By Mark Bookman and Michael Gillan Peckitt Michael [The Limping Philosopher]: I am an academic living in Kobe and I work at Osaka University. I have cerebral palsy and, while I can get around with the aid of a walking stick, I have very little movement in the left side of my body. My disability also […]
COVID-19 Pandemic: A Crisis of Care*
By The Care Collective (Andreas Chatzidakis, Jamie Hakim, Jo Littler, Catherine Rottenberg, Lynne Segal) We are in a global crisis: a new historical moment. The days pass, the virus expands its reach, fatalities rise and the world goes into unprecedented lockdown. Yet the current crisis is not only the result of a new pathogen circulating around […]
Biopolitics and Coronavirus, or Don't Forget Foucault (How Could We?)
An excerpt from the essay “Biopolitics and Coronavirus, or Don’t Forget Foucault” by Felipe Demetri: “What the coronavirus epidemic shows us is more the strength of Michel Foucault’s explanatory scheme than the current necro-thanatopolitical strain of interpretations. We all know that Foucault saw biopower as a series of events, from theoretical ones to concrete practices, […]
JSTOR Teaching Pandemics Syllabus
Readings on the history of quarantine, contagious disease, viruses, infections, and epidemics offer important context for the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. From JSTOR: “Last week, the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic. In an effort to slow the spread of the disease, schools and universities across the world have transitioned […]
Buying Ableism and Shit During the Pandemic
On social media, on TV, in the mainstream press, etc. endless reports have appeared about people “hoarding” toilet paper, getting into physical altercations in Costco stores over packages of toilet paper, searching for hours online to purchase toilet paper, driving around their deserted cities to find a package, and so on. I’ve also seen a […]
Back on the Anti-Ableist Hobby Horse Again
Question: What do Licia Carlson, Andy Clark, Leslie Francis, Sara Goering, Chris Kaposy, Serene Khader, Eva Kittay, Will Kymlicka, Monique Lanoix, Joel Reynolds, Cynthia Stark, and Jonathan Wolff have in common? Answer: All of them are nondisabled philosophers whose careers have been advanced with publications on disability. None of them has a disabled philosopher of […]
The Fallacy of the Good Philosopher-Activist
Julinna Oxley’s article “How to Be a Good Philosopher-Activist” is the focus of a post over at Daily Nous. I hadn’t previously read Oxley’s article, so I’m glad that it’s showcased on the Daily Nous blog. Although I read the article quickly, I derived from doing so the impression that it’s timely, instructive, and provocative. […]
Structural Gaslighting, Racism in Canada, and Ableism in Philosophy
During the past week, I’ve worked on my presentation for the upcoming philoSOPHIA 2020 conference at Vanderbilt University. As I indicated in an earlier post, I decided not to attend the conference in person due to the air travel that my doing so would require. I’ve chosen instead to participate in the equally exciting Speciesism […]
Bioethics (and) MAID in Canada
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 […]
