This week’s quote-of-the-week post (though it’s only Thursday) draws attention to the marginalization of Foucauldian scholarship on disability and the continuing absence of critical philosophical work on disability in Foucault scholarship–both lacunae whose constitution I have worked to ameliorate–as well as highlights some of the initiatives to redress this exclusion in which allies in Foucault studies are engaged. At the outset of my chapter “Foucault; The Premier Disabled Philosopher of Disability (My Love Letter to Foucault),” which is forthcoming in Daniele Lorenzini’s The Foucauldian Mind (Routledge 2026), I state:

Across more than two decades, I have produced a substantial body of work on disability that draws from the pathbreaking insights of Michel Foucault, extending and modifying these insights to elaborate arguments about the ontology of disability and production of the ontological status of disability; the (bio)political implications and constitutive consequences of prevailing conceptions and assumptions about disability; and the positioning of disabled philosophers and philosophy of disability vis-à-vis the discipline and profession of philosophy. This body of work on disability has contributed in unique and vital ways to the growing and long-overdue recognition within philosophy that Foucault is a bona fide philosopher whose texts have dramatically influenced contemporary Euro-American ideas about subjectivity, power, epistemology, agency, philosophical traditions, and social institutions.

Against my efforts, and the efforts of Melinda Hall, Stephanie Jenkins, and other disabled philosophers of disability who use Foucault, as well as despite the centrality of disability to Foucault’s own analyses, critical philosophical work on disability has nevertheless remained largely excluded from Foucault scholarship. As I write elsewhere in the aforementioned chapter:

The prevalent assumptions that disability is a disadvantageous personal characteristic or property; that it exists prior to the social and political realms; and that it is properly studied in biomedical contexts, the life sciences, and related academic fields are products of the constitution and entrenchment of the “problem” of disability in philosophy and in society more widely. Foucault’s studies facilitate recognition of how the production of the problem of disability, of disability as a problem to be resolved, has been a strategic technology of liberal governmentality and capitalism (Tremain, 2017, 8). Yet, the depoliticization and naturalization of (the apparatus of) disability that persist in Foucault scholarship and philosophy in general entail that critical attention to disability and its strategic production are largely absent from major conferences, workshops, monographs, and edited collections devoted to these (and other) elements of Foucault’s political thinking, as they are routinely excluded from research, teaching, and writing in philosophy more generally (Tremain, 2015; 2017).

Daniele Lorenzini has taken quite seriously the criticisms that I advance about the relative absence of philosophy of disability from Foucault scholarship and philosophy more generally. (Feminist philosophy journals would do well to follow his example of accountability.) Hence, on Tuesday, I received an invitation from Daniele and Sverre Raffnsøe–editors-in-chief of Foucault Studies–to join the journal’s editorial team as a co-editor. I was very happy to receive the invitation (“It would be fabulous to have you on board”) and look forward to participating in the production of the journal henceforth.

Foucault Studies has undergone significant changes since I guest edited a special issue of the journal on disability in 2015. More changes at the journal are underway. In the words of Daniele: “The journal was established more than 20 years ago and it is currently transitioning to Penn Press, while retaining its entire independence and its mission of publishing first-rate scholarship on or inspired by Foucault according to a diamond open-access model.”

Indeed, I want to strongly encourage disabled philosophers of disability and other marginalized and minoritized philosophers and theorists who write about Foucault, use his tools, or extend and reinvent them in some way, to submit their cutting-edge oppositional work to Foucault Studies. In my role as a co-editor, I will have considerable influence on content of the journal. Here is my commitment to you: In addition to contributing my expertise on (feminist) philosophy of disability to the discussions and other operations at the journal, I will work concertedly to ensure that your (transgressive) work is given the attention and careful consideration that it deserves. I got you.

So, submit your anti-ableist, anti-racist, feminist, decolonial, queer, trans, anti-carceral, and anti-speciesist scholarship to Foucault Studies soon and often! Submission guidelines are available on our journal’s website here!