Feminism And Disability

The essays in this volume are contributions to feminist disability studies. The essays constitute an interdisciplinary dialogue regarding the meaning of feminist disability studies and the implications of its insights regarding identity, the body, and experience.

This work aims to provide a synthesis of theory, relating to the fields of disability studies and feminism. Theory is combined with practice via case study examples.

Addresses misrepresentations of Foucault's work within feminist philosophy and disability studies, offering a new feminist philosophy of disability

In this book leading writers and activists reveal the many ways feminism can and must acknowledge disabled women for the benefit of all. The premise of the book is that disabled women have been marginalised by a male-dominated disabled movement.

In Feminist, Queer, Crip Alison Kafer imagines a different future for disability and disabled bodies. Challenging the ways in which ideas about the future and time have been deployed in the service of compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, Kafer rejects the idea of disability as a pre-determined limit. She juxtaposes theories, movements, and identities such as environmental justice, reproductive justice, cyborg theory, transgender politics, and disability that are typically discussed in isolation and envisions new possibilities for crip futures and feminist/queer/crip alliances. This bold book goes against the grain of normalization and promotes a political framework for a more just world.

The Rejected Body argues that feminist theorizing has been skewed toward non-disabled experience, and that the knowledge of people with disabilities must be integrated into feminist ethics, discussions of bodily life, and criticism of the cognitive and social authority of medicine. Among the topics it addresses are who should be identified as disabled; whether disability is biomedical, social or both; what causes disability and what could 'cure' it; and whether scientific efforts to eliminate disabling physical conditions are morally justified. Wendell provides a remarkable look at how cultural attitudes towards the body contribute to the stigma of disability and to widespread unwillingness to accept and provide for the body's inevitable weakness.

Feminist Perspectives on Disability provides a unique introduction to the key debates in relation to both feminism and disability. The author considers contemporary similarities, differences and contentious areas and how concepts drawn from postmodern feminism can be usefully applied to the disability arena. The book explores many important aspects of the field, including: biological debates; issues of power, knowledge, equality, difference, subjectivity and the body; interface of public and private/care and community; medical and social barriers; politics, citizenship and identity. Feminist Perspectives on Disability will be compulsory reading for students of all levels in Women's Studies, Gender Relations, Social Policy, Social Work/Social Care and social Science.

Disability and gender are becoming increasingly complex in light of recent politics and scholarship. This volume provides findings not only about the discrimination practised against women and people with disabilities, but also about the productive parallelism between the two categories.