Skip to main content
Log in

Posthuman disability studies

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Subjectivity Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This article explores the human through critical disability studies and the theories of Rosi Braidotti. We ask: What does it mean to be human in the twenty-first century and in what ways does disability enhance these meanings? In addressing this question we seek to work through entangled connections of nature, society, technology, medicine, biopower and culture to consider the extent to which the human might be an outdated phenomenon, replaced by Braidotti’s posthuman condition. We then introduce disability as a political category, an identity and a moment of relational ethics. Critical disability studies, we argue, are perfectly at ease with the posthuman because disability has always contravened the traditional classical humanist conception of what it means to be human. Disability also invites a critical analysis of the posthuman. We examine the ways in which disability and posthuman work together, enhancing and complicating one another in ways that raise important questions about the kinds of life and death we value. We consider three of Braidotti’s themes in relation to disability: (i) Life beyond the self: Rethinking enhancement; (ii) Life beyond the species: Rethinking animal; (iii) Life beyond death: Rethinking death. We conclude by advocating a posthuman disability studies that responds directly to contemporary complexities around the human while celebrating moments of difference and disruption.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Useful overviews of the emerging field of critical disability studies (and related themes and debates) are provided by Meekosha and Shuttleworth (2009), Shildrick (2012) and Goodley (2013).

  2. Indeed, this article emerges in part from our discussions with research partners of organisations of disabled people and their allies who are involved in a current Economic and Social Research Council funded project ‘Big Society? Disabled people with learning disabilities and civil society, (ES.K004883.1)’, www.bigsocietydis.wordpress.com/. One key question to emerge for us is: What kind of idealised citizen lies at the heart of current policymaking by the British government? Clearly questions about citizenship parallel debates about the human.

  3. The Academy of Medical Sciences (2012) publication ‘Human enhancement and the future of work’, reported on a joint workshop hosted by the Academy of Medical Sciences, the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society. The disability scholar Jackie Leach Skully is referred to in the report as raising a number of ethical dis/ability issues in relation to the use of enhancement technologies.

  4. An example of a disability assemblage – spanning children and parents – is beautifully but also tragically captured by the Blogspot, www.mydaftlife.wordpress.com.

  5. RES-062-23-1138 Economic and Social Research Grant, ‘Does Every Child Matter, Post-Blair? The interconnections of disabled childhoods’. http://www.esrc.ac.uk/my-esrc/grants/res-062-23-1138/read.

References

  • Boxall, K. (2013) In defence of normal. Keynote presentation to Normalcy 2013, Theorising the mundane, 7–8 September. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Hallam University.

  • Braidotti, R. (1994) Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Braidotti, R. (2002) Metamorphoses: Towards A Materialist Theory of Becoming. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Braidotti, R. (2003) Becoming woman, or sexual difference revisited. Theory, Culture & Society 20 (3): 43–64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Braidotti, R. (2006) Posthuman, all too human: Towards a new process ontology. Theory Culture Society 23 (7–8): 197–208.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Braidotti, R. (2013) The Posthuman. London: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, F.K. (2009) Contours of Ableism: Territories, Objects, Disability and Desire. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Feely, M. (2014) A DeleuzoGuattarian assemblage analysis of the treatment of sexuality within the specific material-semiotic context of a particular intellectual disability service. University of Belfast: Unpublished PhD thesis.

  • Goodley, D. (2007) Becoming rhizomatic parents: Deleuze, guattari and disabled babies. Disability & Society 22 (2): 145–160.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodley, D. (2011) Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodley, D. (2013) Dis/entangling critical disability studies. Disability and Society 28 (5): 631–644.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodley, D. (2014) Dis/ability Studies: Theorising Ableism and Disablism. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodley, D. and Runswick Cole, K. (in press) Becoming dishuman: Thinking about the human through disability. Discourse: A Cultural Politics of Education.

  • Graby, S. and Greenstein, A. (2013) Supported Autonomy: Disability and Assistance beyond Modernism and Post-modernism. Theorising Normalcy and the Mundane 2013. Sheffield Hallam University.

  • Gregory, S. (1991) Mother’s and their deaf children. In: E. Lloyd. (ed.) Motherhood: Meanings, Practices and Ideologies. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kafer, A. (2013) Feminist, Queer, Crip, Bloomington. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lacan, J. (1977) Ecrits. A Selection. New York: Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Liddiard, K. (2012) (S)Exploring Disability. University of Warwick, Unpublished PhD Thesis.

  • Liddiard, K. (2014) The work of disabled identities in intimate relationships. Disability & Society 29 (1): 115–128.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mallett, R. and Runswick-Cole, K. (2014) Approaching Disability: Critical Issues and Perspectives. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • McLaughlin, J., Goodley, D., Clavering, E. and Fisher, P. (2008) Families Raising Disabled Children: Enabling Care and Social Justice. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • McRuer, R. (2006) Compulsory able-bodiedness and queer/disabled existence. In: L. Davis (ed.) The Disability Studies Reader. 2nd edn. New York: Routledge, pp. 301–308.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meekosha, H. and Shuttleworth, R. (2009) What’s so ‘critical’ about critical disability studies? Australian Journal of Human Rights 15 (1): 47–76.

    Google Scholar 

  • Michalko, R. (1999) The Two-in-One: Walking with Smokie, Walking with Blindness. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Puar, J.K. (2009) Prognosis time: Towards a geopolitics of affect, debility and capacity. Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 19 (2): 161–172.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Puar, J. (2012) ‘I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess’: Becoming-intersectional of assemblage theory. Philosophia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 2 (1): 49–66.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reeve, D. (2012) Cyborgs, cripples and iCrip: Reflections of the contribution of Haraway to disability studies. In: D. Goodley, B. Hughes and L. Davis (eds.) Disability and Social Theory. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 91–111.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Rose, N. (2001) The politics of life itself. Theory, Culture & Society 18 (6): 1–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ryan, S. and Runswick‐Cole, K. (2008) Repositioning mothers: Mothers, disabled children and disability studies. Disability & Society 23 (3): 199–210.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shildrick, M. (2009) Dangerous Discourses of Disability, Subjectivity and Sexuality. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Shildrick, M. (2012) Critical disability studies: Rethinking the conventions for the age of postmodernity. In: N. Watson, A. Roulstone and C. Thomas (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shildrick, M. and Price, J. (2005/2006) Deleuzian connections and queer corporealities: Shrinking global disability. Rhizomes 11/12, Fall 2005/Spring 2006.

  • Siebers, T. (2006) Disability in theory: From social constructionism to the new realism of the body. In: K. Davis (ed.) The Disability Studies Reader. 2nd edn. New York: Routledge, pp. 173–184.

    Google Scholar 

  • Slater, J. (2013) Constructions, Perceptions and Expectations of being ‘Young’ and ‘Disabled’: A critical disability perspective. Unpublished PhD thesis: Manchester Metropolitan University.

  • Teo, T. (2010) What is epistemological violence in the empirical social sciences? Social and Personality Psychology Compass 4 (5): 295–303.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Titchkosky, T. (2014) Monitoring disability: The question of the ‘human’ in human rights projects. In: C. Schlund-Vials and M. Gill (eds.) Collection on Disability, Human Rights, and Humanitarianism. London: Ashgate Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, P. and Shoultz, B. (1982) We Can Speak for Ourselves. London: Souvenir Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolbring, G. (2009) What next for the human species? Human performance enhancement, ableism and pluralism. Development Dialogue 54 (Aug): 141–163.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolbring, G. (2012) Expanding ableism: Taking down the ghettoization of impact of disability studies scholars. Societies 2 (3): 75–83.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the anonymous reviewers for the generosity of time they gave to responding to our original paper with constructive and hard-hitting critique. Thanks also to Isabel Waidner for support with the rewriting of the paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Goodley, D., Lawthom, R. & Runswick Cole, K. Posthuman disability studies. Subjectivity 7, 342–361 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2014.15

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2014.15

Keywords

Navigation