Governing COVID in Brazil: Dissecting the Ableist and Reluctant Authoritarian* By Francisco Ortega and Michael Orsini Brazilians, says President Jair Bolsonaro, are so tough they can fend off this pesky COVID-19 virus, the same virus that has killed more than 147,000+ people worldwide and counting. Likening COVID-19 to a “little flu”, the Brazilian leader has exposed, once […]
Culinary Injustice (Guest Post)
Culinary Injustice by Axel Arturo Barceló Aspeitia It is not rare to find people who make statements such as “people who dislike reggaetón are being racists and classists” (Rivera-Rideau 2005). In the early eighties, many people claimed that anyone who chanted “disco sucks” was racist and homophobic (Hubbs 2007, Lawrence 2006, Hughes 1994); and some […]
From Scarcity to Abundance: Reconfiguring The Means of Production During the Pandemic
Disabled activists and philosophers have made a number of interventions on social media, blogs, podcasts, and so on with respect to the pandemic and disabled people. Most of these contributions to critical discourse about the pandemic and disability have been concerned with distribution, disability, and discrimination: who should get medical attention, who should have access […]
Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain With Alison Reiheld
Hello, I’m Shelley Tremain and I’d like to welcome you to the fifth-anniversary installment of Dialogues on Disability, the series of interviews that I’m conducting with disabled philosophers and post to BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY on the third Wednesday of each month. The series is designed to provide a public venue for discussion with disabled philosophers about […]
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 […]
Teaching: COVID-19 Mini-Syllabus
I have been very quiet lately online – I left Facebook and have taken a break from blogging for some time. It’s been the most difficult semester of my working life – not that this is different from anyone else’s situation (and in fact I’m better off than most, which I understand and appreciate). I […]
To Mask or Not to Mask, That Is the Question-An Easy Way to Make A Mask
The question of whether the “general public” should wear masks to prevent the transmission of COVID-19 continues to be debated. In Canada, the consensus among medical authorities such as the impressive Dr. Theresa Tam, Chief Public Health Officer of Canada, has been that for a number of reasons only medical professionals should wear masks. Tam […]
I’m Disabled and Need a Ventilator to Live. Am I Expendable During This Pandemic?
In the fifth chapter of Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability, I develop the argument that bioethics is a eugenic technology of government that facilitates normalization of the population through strategies such as “quality of life” assessments. I also argue that the intentional and nonsubjective forms of power that motivate bioethics require the exclusion of […]
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 […]
Happy Trans Day of Visibility!
Today is Trans Day of Visibility, so it seems like the ideal time to remind you that in December of last year, Ray Briggs wrote a fantastic guest post for BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY entitled, “Practical Suggestions for My Cis Colleagues in Philosophy.” You can find Ray’s guest post on BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY here. On Facebook, Ray linked […]
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