Letter to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs of the Government of Canada in Opposition to Bill C-7

This morning, as per Catherine Frazee’s request, I submitted a letter to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs of the Canadian Government. The letter articulates my opposition to Bill C-7, which would expand access to medically-assisted suicide (“MAID”) for disabled people. Given the dearth of disabled philosophers (of disability) in Canadian philosophy, […]

The Biopolitics of COVID-19

Learning From The Virus By Paul B. Preciado If Michel Foucault had survived AIDS in 1984 and had stayed alive until the invention of effective antiretroviral therapy, he would be ninety-three years old today. Would he have agreed to confine himself in his apartment on rue de Vaugirard in Paris? The first philosopher of history to […]

COVID-19, Nursing Homes, and Public Philosophy

At the beginning of April, I wrote an essay (here) for BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY about COVID -19, nursing homes, and vulnerability, in which I argued that the escalating number of deaths in nursing homes was a consequence of the nature of the institutions themselves rather than due to some inherent vulnerability, that is, some property or […]

Structural Gaslighting, Epistemic Injustice, and Ableism in Philosophy

In the coming days and weeks, readers and listeners can expect additional posts about the pandemic and disability, including posts about nursing homes and institutionalized ableism and ageism (check out my earlier post about nursing homes here), about the ableism that conditions a recent statement on rationing from the Canadian Medical Association, and about how […]

COVID-19 and The Naturalization of Vulnerability

Since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and especially since its effects began to be more directly experienced in Canada, I have carefully watched growing discussions about the pandemic, “seniors,” disabled people, “vulnerability,” and nursing homes unfold on social media and in the mainstream popular press. In particular, I am attentive to the ways that […]

Facing the COVID-19 Crisis in Japan With a Disability*

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 […]