Foucault And The Government Of Disability

An up-to-date edition of a foundational collection

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

Despite the widespread belief that Canada is a country of liberty, equality, and inclusiveness, many persons with disabilities experience social exclusion and marginalization. In this book, twenty-four scholars from a variety of disciplines contend that achieving equality for the disabled is not fundamentally a question of medicine or health, nor is it an issue of sensitivity or compassion. Rather, it is a question of politics, and of power and powerlessness. This book argues that we need a new understanding of participatory citizenship that encompasses the disabled, new policies to respond to their needs, and a new vision of their entitlements.

Disability raises profound and fundamental issues: questions about human embodiment and well-being; dignity, respect, justice and equality; personal and social identity. It raises pressing questions for educational, health, reproductive, and technology policy, and confronts the scope and direction of the human and civil rights movements. Yet it is only recently that disability has become the subject of the sustained and rigorous philosophical inquiry that it deserves. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability is the first comprehensive volume on the subject. The volume's contents range from debates over the definition of disability to the challenges posed by disability for justice and dignity; from the relevance of disability for respect, other interpersonal attitudes, and intimate relationships to its significance for health policy, biotechnology, and human enhancement; from the ways that disability scholarship can enrich moral and political philosophy, to the importance of physical and intellectual disabilities for the philosophy of mind and action. The contributions reflect the variety of areas of expertise, intellectual orientations, and personal backgrounds of their authors. Some are founding philosophers of disability; others are promising new scholars; still others are leading philosophers from other areas writing on disability for the first time. Many have disabilities themselves. This volume boldly explores neglected issues, offers fresh perspectives on familiar ones, and ultimately expands philosophy's boundaries. More than merely presenting an overview of existing work, this Handbook will chart the growth and direction of a vital and burgeoning field for years to come.

This comprehensive, interdisciplinary collection, examines disability from a theoretical perspective, challenging views of disability that dominate mainstream thinking. Throughout, social theories of disability intersect with ideas associated with sex/gender, race/ethnicity, class and nation.

Based on Foucault's 1978 and 1979 lectures on rationalities of government, this work examines the art or activity of government and the different ways in which it has been made thinkable and practicable. There are also contributions of other scholars exploring modern manifestations of government.

Foucault is often thought to have a great deal to say about the history of madness and sexuality, but little in terms of a general analysis of government and the state.; This volume draws on Foucault's own research to challenge this view, demonstrating the central importance of his work for the study of contemporary politics.; It focuses on liberalism and neo- liberalism, questioning the conceptual opposition of freedom/constraint, state/market and public/private that inform liberal thought.

War on Autism examines autism as a historically specific and power-laden cultural phenomenon that has much to teach about the social organization of a neoliberal western modernity. Bringing together a variety of interpretive theoretical perspectives including critical disability studies, queer and critical race theory, and cultural studies, the book analyzes the social significance and productive effects of contemporary discourses of autism as these are produced and circulated in the field of autism advocacy. Anne McGuire reveals how in the field of autism advocacy, autism often appears as an abbreviation, its multiple meanings distilled to various "red flag" warnings in awareness campaigns, bulleted biomedical "facts" in information pamphlets, or worrisome statistics in policy reports. She analyzes the relationships between these fragmentary enactments of autism and traces their continuities to reveal an underlying, powerful, and ubiquitous logic of violence that casts autism as a pathological threat that advocacy must work to eliminate. Such logic, McGuire contends, functions to delimit the role of the "good" autism advocate to one who is positioned "against" autism. Book jacket.