The Biopolitics of Disability: Neoliberalism, Ablenationalism, and Peripheral Embodiment (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780472052714)

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.

Author: David T. Mitchell
ISBN-10: 0472052713
ISBN-13: 9780472052714
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Language: English
Published: 06/02/2015
Pages: 288
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.00h x 5.90w x 0.80d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 01/01/2016