Beyond Pain: An Autoethnographic Inquiry into Disability, Rights, Ethical Leadership, and Lived Knowledge

Beyond Pain: An Autoethnographic Inquiry into Disability, Rights, Ethical Leadership, and Lived Knowledge is an independent research paper that examines acquired disability as a site of ethical knowledge production, leadership reorientation, and rights-based inquiry. Using autoethnographic methodology, the study draws on lived experience following sudden physical impairment after years of humanitarian engagement and organizational leadership in Bangladesh.The paper challenges dominant narratives that frame disability as personal tragedy or inspirational recovery. Instead, it situates disability within systemic neglect, power imbalance, and moral responsibility, interrogating leadership paradigms that equate authority with physical capacity, uninterrupted productivity, and autonomy.Situated at the intersection of disability studies, ethical leadership, and trauma-informed inquiry, the research argues that disability generates a distinct form of ethical knowledge grounded in vulnerability, dependency, restraint, and dignity. The study demonstrates how lived experience, when practiced with reflexivity and ethical discipline, can function as rigorous, non-extractive scholarship, particularly within Global South contexts.This paper contributes to disability and leadership scholarship by advancing a rights-based understanding of leadership shaped through limitation rather than recovery, and responsibility rather than performance.