Feminist Perspectives On Disability

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Most women's lives are touched by disability, either their own limitations or those of someone for whom they care; and the institutionalized inequality that women face is no less a reality for women with disabilities. Yet to a great extent the feminist and disability communities have failed to form a significant coalition or even to comprehend women's experiences of disability. Written from Barbara Hillyer's perspective as a teacher of feminist theory and the mother of a young woman with multiple disabilities, Feminism and Disability blends personal, political, and intellectual insights to enrich both feminist theory and disability theory. It explores issues of vital concern to women with disabilities and women caregivers: body awareness, community and reciprocity, fatigue, the supposed dichotomy between nature and technology, codependence. and recovery programs. The ways in which cultural standards of language, independence, pace, cheerfulness, mother-blaming, and grief limit our understanding are explained and confronted. Throughout, Hillyer advocates that women recognize and integrate weakness along with strength. The text challenges political movements that emphasize productivity and normalization to accommodate some less heroic aspects of the human condition: that all people need help in development at all stages; that death is not always the worst thing that can happen to a person; that senility and degenerative diseases undermine belief in life as a growth process; that some losses cannot be restored. Being limited and knowing it, Hillyer shows, permit both compassion and political cooperation. Feminism and Disability is a scholarly tour de force, a comprehensive survey of various specialized literatures decoded and compared in light of women's autobiographical narratives of limitation and ability. Its conclusions are bold and liberating. Certain to be a milestone in the development of feminism and disability rights, it offers a new, holistic view that will energize discourse, influence policy, and change lives.

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.