Biopolitics of disability : neoliberalism, ablenationalism, and peripheral embodiment /

In this erudite but jargon-laden work, Mitchell (English, George Washington Univ.) and Snyder (disability studies, George Washington Univ.) critique the productivism undergirding neoliberalism, even as capitalist regimes and state apparatuses make accommodations for "worthy" disabled bodies. The authors argue that so-called cripistemology provides a way of producing new forms of embodied subjectivities that resist the ideologies of neoliberalism and incorporate disability as central to visions of social justice. Mitchell and Snyder analyze what they term ablenationalism as related to homonationalism: both ideologies valorize inclusion when non-normative bodies/sexualities perform normative identities. It is an ironic outcome of activist claims that disabilities do not determine the value of the human beings, and persons with disabilities have the right to be treated as citizens like everybody else. Through analyses of films and novels featuring individuals with disabilities, the authors establish the potential for persons with disabilities to rupture normative identities of belonging. (The authors are silent on race and its intersections with disability.) In its radical refusal to valorize one state of being over another, this genre of disability scholarship makes it difficult to claim that one has been harmed by the various processes of late capitalism--environmental degradation, inequitable health care, or violence. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. --Jennifer L. Croissant, University of Arizona