Foucault and the Government of Disability

Foucault, Governmentality, and Critical Disability Theory: An Introduction

shelley tremain


 Foucault, Governmentality, and Critical Disability Theory An Introduction
 Twenty years after Michel Foucault died of complications from AIDS, the scope of his intellectual endeavors and the tremendous impetus to social change which that body of work offers are only beginning to be appreciated . Across the disciplines, including history, philosophy, the social sciences , medicine, semiotics, and psychology, Foucault’s work has provoked scholars to question what had previously been considered self-evident, timeless, unchanging, and necessary. In various writings, lectures, and public statements, Foucault urged critical re›ections on the current situation , and on the historical conditions that led to these formations and how they might be differently perceived. To assist people in ‹nding new ways to conceive of their relationships to themselves and with each other, and their imbrication in relations of power, he provided the analytical tools of archaeology and genealogy; and he elaborated groundbreaking analyses of punishment, psychiatry, and sexuality to show how these tools could be employed. The essays in this book variously demonstrate and assess the potential that Foucault’s approach has to expand and enrich understanding of the phenomena surrounding the state of affairs called “disability.” This book is an invitation to think differently about disability, and is intended for readers of Foucault as well as for people who engage with critical disability theory ; it is also intended for those unacquainted with either body of work. The aim of this introduction, therefore, is to highlight certain concepts, themes, and arguments in Foucault’s work and disability theory pertinent to a conversation between these areas of critical inquiry. Beginning in the Great Depression, and over the last thirty years in particular , people classi‹ed as “handicapped” or “disabled” have developed sociopolitical conceptions of disability in order to counter medicalized approaches. These politicized conceptions of disability and the increasing consolidation and visibility of the social movement that spawned them have precipitated signi‹cant social change, including the deinstitutionalization of thousands of people incarcerated in nursing homes and hospitals worldwide ; the passing into law of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990; the retro‹tting of government of‹ces and public facilities to make them more physically accessible; the redesign of urban landscapes; closed captioning on late-model televisions; and the growing recognition that disabled people constitute a marginalized and disenfranchised constituency. The disabled people’s movement has also had an impact on academia, where the interdisciplinary (and counterdisciplinary) ‹eld of disability studies has begun to emerge strongly. Courses in disability studies (or related ‹elds of study) are now offered at universities and colleges throughout North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe, as well as in some regions of South America, Central America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Academics who conduct their work under the rubric of disability studies have begun to problematize the foundational assumptions of many disciplines and ‹elds of inquiry, as well as the methodologies that they employ, the criteria of evaluation to which they appeal, and the epistemological and social positioning of the researchers and theorists invested in them. From within both autonomous programs and home disciplines, disability theorists and researchers have engaged in a diversity of investigative and critical pursuits. For example, they have shown the cultural and historical speci‹city of dominant Euro-American notions of corporeal attractiveness; they have analyzed how disability colluded with race in the formation of the modern nation-state, have plotted histories of disabled people’s resistance , traced genealogies of eugenic policies that culminate in contemporary reproductive technologies, critiqued representations of disabled people in the media and literature, and considered the intersection between disability and queer sexualities. Though some theoretical work in disability studies has used Foucault’s ideas in interesting and creative ways, attempts to articulate a Foucauldian stance on disability have, overall, been largely rudimentary. Foucault and the Government of Disability seeks to deepen Foucault’s relevance and applicability to work on disability. The collection is a response to Foucault ’s call to question what has been regarded as natural, inevitable, ethical , and liberating; hence, contributions to this collection draw on Foucault in order to scrutinize a range of widely endorsed practices and ideas sur2
Foucault and the Government of Disability rounding disability, including rehabilitation, community care, impairment, normality and abnormality, inclusion, prevention, genetic counseling, accommodation, and special education. Although some commentators on Foucault have claimed that Anglo-American writers tend to reproduce “stereotypical” understandings of his texts, the...