Dangerous Discourses of Disability, Subjectivity and Sexuality by Margrit Shildrick (review)

In the nonideal world against which philosophical ideas and ideals are tried, suffering is distributed unequally. A central, if not defining, question for many late-twentieth-century feminist ethicists is how and why so many forms of suffering are distributed by virtue of bodily difference. For over four decades, disability studies, a multidisciplinary field spanning the humanities and social sciences, has principally revolved around a basic question: is the concept of "disability" constructed like "race," "gender," or "sexuality"? In other words, is it as much a construct as any category historically deployed to justify sociallyproduced sufferings, inequities, and hierarchies and to disenfranchise, stigmatize, and oppress minority groups? Largely as a result of engagements with disability studies and activism, the discipline of philosophy has in recent years increasingly addressed questions of disability.¹ Yet, philosophy of disability, insofar as it is taken to be a distinct field with accepted foundational texts and questions, is still experiencing growing pangs.

Margrit Shildrick's Dangerous Discourses of Disability, Subjectivity and Sexuality marks a welcome, needed, and challenging contribution. With the question of the construction and politics of disability firmly in mind, Shildrick productively engages ongoing debates within philosophy of disability, critical disability studies, queer theory, and continental feminist philosophy. Although the monograph assumes working knowledge of twentieth-century continental philosophy, scholars from multiple disciplines interested in critical disability studies—from English to gender and sexuality studies and from sociology to bioethics—will find it insightful and provocative.

Shildrick begins by laying out the general scope of her project, the ultimate goal of which is to forge new lines of critical inquiry concerning the "extraordinary significance of human corporeality" (1). As the work's title indicates, she conceptualizes this inquiry as dangerous because its conclusions about the ambiguity of embodiment could upset and even upend any "smooth and predictable organization of social relations" (7). If one reflects upon both cultural and academic responses to phenomena like BIID (Body Integrity Identity Disorder) and to figures such as Caitlyn Jenner or Laverne Cox, the claim rings true and timely. The increase in hate crimes against trans/GNC people and people with disabilities in recent years is evidence of the very real danger and significance of "anomalous" embodiment (Sherry 2010; Human Rights Campaign 2016). Although her text was first published in 2009, such stakes are further intensified in light of the multiple populations demonized during the 2016 U.S. presidential race and the administration following it. The import of Shildrick's monograph is best borne out with this range of contexts and stakes in mind.

Chapter one questions why and how it is that anomalous embodiment has such a profound effect on human experience and affairs. Shildrick relies on Kristeva's work on abjection and Merleau-Ponty's on touch to explore the lived experience of embodiment (37). She argues that our fundamental interrelationality and interdependence both sustain us and cause intense, often negative affective responses to non-normate embodiment and figures of conspicuous dependence.² Throughout the first chapter and across the book, Shildrick returns to the philosophical and political priority of lived experience. She is critical, however, of "mainstream phenomenology" for treating "issues like illness, ageing, or disability" as mere problems and, thereby, overmedicalizing phenomena that are also social and political in nature (32). I will return to her engagement with phenomenology below.

In chapter two, Shildrick draws upon Foucault, Derrida, and a range of scholars in critical disability studies to argue that perspective on the body, subjectivity, and sexuality must be approached historically and critically. No single narrative accounts for the wide variety of attitudes and interpretations of corporeal alteration and variation, and Shildrick contends that a combination of Foucauldian genealogy and Derridean deconstruction prove fruitful for such inquiry. Chapter three focuses on the figure of the disabled body as either asexual or hypersexualized and, in some cases, paradoxically both. She argues that conceptions of sexuality have always already informed understandings of the "deviant" or "abnormal" body. That is to...