Disabled people are marginalized in every country of the world both North and South. By probing these prejudices and studying cases where they have been overcome this book provides an insight into the processes of liberation and empowerment.
First published in 1999, the groundbreaking Exile and Pride is essential to the history and future of disability politics. Eli Clare's revelatory writing about his experiences as a white disabled genderqueer activist/writer established him as one of the leading writers on the intersections of queerness and disability and permanently changed the landscape of disability politics and queer liberation. With a poet's devotion to truth and an activist's demand for justice, Clare deftly unspools the multiple histories from which our ever-evolving sense of self unfolds. His essays weave together memoir, history, and political thinking to explore meanings and experiences of home: home as place, community, bodies, identity, and activism. Here readers will find an intersectional framework for understanding how we actually live with the daily hydraulics of oppression, power, and resistance. At the root of Clare's exploration of environmental destruction and capitalism, sexuality and institutional violence, gender and the body politic, is a call for social justice movements that are truly accessible to everyone. With heart and hammer, Exile and Pride pries open a window onto a world where our whole selves, in all their complexity, can be realized, loved, and embraced.
Spread out over many years and many different publications, the late author and activist Marta Russell wrote a number of groundbreaking and insightful essays on the nature of disability and oppression under capitalism. In this volume, Russell’s various essays are brought together in one place in order to provide a useful and expansive resource to those interested in better understanding the ways in which the modern phenomenon of disability is shaped by capitalist economic and social relations. The essays range in analysis from the theoretical to the topical, including but not limited to: the emergence of disability as a “human category” rooted in the rise of industrial capitalism and the transformation of the conditions of work, family, and society corresponding thereto; a critique of the shortcomings of a purely “civil rights approach” to addressing the persistence of disability oppression in the economic sphere, with a particular focus on the legacy of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990; an examination of the changing position of disabled people within the overall system of capitalist production utilizing the Marxist economic concepts of the reserve army of the unemployed, the labor theory of value, and the exploitation of wage-labor; the effects of neoliberal capitalist policies on the living conditions and social position of disabled people as it pertains to welfare, income assistance, health care, and other social security programs; imperialism and war as a factor in the further oppression and immiseration of disabled people within the United States and globally; and the need to build unity against the divisive tendencies which hide the common economic interest shared between disabled people and the often highly-exploited direct care workers who provide services to the former.
We know considerably more about persons with intellectual disability than we did even a decade ago. Seeking to improve and increase upon this knowledge, this book provides a map to continue sophisticated and precise research, to inspire professionals involved with intellectual disability, and to better the lives of persons affected by it.
James Charlton has produced a ringing indictment of disability oppression, which, he says, is rooted in degradation, dependency, and powerlessness and is experienced in some form by five hundred million persons throughout the world who have physical, sensory, cognitive, or developmental disabilities. Nothing About Us Without Us is the first book in the literature on disability to provide a theoretical overview of disability oppression that shows its similarities to, and differences from, racism, sexism, and colonialism. Charlton's analysis is illuminated by interviews he conducted over a ten-year period with disability rights activists throughout the Third World, Europe, and the United States. Charlton finds an antidote for dependency and powerlessness in the resistance to disability oppression that is emerging worldwide. His interviews contain striking stories of self-reliance and empowerment evoking the new consciousness of disability rights activists. As a latecomer among the world's liberation movements, the disability rights movement will gain visibility and momentum from Charlton's elucidation of its history and its political philosophy of self-determination, which is captured in the title of his book. Nothing About Us Without Us expresses the conviction of people with disabilities that they know what is best for them. Charlton's combination of personal involvement and theoretical awareness assures greater understanding of the disability rights movement.
This powerful volume represents the broadest engagement with disability issues in South Africa yet. Themes include theoretical approaches to, and representations of, disability; governmental and civil society responses to disability issues; aspects of education as these pertain to the oppression/liberation of disabled people; social security for disabled people; the complex politics permeating service provision relationships; and a consideration of disability in relation to human spaces - physical, economic and philosophical. Firmly located within the social model of disability, this collection resonates powerfully with contemporary thinking and research in the disability field and sets a new benchmark for cutting-edge debates in a transforming South Africa.
The situation of disabled people provides a microcosm of the whole development debate and process. Disabled people are oppressed and marginalised in every country of the world, both North and South. Their lives are constrained by social attitudes which stem from fear and prejudice. By probing these prejudices and studying cases where they have been overcome, we gain an insight into the processes of liberation and empowerment that lie at the heart of any development message.
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.
The lived theology movement is built on the work of an emerging generation of theologians and scholars who pursue research, teaching, and writing as a form of public discipleship, motivated by the conviction that theology can enhance lived experience. This volume--based on a two-year collaboration with the Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia--offers a series of illustrations and styles of lived theology, in conversation with other major approaches to the religious interpretation of embodied life.