The following is the script for my presentation at St. Louis University on 01/31/2025 at 2pm. My slides with alt text can be found here:

“The true philosophy of history thus consists in the insight that, in spite of all these endless changes and their chaos and confusion, we yet always have before us only the same, identical, unchangeable essence, acting in the same way today as it did yesterday and always…The motto of history in general should run: Eadem, sed aliter [The same, but otherwise].” – Schopenhauer

Abstract: Is there a future for disability justice in philosophy? Will society become more accessible? As I unwillingly embark on a new era of rampant privatization, service cuts, and state-sanctioned violence in the U.S., I am not hopeful that things will improve for disabled people. I call this mood “crip-pessimism.” As far as I can tell, crip-pessimism has not been developed as fully as pessimisms in other philosophical subdisciplines, including feminist theory, critical race theory, and queer theory. In this presentation, I examine various pessimistic philosophies and explore whether they can be used to better understand the crip-pessimism that I and many of my disabled friends are experiencing. 

The Elusive Quest for Disability Justice 

In December, I participated in a roundtable discussion at the annual Philosophy, Disability, and Social Changeconference, where I was asked, “what actions can philosophers take to interrupt disability’s exclusion from the profession?” I was tempted to give the usual answers: promote disabled philosophers, critique ableist epistemologies, adopt principles of universal design, and so on. But I no longer feel confident that this advice will make a difference. That is, I am pessimistic about the possibility of an accessible future for academic philosophy. 

At the roundtable, there were three other speakers besides myself, and only one of them works in a philosophy department, even though they all hold PhDs in philosophy and have published extensively in the field, particularly in the philosophy of disability. Nonetheless, Andrea Pitts works in a department of comparative literature and Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril works in a college of medicine and veterinary science. When asked what advice they would give to junior disabled philosophers, both recommended applying for jobs outside of philosophy departments, where their knowledge and expertise might be more appreciated. 

The third speaker, Stephanie Jenkins, did manage to secure a full-time job as a philosopher at a liberal arts college, but after being hired, she had to hire legal representation and file a discrimination complaint against a high-level administrator. She explained that she only had the confidence to sue her university because by then, she was ready to give up on professional philosophy “due to [her] frustrations with the lack of access.” This is not the only disabled philosopher I know who has filed a discrimination complaint, nor the first to consider leaving the profession due to lack of accessibility, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.   

The conference organizer, Shelley Tremain, is one of the most prolific scholars in disabled philosophy of disability, but has no academic job. At the conference, she disclosed that despite her extensive record of scholarship and unpaid professional service, she is now impoverished and on the verge of homelessness. This is a fairly common situation for disabled people, who make up less than 50% of the workforce in Canada and less than 25% of the American workforce according to government data. Disabled people are also underrepresented in the philosophical profession, as I’m sure many of you know. These statistics have barely budged in the last 20 years, making me wonder if real progress is possible. 

Shelley also announced that the conference will no longer receive funding and will cease to exist if no one steps in to cover the relatively small budget for this entirely-online event. Many participants expressed disappointment that the only annual conference for disabled philosophers would be coming to an end. Several also shared that they felt hopeless about the future of philosophy for disabled people, as well as the future of disability justice in general, given the persistence of structural barriers. It doesn’t inspire optimism when disabled philosophers’ best advice is to leave the profession or not go into it in the first place.

In the U.S., this pessimism is compounded by the fact that the new President seems to have no plans to make society more accessible, and may in fact plan to make it less accessible. In a 2024 op-ed in Time Magazine, Trump’s nephew, Fred Trump, disclosed that the President had told him that disabled people “should just die.” When Fred inquired about funding a medical trust for his disabled son, the President responded that he should “just let him die and move down to Florida.” If this is Trump’s intention for disabled Americans, then we can expect no Presidential support for Social Insurance, Medicaid, or any other accessibility services. 

These events have left me with a growing pessimism about the future of disability justice. I am no longer hopeful that society will become less ableist overall. On the contrary, I suspect that it will grow more ableist for the rest of my life, and probably long after that. I also share my colleagues’ suspicion that philosophy departments, especially in the United States, will become increasingly inaccessible. As Republicans continue to strategically underfund higher education and privatize the public sector, the most marginalized subdisciplines will be on the chopping block. This is why I’m reluctant to give advice about how to disrupt ableism in academic philosophy: I don’t want to give people false hope or encourage them to fight a losing battle, if the reality is that many disabled philosophers will end up leaving the profession, filing lengthy and expensive discrimination lawsuits, or falling into poverty after devoting many years of unpaid service or low-paying gig work to a profession in decline. In short, I’m pessimistic about the future for disabled philosophers and disabled Americans in general. 

I call this orientation “crip pessimism.” If you’re unfamiliar with the term, “crip” is a reclaimed shorthand for “cripple,” much like “queer” has been reclaimed and reinterpreted by members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Crip theorists explore how ableist societies oppress and marginalize bodies identified or marked as disabled. They view disability as a social construct or apparatus of power rather than a natural, biological, and apolitical state of individual bodies. Crip theorists also emphasize the intersections between ableism and other forms of oppression, such as homophobia, sexism, racism, and classism. And they typically advocate for social justice, solidarity, and relationships of reciprocity and respect. 

Crip theorists don’t typically write about optimism or pessimism, and the central themes of crip theory – oppression, resistance, solidarity, caregiving – could be seen as compatible with either orientation. When preparing for this presentation, I was unable to find any substantive philosophical account of crip pessimism. Pessimism, however, is a well-developed concept in queer theory, critical race theory, feminist philosophy, and existentialism, where it is associated with inexorable barriers, alienation, anxiety, and death.  

When I googled “crip-pessimism,” the two top results were a dissertation by Michael L. Selk in the field of communications studies, and a book on crip negativity by J. Logan Smilges, an English professor at the University of BC. While neither result is a strictly philosophical account, both resonate with my feelings of pessimism about the future of disability justice. Selk laments that “the disabled are dying and with them dis/abled culture is being eradicated. In the time between formulating this project and its completion already too many disabled souls have been taken from this world, including pivotal disability studies influences for this research.” In a similar spirit, Smilges shares that, “some days my bad crip feelings are felt so cripply that I live in a heap of tears and blankets. Sometimes I feel despair—total, fucking despair.” Although Smilges’ pessimism is ephemeral, it “honors… the depth of [their] bad crip feelings,” which are “no more or less aberrant than the bouts of optimism [they] feel at other times.” Smilges uses the term “crip negativity” to describe the negative emotions that disabled people often feel toward a society that defines them as a negation – as the absence of humanity, knowledge, and other positive qualities. Being defined as negation engenders negative feeling, including sadness, anger, and pessimism. 

Although informative, these texts weren’t exactly what I was looking for, as they’re not philosophical accounts and they don’t offer a focused analysis of crip-pessimism comparable to those in other-disciplines. This inspired me to look more closely at the concept of pessimism in other areas, to better understand my own “crip feelings” about the prospect, or lack thereof, of an accessible future in professional philosophy and the broader culture. Due to time constraints, I can only outline a few pessimistic arguments in each section, but my goal is simply to bring these arguments into productive conversation with crip theory. 

Perhaps I should say in advance that my aim isn’t to convince anyone to become a pessimist. I don’t think that moods or philosophical orientations are under our direct control, so it would be pointless for me to try to convert anyone. Instead, I simply want to develop a framework for understanding what I and some of my friends are feeling as we unwillingly embark on a new era of rampant privatization, service cuts, and state-sanctioned violence. What kind of pessimism is right for this particular historical moment of ableist oppression?  

In what follows, I will examine some pessimistic thoughts in feminist philosophy and African American philosophy, and then compare them to themes in crip theory to see if they can shed light on crip pessimism and contribute to a more intersectional analysis.   

1. Feminist Pessimism

In her paper Perpetual Struggle, Kathryn Norlock argues for pessimism about moral progress. She begins by asking, “What if it doesn’t get better?” and goes on to argue that a better future may not be on the horizon, and there is no guarantee of linear moral progress: 

Against more hopeful and optimistic views that it is not just ideal but possible to put an end to what John Rawls calls “the great evils of human history,” I aver that when it comes to evils caused by human beings, the situation is hopeless. We are better off with the heavy knowledge that evils recur than we are with idealizations of progress, perfection, and completeness; an appropriate ethic for living with such heavy knowledge could include resisting evils, improving the lives of victims, and even enjoying ourselves. (2018: 1)

Norlock contrasts this pessimistic orientation against the optimistic predictions made by philosophers like Martin Luther King Jr., John Stuart Mill, and John Rawls. Dr. King believed that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Mill said that “in every century, progress is made.” And Rawls argued that “the great evils [of history] will eventually disappear.” Against these optimistic forecasts, Norlock maintains that “there is no reason to believe that the future will be one in which evils cease to be” (6). Furthermore, expecting moral progress can make one vulnerable to “adaptive preferences, that is, preferences for what is within the range of options that are available” (3). Hopefulness, in short, can foster ignorance about the evils of the world and an unwillingness to confront them.

Hannah Arendt similarly believed that hope leads to helplessness and exploitability. In 1934, she described “fear and hope” as “the two arch-nemeses of Jewish politics” (viz., Hill 2024). She argued that hopefulness explains how thousands of Jewish people could volunteer for deportation to concentration camps, optimistic that they were going to resettlement camps that would offer them a better life. Arendt cautioned that totalitarian regimes exploit people’s hopefulness to better control them and lead them to their own destruction.  

Having survived the Nazi regime, Arendt recognized that hoping for an end to evils is unrealistically utopian. Similarly, my grandfather, who lived under Mussolini and endured lifelong PTSD from witnessing the horrors of the fascist regime, believed that fascism would always persist in some form, and we should remain vigilant about the resurgence of fascism under different guises. This advice resonates with non-ideal theory, which acknowledges the reality of structural injustice – a reality that is erased by idealistic moral and political theories predicated on an assumption of linear progress. As Charles Mills put it, ideal theory “abstracts away from social oppression,” thereby both “conceal[ing] its extent” and preventing us from confronting it (2017: 15). As an optimist, Rawls believed that non-ideal social conditions were merely temporary obstacles on the path to a “realistic utopia,” free from injustice. In contrast, Norlock argues that non-ideal conditions are a permanent feature of social reality, making survival a perpetual struggle. Thus, our moral and political theories should be compatible with a realistic expectation of lifelong adversity. This is not a recipe for nihilism, however, since perpetual struggle is compatible with many ordinary goals and values, including survival, solidarity, caregiving, disobedience, friendship, and artistry. 

Norlock’s observations align with a popular belief amongst feminist philosophers that there is a certain logic to the patriarchy, which makes it extremely resilient and resistant to change. Simone de Beauvoir articulated a version of this belief in The Second Sex, where she argued that women are a subordinate class relative to men. As a result, women – as well as sexual minorities like trans and non-binary people – do not enjoy the same freedoms as men, including the freedom to participate equally in public life, contribute equally to public discourse, and be free from violence. Although the patriarchy has changed over the last 70 years, the logic of patriarchy has remains intact, continuing to uphold male privilege, as Kate Manne demonstrates in her book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (2019). Manne suggests that as feminists push against patriarchal barriers, they face greater hostility, which prevents them from achieving the elusive goal of full gender equality. The more feminists push against the patriarchy, the harder the logic of misogyny pushes back. While feminists have made gains since the 1950s, the patriarchy continues to assert itself in new and more insidious ways. 

Beauvoir herself often wrote optimistically about the future of feminism, but theory and practice do not always align. Beauvoir ended up quitting philosophy because of her insecurities about her philosophical abilities, which were triggered by Sartre’s adversarial comments. She wrote in her memoirs: “Day after day, and all day long I measured myself against Sartre, and in our discussions I was simply not in his class…. [Eventually, I came to realize that] many of my opinions were based only on prejudice, bad faith or thoughtlessness, that my reasoning was shaky and my ideas confused. ‘I’m no longer sure what I think, or even if I think at all.’” After quitting philosophy, Beauvoir remained romantically linked to Sartre until his death, when she was surprised to learn that he had cut her out of his will and bequeathed everything to his latest girlfriend. Beauvoir’s hopefulness about the future of feminism didn’t protect her from ordinary misogynist antagonisms, such as being pressured to quit your job by your spouse or being denied reciprocal caregiving. 

Lauren Berlant (2011) uses the term “cruel optimism” to describe the hope or desire for an unrealistic future, which inevitably leads to disappointment, frustration, or delusion. She applies this term to the attitude held by many Americans in the 1980s, who hoped for the upward mobility, job security, and social equality promised them by post-war politicians. Persistent belief in the American dream, says Berlant, made Americans susceptible to excessive workaholism, empty relationships, and consumerist lifestyles that failed to deliver a meaningful life. Rather than hoping for a better future that may never come, Berlant recommends embracing small acts of care, connection, and joy that can be realized in neoliberal societies that deny people basic security, stability, or a guaranteed quality of life. 

Norlock is careful to note that pessimism is not incompatible with feminist values like care, friendship, and solidarity. Unlike classical liberal theorists who aimed to change the world, feminists tend to have more modest goals that can be realized within patriarchal societies. 

The value of non-world-changing goals is demonstrated by Norlock’s treatment of complaint in another paper (2017). Specifically, Norlock argues that complaining about one’s plight is valuable even when politically ineffective. This challenges the dim view of complaint held by Aristotle and Kant, who described complaining as useless, emasculating, undignified. Aristotle wrote that “females… and effeminate men enjoy having people to wail with them… But in everything we must clearly imitate the better person” – that is, a man. Kant similarly held that “no true man will importune a friend with his troubles.” Both philosophers believed that complaining is irrational and self-indulgent because it accomplishes nothing. Political protest, on the other hand, changes society for the better, and is therefore fitting for rational and “manly” people. This dismissive view of complaint is, of course, sexist, but it is also overly optimistic about the future, which is not under our direct control. The dismissive view fails to acknowledge that some people – specifically, deeply oppressed people – are not even in a position to change their own circumstances, let alone the entire world. Nonetheless, their complaints are valid. Complaining can solidify social bonds and communicate knowledge to others, even when it doesn’t change the grand scheme of things. This is why complaining about a hopeless situation can be valuable. In fact, complaint is most valuable in the most hopeless situations because it generates the kind of solidarity and friendship that makes oppression more bearable. The value of complaining doesn’t depend on the possibility of political change, and is therefore compatible with pessimism.  

Myesha Cherry (2020) similarly argues for the importance of care in conditions of inexorable oppression. Consistent with non-ideal theory, Cherry notes that the world is full of evils. However, not everyone chooses to acknowledge those evils; some prefer to be “blissfully ignorant.” Others choose to be aware of systemic evils, and these people are colloquially called “woke.” Cherry notes that “being woke can impede wellbeing” because it can cause existential, mental, and emotional anguish (2). The pain of wokeness can come from knowing that society defines you as a “problem” or negation; reckoning with painful memories of a lifetime of oppression; and acknowledging that people will continuously disappoint you by refusing to change. Despite the pains of wokeness, we should not recede into bad faith. Rather, the solution to woke anguish is “solidarity care” or collective concern and mutual support among people who share a common struggle – one that may never end. Cherry emphasizes that we should care for people not just “as a means to accomplish a grand objective,” but simply because they deserve care, especially in the worst and most irremediable situations of suffering (5). This is consistent with the general feminist understanding of care as a relational value rather than a political expedient. Care, as such, is valuable even, and especially, when the cause of a person’s suffering is irremediable.   

Although Cherry isn’t particularly pessimistic, she does agree with Norlock that feminist goals, like care and solidarity, don’t need to be politically expedient to be valuable. Rather, these goals should be compatible with pessimism about moral progress, as this 

makes them accessible to oppressed people who may have no control over their situation. 

Cherry notes that “care ethics is in some ways the opposite of the liberal tradition,” which instrumentalizes emotions and relationships as mere means to a political end, prioritizing grand objectives over more accessible goals like caring and building relationships (5). In contrast, feminists care ethicists tend to value pragmatic goals such as finding joy in dark places, building friendships in hopeless situations, and disobeying patriarchal rules for the sake of defiance. These goals are compatible with the possibility that things won’t get better.  

B. Afro-pessimism 

When one thinks of pessimism, one of the first philosophies to come to mind is probably Afro-pessimism. Afro-pessimists such as Frank B. Wilderson II (2015) and Orlando Patterson (1982) believe that Black people are defined in modern liberal societies as the negation or absence of humanity and valuable human characteristics. The ontological positioning of Black people outside the category of the human ensures that anti-Black racism will persist, regardless of social or legal reforms. Afro-pessimists are therefore skeptical of liberal frameworks for addressing racism, such as anti-discrimination laws or diversity initiatives, which address surface-level manifestations of racism while leaving its foundational structures intact. Afro-pessimists describe the condition of the Black subject as one of “social death,” characterized by perpetual violence, dispossession, and social exclusion.   

Afro-pessimism may seem to be incompatible with the gains of the civil rights movement, which have inspired hope for perpetual progress, but Derick Bell contends that the perception of linear moral progress is little more than an optimistic illusion. In And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice (1987), Bell argues that “American civil rights doctrines and laws were little more than symbolic gestures used to maintain societal stability and diffuse black radicalism” (Curry 2017). As my friend Tommy Curry describes Bell’s thesis,American policymakers decided that “Blacks in the United States would be allowed to progress as long as their agenda did not conflict with the interests of a broad group of whites. In short, Black rights would remain secure or be rewarded as long as those rights aligned with the interests of the dominant white group.” As such, civil rights laws were enacted only if they aligned with and protected white privilege. Consequently, the civil rights movement allowed anti-Black racism to persist, albeit in subtler and more insidious forms. Bell’s analysis affirms the Afro-pessimist thesis that the struggle against racism is perpetual.   

Nonetheless, Afro-pessimism is not incompatible with post-colonial values such as survival, solidarity, disobedience, and joy. In The Politics of Black Joy, Lindsay Stewart writes that, “although the South burgeons through and through with racism, our oppression is not so totalizing that it chokes out every tender shoot of Black joy” (2024: 2). Black joy, as Stewart describes it, is not a form of protest or resistance – which would presuppose the hope of a better future – but is instead self-referential, aimed at cultivating happiness, art, and beauty independent of the white gaze. Stewart characterizes Black joy as form of refusal rather than resistance because it doesn’t need to react to or defined itself against white supremacy; instead, it exists on its own terms, as sui generis. Thus, Black joy is compatible with the rising tide of white supremacy; it exists independently of the white gaze’s perception of Blackness.

C. Crip-pessimism 

The pessimistic orientations discussed above resonate with themes in crip theory and can be used to further develop a notion of crip-pessimism that could be useful in the modern era.   

First, a common theme in pessimistic philosophies is negation as a logical signifier of oppression. Oppressed people are defined in opposition to humanity as the absence of valuable human properties. Consistent with this, crip theorists note that modern neoliberal societies define disability in opposition to humanity as a fundamental lack, deficit, or impairment. Shelley Tremain, for instance, writes that the dominant definition of disability is as “a natural human disadvantage” and “an inherent human flaw” (2017: viii). This negative conceptualization places disabled people in a state of social death or perpetual dispossession, exclusion, and violence. It validates the claim that “disabled people should just die,” as well as policies designed to eliminate disability and, by extension, disabled people. 

Because the logic of ableism is so deeply ingrained, liberal frameworks for addressing it are unlikely to succeed. In Empire of Normality: Capitalism and Neurodivergence, Robert Chapman argues that the “liberal, rights-based framework” popularized by the civil rights movement cannot eliminate structural ableism because it “focuses on incremental reforms within the system,” leaving intact the “deeper societal power relations, structures, and norms” that maintain able-bodied privilege (2023: 7-9). While civil rights legislation did “help some neurodivergent people, it was mainly those who were already relatively privileged in other ways – white, middle­class, and so on – while leaving multiply marginalised neurodivergents stuck in a variety of carceral systems, homeless, or in other unbearable situations” (9). Seemingly, neurodivergent people have been allowed to progress only as long as their agenda does not conflict with the interests of the neurotypical majority. As civil rights activists demanded more rights for disabled people, the logic of capitalism responded with more insidious and resilient forms of ableism, which have been harder to dislodge. Chapman adds that late-stage capitalism has generated a “mass disabling event,” with levels of depression and anxiety on the rise (107). Rather than abating, ableism has, in some ways, intensified as capitalism has produced less security and more intense disasters.   

Should we remain hopeful that liberal reformism can fulfil its promise of radical change? Believing in the liberal utopia promised by post-war politicians could be a form of cruel optimism that will only bring disappointment, despair, or delusion. But this doesn’t mean that all is lost. We can still invest in the relational and self-referential goals of solidarity, care, commiseration, disobedience, and joy promoted by feminists, critical race theorists, and existentialists like Camus and Nietzsche. These goals don’t depend on the possibility of moral progress because they are already available to us, no matter what our circumstances.  

For me, this is an appealing proposition because it resonates with my experiences. When I attend conferences by and for disabled people, I get to see my friends, enjoy myself, and share stories about my experiences, including my pessimism about the future of disability justice. We complain about our struggles, even though none of us knows how to solve them, much less save the world. But saving the world isn’t the point of going to the conference. It’s to create a temporary oasis of crip joy, solidarity, and knowledge in a vast desert of ableism.  

Norlock points to Aldo Leopold as a real-life exemplar of the ethic of perpetual struggle. Leopold, an American environmentalist, “saw environmental deterioration as inexorable, but he greatly enjoyed taking a canoe on singing waters, and celebrated the pleasures of nature, both aesthetic and affective” (11). Leopold predicted that environmental degradation would continue to accelerate, and he was right. Last week, Florida was covered in snow while California was on fire, and these disasters will only intensify. But, as Leopold said, “that the situation is hopeless should not prevent us from doing our best” (ibid). Doing our best is always an option, even if our house is on fire. There are some things that oligarchs can’t take from us.

This is a good lesson for those of us who are pessimistic about the future of disability justice. Is there an accessible future for professional philosophy? Even if the situation is hopeless, we can do our best to survive ableist austerity measures, show solidarity to people facing ableist discrimination, care for people affected by ableist policies, and show up for disabled people in other ways, even and especially if America’s political circumstances don’t improve.    

Thank you.