In the case of handicap, spontaneous designations reveal implicit classifications (e.g. : curable/irretrievable). This paper offers a history of the various designations starting with Esquirol’s reasoned classification, typical of 19th century epistemology, which reveals the educable individual behind the patient under treatment until the official classifications who endeavour to formalize life situations for epidemiological and political ends. It show how institutions view the disabled persons as populations to be administered, risks to be prevented, individuals to be satisfied. A type of permanent elision of the individual appears, relating back to the fundamental aporia of quasi-unrepresentable strangeness.