Welcome to BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY! BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY aims to provide the philosophical community with a forum for critical analysis of biopolitical asymmetries and other mechanisms and effects of power in philosophy and beyond. The BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY insignia in the banner depicts a dandelion, suggesting life, networks, systems, and change (photo credit: James Niland). BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY will […]
MAiD in Canada and Its Discontents
If you read Canadian media, you might have come across news items that indicate how the new leader of the federal New Democratic Party, Avi Lewis, has ‘voiced concerns about the trajectory of Canada’s “medical assistance in dying” (in a word, MAiD) regime’. As I wrote in an earlier post at BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, when I […]
Aestheticizing Ableism and Curating Injustice: Lopes, Eaton, Irvin, and Others on Aesthetics and Disability
Recently, Luvell Anderson and I agreed that sometime in the near future we would attempt to coauthor an article on disability and humour. While disability is my jam, Luvell is an expert on aesthetics and in particular philosophical approaches to humour. Humour (unlike the apparatus of disability) has long been regarded as an important topic […]
Dialogues on Disability on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, at 8 a.m. ET
“I have read almost all of your interviews and they are always wonderful. … I am really looking forward to the next installment of Dialogues on Disability.” — Adrian Piper “… a major contribution to our understanding of the field and the people in it.” — Vanessa Wills “I’ve learned so much about ableism in philosophy […]
Disability Justice Is Animal Liberation: Cripping the Ridglan Farms Open Rescue
On April 18th, hundreds of activists attempted to rescue beagles from Ridglan Farms, an animal research and breeding facility in Wisconsin. David Killoren wrote about his experience as one of those activists, and defended the use of open rescue to liberate animals[i] from carceral settings. This includes Ridglan Farms, where beagles are confined in 2×4 cages for their […]
Bioethics as Eugenic Mechanism: A Précis
Below I have copied the text of a presentation that I am giving (via Zoom) to “The Body in Extremis: Fascism, Health, and the Auto-Immune State” Workshop (U of Illinois-Urbana Champaign) today. In this context, I want to send out the presentation to the tenured liberal Canadian philosophers who—apparently uninformed about ableism and the apparatus […]
Acknowledging and Celebrating the Indisputable Importance of Michel Foucault
As friends of BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY by now know, 2026 is the centenary of Michel Foucault’s birth in 1926. In a recent post, I wrote: Facebook is buzzing in anticipation of the publication of The Foucauldian Mind in September to commemorate the centennial anniversary of Michel Foucault’s birth. Edited by the illustrious Daniele Lorenzini, this landmark text has […]
Proposal for Oxford Handbook of Feminist Philosophy of Disability
As I noted in last week’s anniversary installment of Dialogues on Disability, Katie Staal, Senior Acquisitions Editor at Oxford University Press, recently encouraged me to submit a proposal for a handbook on feminist philosophy of disability. I submitted the proposal, about which Katie was very enthusiastic and has sent out for review, earlier today. It […]
A Gender Icon Strikes Back
The latest issue of Weekend Reads, the supplement of The Chronicle of Higher Education, includes an episode of College Matters, the publication’s podcast, with Judith Butler. In the podcast, Butler gives a brief synopsis of their groundbreaking characterization of gender as performative and its impact on gender studies and queer theory, and then goes on […]
Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain With Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril and Emily R. Douglas
Hello, I am Shelley Tremain and I would like to welcome you to the eleventh-anniversary installment of Dialogues on Disability, the series of interviews that I am conducting with disabled philosophers and post to BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY on the third Wednesday of each month. The series is designed to provide a public venue for discussion with disabled philosophers about […]
Philosophy and Theory of Disability in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies!
On April 9, The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies (ORE) — a mammoth project whose contents will appear online on a rolling basis — was launched! As readers/listeners of BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY may recall, I edited/curated the Philosophy and Theory of Disability Area of the ORE (go here). Yesterday, several authors who wrote for the […]
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