Bioethicists in Canada (and elsewhere) have played a significant role in the formulation and implementation of legislation that has steadily expanded the scope of what counts as acceptable with respect to medically-assisted death, that is, which medically-assisted deaths should be regarded as acceptable to the Canadian public, whose deaths, and why. Some of these (and […]
The Unbearable Confidence of the Racialized Apparatus of Disability
“First and foremost, I aim to issue a caution . . . When addressing and identifying forms of epistemic oppression one needs to endeavor not to perpetuate epistemic oppression.” – Kristie Dotson (2012, 24) Several months ago, the moderator of the Teaching Disability Studies Facebook group, a group that had operated for several years, announced […]
The Costs of Flying: An Intersectional Analysis (Guest Post)
Guest Post By Michelle Ciurria Professors, especially senior, wealthy, white men, should fly less for work. In this post, I will argue that professors should fly less for work in order to reduce their carbon footprint. And I will argue that senior, wealthy, white, male professors should curb their flight-related carbon emissions the most because […]
Reconfiguring Values: A Riposte to Agnes Callard
In Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability, I argue that disability is a complex and complicated apparatus of power rather than a personal property, attribute, or difference, as assumed on the individualized and medicalized conceptions of disability that most philosophers (including most philosophers of disability) hold. In order to make this argument, I employ Foucault’s […]
Remembering Disabled People on the 75th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz
The sterilization and extermination of disabled people by the Nazis during the Second World War are often overlooked in remembrances of the Holocaust. Indeed, although many disabled people died in Auschwitz and other camps, thousands of disabled people were sterilized and murdered before the establishment of the camps, as disabled author Kenny Fries, among others, […]
What Should We Do?
After I returned from the Disabling Normativites conference in South Africa in October, I began to seriously question whether I should go to the conference and workshop to which I have been invited this Spring. With the growing urgency of the international discussion around climate change and mounting evidence for it, I feel as if […]
Notes on Khader’s Decolonizing Universalism and the Problematization of Disability in Feminist Philosophy
In Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability, I aimed to denaturalize disability by arguing that disability is an apparatus of power rather than a natural human difference, personal attribute, or biological characteristic. My argument is thus distinct from the approaches to disability that disabled philosophers of disability such as Barnes, Silvers, and Stramondo take and […]
Beyond “Squeezable Stress Stars”: Mental Health on University Campuses (Guest Post)*
Guest Post by Jay T. Dolmage In Academic Ableism, I wrote about the connections between historically eugenic programs on college and university campuses—programs that focused on “hygiene”—and the current fad of “campus wellness.” We can draw a (rather straight) line from eugenic mental hygiene programs and physical fitness tests, to their existence as promotional programs, to […]
The Aesthetics and Politics of Depression
In Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability, I call for a conceptual revolution with respect to disability, arguing that disability is an apparatus of force relations rather than a natural human attribute, biological difference, personal characteristic, or property of individuals. In order to denaturalize and politicize disability in this way, I examine the problematization (as […]
War and Climate Change (Guest Post)
Guest post by Eric Winsberg Many human activities are responsible for emission of the greenhouse gases that are pushing the planet toward dangerous tipping points, tipping points that will cause large-scale human suffering and will, invariably, lead to global conflicts over increasingly scarce resources. If we don’t draw down to zero the rate at which […]
BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 