[This piece is written for those working in communication studies and in healthcare writ large, with the aim of bringing insights from disability studies and philosophy of disability to bear on discussion concerning disability in those fields.] Despite being assailed for decades by disability activists and disability studies scholars spanning the humanities and social sciences, the medical model of disability—which conceptualizes disability as an individual tragedy or misfortune due to genetic or environmental insult—still today structures many cases of patient–practitioner communication. (...) Synthesizing and recasting work done across critical disability studies and philosophy of disability, I argue that the reason the medical model of disability remains so gallingly entrenched is due to what I call the “ableist conflation” of disability with pain and suffering. In an effort to better equip healthcare practitioners and those invested in health communication to challenge disability stigma, discrimination, and oppression, I lay out the logic of the ableist conflation and interrogate examples of its use. I argue that insofar as the semiosis of pain and suffering is structured by the lived experience of unwelcome bodily transition or variation, experiences of pain inform the ableist conflation by preemptively tying such variability and its attendant disequilibrium to disability. I conclude by discussing how philosophy of disability and critical disability studies might better inform health communication concerning disability, offering a number of conceptual distinctions toward that end. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that certain injustices faced by mentally disabled persons are epistemic injustices by drawing upon epistemic injustice literature, especially as it is developed by Miranda Fricker. First, I explain the terminology and arguments developed by Fricker, Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr., and Kristie Dotson that are useful in theorizing epistemic injustices against mentally disabled people. Second, I consider some specific cases of epistemic injustice to which mentally disabled persons are subject. Third, I turn to a discussion of severely (...) mentally disabled persons who, because they are unable to share information or develop interpretations of shared social experiences, may fall outside Fricker’s discussion of epistemic injustice. Fourth and finally, following arguments given by Kristie Dotson and Christopher Hookway, I define and explain a type of epistemic injustice: intimate hermeneutical injustice that I believe supplements other discussions of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

Having encountered landmines in offering a critique of philosophy based on my experience as the mother of a cognitively disabled daughter, I ask, “Should I continue?” I defend the idea that pursuing this project is of a piece with the invisible care labor that is done by people with disabilities and their families. The value of attempting to influence philosophical conceptions of cognitive disability by virtue of this experience is justified by an inextricable relationship between the personal, the political, and (...) the philosophical. If one grants that the “special relationship” between mother and child requires moral recognition, then I need first to make vivid the case that this relationship in the case of a child who lacks some “normal capacities” is indistinguishable from any mother‐child relationship. If this is so, then I believe I can make a case that has as its conclusion that the moral personhood of even the severely cognitively disabled must be granted. Moreover, such recognition, I argue, necessitates the recognition of others who bear no special relationships to the child. (shrink)

In this paper I reflect upon my personal experience of chronic progressive multiple sclerosis in order to provide a phenomenological account of the human experience of disability. In particular, I argue that the phenomenological notion of lived body provides important insights into the profound disruptions of space and time that are an integral element of changed physical capacities such as loss of mobility. In addition, phenomenology discloses the emotional dimension of physical disorder. The lived body disruption engendered by loss of (...) mobility includes a change in the character of surrounding space, an alteration in one's taken-for-granted awareness of objects, the disruption of corporeal identity, a disturbance in one's relations with others, and a change in the character of temporal experience. The loss of upright posture is of particular significance since it not only concretely diminishes autonomy but affects the way one is treated by others. Such a change in posture is, therefore, particularly disruptive in the social world of everyday life. An understanding of the lived body disruption engendered by disability has important applications for the clinical context in devising effective therapies, as well as for the social arena in determining how best to resolve the various challenges posed by chronic disabling disorders. (shrink)

What has come to be called critical disability studies is an emergent field of academic research, teaching, theory building, public scholarship, and something I'll call "educational advocacy." The critical part of critical disability studies suggests its alignment with areas of intellectual inquiry, sometimes awkwardly called identity studies, rooted in the political and social transformations of the mid-20th century brought forward by the broad civil and human rights movement. These movements pressed both the law and the social order toward an expansion (...) of rights for people previously marginalized or excluded from full participation in exercising the obligations and benefits of equal citizenship. The ideas of... (shrink)

It is hardly news to readers of this collection that in bioethics there has been a long-standing debate between people who can seem to be arguing "for" disability and people who can seem to be arguing "against" it. Those who have argued for have often been disability scholars and those who have argued against have often been philosophers of a utilitarian bent. At least since the mid 2000s, some disability scholars and some philosophers of a utilitarian bent have sought to (...) move beyond that debate, but achieving that aim is harder than it sounds. In this essay, I want to take two... (shrink)