Introduction: Palestinian philosopher Edward Said contended that the role of intellectuals in every discipline is to interrogate the unquestioned assumptions on which their profession’s practices depend, resist the uncritical acceptance of authoritative discourses, challenge orthodoxy, and stand in opposition to injustice and oppression.
Objectives: To explore the relevance of Said’s ideas to the work of occupational therapy scholars striving towards an ethically-consistent and socially-accountable profession.
Approach: This presentation brings Said’s work to the attention of those occupational therapy intellectuals who seek to contest the profession’s status quo and to present alternatives for future practices.
Practice implications: Said exhorted intellectuals to contest the proclamations and platitudes of those wielding power within their particular discipline; accordingly, occupational therapy’s scholars would insist that the profession’s Position Statements are documents of action, not performance. Because Said refuted professionals’ collusion with classificatory practices that reinforce colonialism’s hierarchical systems of injustice (such as by assessing and documenting physical and functional differences from constructed “norms”), his work has clear relevance to an occupational therapy profession informed by an ableist ideology.
Significance to the occupational therapy profession: Identifying writing as an inescapably political practice, Said exhorted theorists and intellectuals to care about the consequences of ideas promulgated within their profession. Intellectual integrity obligates occupational therapy’s thinkers to expose hypocrisy within the profession’s discourses and practices, demand accountability, and engage in, and promote sceptical critical consciousness. Said’s work inspires occupational therapy’s scholars to contest the ableist status quo, inspire change, and innovate a future profession committed to resisting injustice.