma and their needs for accommodation and on-going care. One wound survivor described the experience as “dying every day and reinventing yourself to stay alive” (qtd. in Kazemi 27). The idea of the wound will allow disability advocates to acknowledge both the horrors inflicted by biosovereignty and the inherent worth of disabled bodies.
This vocabulary is especially important because biosovereignty is a global phenomenon. The experiences that Kazemi describes are very specific to Iran and to the biopolitics of the IRI (Islamic Republic of Iran). However, war injuries, injuries inflicted by legal systems, and injuries or illnesses created by resource deprivation, occur “even in” the heart of the global north. For example, survivors of police violence in the United States may bear lifelong wounds from their encounters.2 Kazemi’s most revolutionary concept will affect studies of disability in all areas, even as her work remains staunchly located in the culture and events specific to the IRI and with the people whose stories she has collected.
In Disabling Relations, Kazemi bears powerful witness to stories of systematic abuse and state violence. The work also offers us a way to conceptualize these disabilities as both similar to and different from disabilities that result from illness, accident, or genetic difference. This book will alter and expand disability studies while presenting a scathing indictment of state violence.
Notes
- Editor’s Note: Among other foundational texts in alignment with and informing Kazemi’s work, readers who are interested in reading further are encouraged to engage with Jasbir K. Puar’s The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (Duke University Press, 2017).
- Rodney King, for instance, suffered permanent neurological injuries: https://www.pcs.org/features/rodney-king.
Title: Disabling Relations: Wounded Bodyminds and Transnational Praxis
Author: Sona Kazemi
Publisher: Temple University Press
Date: 2026
Read Kate Champlin’s reviews of In the Bear’s House and Notes from the Ward in this issue of Wordgathering.
Back to Top of Page | Back to Volume 19, Issue 2s – Spring 2026
About the Reviewer
Kate Champlin (she/her) is a late-deafened adult and a graduate of Ball State University (Indiana). She currently works as a writing tutor and as a contract worker for BK International Education Consultancy, a company whose aim is to normalize the success of underserved students.