Feminism and Disability Theory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Licia Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Disability

This chapter maps out connections between feminist and disability theories to bring into relief the multiple ways that feminist philosophers are partaking in these conversations. It begins with a discussion of what is distinctive about feminist approaches to disability, while recognizing that there is not a single, univocal “feminist philosophy of disability.” It then turns to specific areas of philosophical inquiry in which feminist philosophers address disability, including ontological, epistemological, political, ethical, and bioethical considerations. The final section highlights a number of themes central to work in feminist philosophy and disability: embodiment, identity, intersectionality, and the generative and positive dimensions of disability. The chapter concludes by pointing to more recent directions in feminist philosophy of disability. These include disability aesthetics, explorations of disability in the context of technoscience and ecofeminism, and the problem of ableism in philosophy and the academy more broadly.

The Question of Ability

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 227-240
Author(s):  
Joel Michael Reynolds ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Personal Power ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Distinct Area ◽  
Philosophy Of Disability

While Heidegger decried ethics as a distinct area of philosophical inquiry, a steady stream of secondary literature over the last three decades has mined his corpus for ethical insights. This literature tends to draw on his early or middle work and contrast his views with canonical normative theories. I bring Heidegger into conversation with philosophy of disability and feminist philosophy by focusing on the role of relationality and ability expectations. In section one, I provide a schematic of the dominant concept of ability in modernity: ability as personal power. Through the Bremen lectures, I then develop a Heideggerian concept of ability: ability as access. I conclude by discussing the stakes—ethical, philosophical, and political—of interpreting the question of the meaning of being as a question of ability as access to meaning.

scholarly journals This Is What a Historicist and Relativist Feminist Philosophy of Disability Looks Like

2015 ◽  
pp. 7-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelley Tremain
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Philosophy Of Disability

With this article, I advance a historicist and relativist feminist philosophy of disability. I argue that Foucault’s insights offer the most astute tools with which to engage in this intellectual enterprise. Genealogy, the technique of investigation that Friedrich Nietzsche famously introduced and that Foucault took up and adapted in his own work, demonstrates that Foucault’s historicist approach has greater explanatory power and transgressive potential for analyses of disability than his critics in disability studies have thus far recognized. I show how a feminist philosophy of disability that employs Foucault’s technique of genealogy avoids ahistorical, teleological, and transcultural assumptions that beleaguer much work in disability studies. The article also situates feminist philosophical work on disability squarely in age-old debates in (Eurocentric) Western philosophy about universalism vs. relativism, materialism vs. idealism, realism vs. nominalism, and freewill vs. determinism, as well as contributes to ongoing discussions in (Western) feminist philosophy and theory about (among other things) essentialism vs. constructivism, identity, race, sexuality, agency, and experience. 

scholarly journals On the Negative Possibility of Suffering: Adorno, Feminist Philosophy, and the Transfigured Crip To Come

2013 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Fritsch
Keyword(s):  
Disability Studies ◽  
The Body ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Total Domination ◽  
Negative Dialectics ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
Negative Dialectic ◽  
Philosophy Of Disability ◽  
Critical Theorist ◽  
To Come

<p>Critical theorist Theodor Adorno is rarely considered as a philosopher of the body. The body which leaks, desires, rages, and lusts is seemingly disjointed from the dry and dense writings that often characterize Adorno's work. As bleak as this description of Adorno&rsquo;s writings may be, however, the body is both central to his critique of modernity and the site of hope and desire against the total domination and suffering that capitalism imposes. This paper highlights some of the ways in which feminist philosophy of disability and disability studies, more generally, would benefit by thinking in constellation with Adorno's negative dialectic to interrogate the ways in which meanings get made about bodies and, furthermore, use the margins of difference, in relation with others, to challenge what Adorno calls the "wrong state of things." I argue that the transfigured crip to come is central to this fight against the "wrong state of things."<strong></strong></p><p class="Body">Keywords: Adorno; negative dialectics; suffering; disability; crip</p>

Feminist Philosophical Engagements with Trans Studies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Talia Mae Bettcher
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Transgender Studies ◽  
Analytic Work ◽  
Trans Studies

In this chapter Bettcher examines feminist philosophical engagements with transgender studies. In the first section, she discusses the emergence of trans studies as well as the recent development of trans philosophy within the discipline. The latter makes the question of feminist philosophical engagement more complex. To what extent does the feminist philosophy engage with trans philosophy? To what extent does it merely philosophize about trans phenomena? In the second section, Bettcher considers an approach that adds trans to a longer list of excluded identities, focusing specifically on analytic work designed to answer the question “What is a woman?” Drawing on Crenshaw’s notion of intersectionality, Bettcher raises worries about this sort of approach in both its traditional and ameliorative variations. In the final section, Bettcher considers intersectional approaches to trans oppression/resistance as well as impediments to their pursuit including oppositional starting points, unhelpful models of trans oppression/resistance, and, finally, complexities that arise when considering the intersections of trans and sexist oppressions.

scholarly journals Hegel, Feminist Philosophy, and Disability: Rereading our History

2013 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Dryden
Keyword(s):  
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Canonical Texts

<p class="NoSpacing"><span lang="EN-CA">Although feminist philosophers have been critical of the gendered norms contained within the history of philosophy, they have not extended this critical analysis to norms concerning disability. In the history of Western philosophy, disability has often functioned as a metaphor for something that has gone awry. This trope, according to which disability is something that has gone wrong, is amply criticized within Disability Studies, though not within the tradition of philosophy itself or even within feminist philosophy. In this paper, I use one instance of this disability metaphor, contained within a passage from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel&rsquo;s <em>Philosophy of Right</em>, in order to show that paying attention to disability and disability theory can enable identification of ableist assumptions within the tradition of philosophy and can also open up new interpretations of canonical texts. On my reading, whereas Hegel&rsquo;s expressed views of disability are dismissive, his logic and its treatment of contingency offer up useful ways to situate and re-evaluate disability as part of the concept of humanity. Disability can in fact be useful to Hegel, especially in the context of his valorization of experiences of disruption and disorientation. Broadening our understanding of the possible ways that the philosophical tradition has conceived human beings allows us to better draw on its theoretical resources.&nbsp;</span></p><p class="NoSpacing">&nbsp;</p><p class="NoSpacing"><span lang="EN-CA">Keywords: Hegel; contingency; history of philosophy; feminist Hegel scholarship</span></p><p class="NoSpacing"><span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></p>

scholarly journals Review of Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea J. Pitts
Keyword(s):  
Disability Studies ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Disability

Shelley L. Tremain’s Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability (2017) builds on the author’s over twenty years of professional labour and scholarly interventions within philosophy to provide a compelling and careful examination of a range of timely issues for researchers and students in disability studies.

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