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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

New Review of Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability

A new review of my book Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability (Tabetha K. Violet) appears in the Spring 2020 issue of IJFAB: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (vol. 13, no, 1, pp. 174-177). You can find the review online here. Links to a review of the book that appeared in the APA […]

Feminist Philosophy of Disability, Women’s History Month, and IWD

March is Women’s History Month and March 8th is International Women’s Day (IWD). In recognition of these occasions, the University of Michigan Press has applied a discount to a number of its publications relevant to women and feminism, including to my book, Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability. My book, the manuscript of which won […]

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. […]

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 […]

Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain Interviews Emily R. Douglas

Hello, I’m Shelley Tremain and I’d like to welcome you to the fifty-eighth installment of Dialogues on Disability, the series of interviews that I am 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 […]

Dialogues on Disability on Wednesday, January 15th, at 8 a.m. EST

“I have read almost all of your interviews and they are always wonderful. …  I am really looking forward to the next installment of Dialogues on Disability.” — Adrian Piper “The Dialogues on Disability platform … has been very helpful to me, especially at times where I did not feel I belong in the world of […]

Biopower, Normalization, and Slippery Slopes

[This post previously appeared on the Discrimination and Disadvantage blog which no longer exists. In an upcoming post, I will discuss how the subfield of bioethics has shaped Canadian philosophy and how the predominance of the subfield of bioethics in Canadian philosophy is intertwined with prestige bias. An earlier post on prestige bias in Canadian […]