The Biopolitics of Disability: Neoliberalism, Ablenationalism, and Peripheral Embodiment (Corporealities: Discourses of Disability) - Softcover

Mitchell, David T.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0472052713 ISBN 13: 9780472052714

Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 2015

Synopsis

In the neoliberal era, when human worth is measured by its relative utility within global consumer culture, selected disabled people have been able to gain entrance into late capitalist culture. The Biopolitics of Disability terms this phenomenon “ablenationalism” and asserts that “inclusion” becomes meaningful only if disability is recognized as providing modes of living that are alternatives to governing norms of productivity and independence. Thus, the book pushes beyond questions of impairment to explore how disability subjectivities create new forms of embodied knowledge and collective consciousness. The focus is on the emergence of new crip/queer subjectivities at work in disability arts, disability studies pedagogy, independent and mainstream disability cinema (e.g., Midnight Cowboy), internet-based medical user groups, anti-normative novels of embodiment (e.g., Richard Powers’s The Echo-Maker) and, finally, the labor of living in “non-productive” bodies within late capitalism.

About this title

About the Author

David Mitchell is Professor of English and Sharon L. Snyder is a faculty member at George Washington University.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0472052713
• ISBN 13: 9780472052714
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288