The Biopolitics of Disability: Neoliberalism, Ablenationalism, and Peripheral Embodiment

by David T. Mitchell

In the neoliberal era, when human worth is measured by its relative utility within global consumer culture, selected disabled people have been able to gain entrance into late capitalist culture. The Biopolitics of Disability terms this phenomenon “ablenationalism” and asserts that “inclusion” becomes meaningful only if disability is recognized as providing modes of living that are alternatives to governing norms of productivity and independence. Thus, the book pushes beyond questions of impairment to explore how disability subjectivities create new forms of embodied knowledge and collective consciousness. The focus is on the emergence of new crip/queer subjectivities at work in disability arts, disability studies pedagogy, independent and mainstream disability cinema (e.g., Midnight Cowboy), internet-based medical user groups, anti-normative novels of embodiment (e.g., Richard Powers’s The Echo-Maker) and, finally, the labor of living in “non-productive” bodies within late capitalism.

Genres: Disability, Disability Studies, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Theory, History

395 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 21, 2015

About the author

David T. Mitchell is an American scholar and professor of English and Cultural Studies at George Washington University, renowned for his influential work in Disability Studies. He has authored and edited numerous landmark texts, including Narrative Prosthesis and The Body and Physical Difference, and co-edits the long-running Corporealities book series at the University of Michigan Press. His research explores disability representation across literature, culture, film, history, and political theory, offering new ethical frameworks for understanding embodiment. His recent work spans topics such as climate change, posthumanism, and biopolitics. In addition to his writing, Mitchell produces films as part of his academic inquiry. He is currently completing Disposable Humanity, a documentary on Nazi psychiatric killings, co-directed with his son.

Reviews

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's interesting how some books of theory hold up well over time, and others don't. In my opinion, this is one of the latter.

I can see how at the time of its release it would have made waves. It took then-current conversations and contributed to them; I can see how it used Puar's homonationalism to name the related concept ablenationalism, and identify (some of) its relevant assemblages, in a way that other theories have made use of.

But I can also see how much it misses the mark - in particular, it almost complete ignores racism. Talking about identity politics without digging into Crenshaw or Collins? Talking about biopolitics and eugenics in a US context without talking about anti-Blackness? Race/racism isn't even in the index? What are you even doing here?

Related, despite the use of the word "global" in the book description, its primary audience is very clearly (white) USian academics, its secondary audience is Global North academics. That carries through into who gets cited.

I also would have liked, when they talk about not liking how Shakespeare and others identify disability in an expansive "everyone is somewhat disabled" way, if they had explained their opposition more clearly. I can understand various approaches to this conversation, so I'm not critical of their opinion on principle. It's just that that section shows up near where they talk about their daughter's disabilities (and boy howdy, I really hope they got her permission to do that first), and there's no part of the book where they talk about their own disabilities. That combination gives me.... feelings. If you grew up with disability, you know what I'm talking about.

Also, and this is just a personal thing, but the way English literature folks use random books/movies as the basis for their analysis to make general claims about life/humans/whatever, that whole methodology makes no logical sense to me.

All in all, a mixed bag. I don't regret reading it because it is referenced so much, but it's also not the first thing I'd recommend to people who are interested in a political analysis of disability.

[Izetta Autumn]

Mitchell and Snyder are always (and clearly) committed to expanding disability scholarship and grounding that scholarship in conversation with deep theory and developments across fields.