Abstract
Critical diversity studies (CDS) can be found within “traditional,” or “established,”
university disciplines, such as philosophy, as well as in relatively newer departments
of the university, such as African studies departments, women’s and gender studies
departments, and disability studies departments. In this article, therefore, I explain why
philosophy of disability, an emerging subfield in the discipline of philosophy, should
be recognized as an emerging area of CDS also. My discussion in the article situates
philosophy of disability in CDS by both distinguishing this new subfield’s claims
about disability from the arguments about disability that mainstream philosophers
make and identifying the assumptions about social construction and antiessentialism
that philosophy of disability shares with other areas of CDS. The discussion is
designed to show that a (feminist) philosophy of disability that draws upon the work
of Michel Foucault will transform how philosophers understand the situation of
disabled people. By drawing upon Foucault, that is, I offer philosophers of disability
and other practitioners of CDS a new understanding of disability as an apparatus of
power relations.