The aesthetic and political concerns that motivate my inquiries stem from what I take to be a notable fact of pluralist democratic societies: namely, that individuals or groups in these societies attend to one another at the level of appearances.
Nice overlap with Siebers here.
what I will variously call disarticulation or disfiguration
I appreciate both of these words. (Dis)articulation calls to mind articulation theory (Marika Seigel's recent book on rhetoric and pregnancy does a super job of explaining and using the theory to interesting effect). And (dis)figuration calls to mind the rhetorical "figuring" of sense-making.