The Biopolitics of Disability: Neoliberalism, Ablenationalism, and Peripheral Embodiment (Corporealities: Discourses Of Disability)

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. "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." -- Cover page 4 Contents Introduction Part I. From Liberal Restraints to Neoliberal Inclusion One. From Liberal to Neoliberal Futures of Disability: Rights-Based Inclusionism, Ablenationalism, and the Able-Disabled Two. Curricular Cripistemologies; or, Every Child Left Behind Part II. The Biopolitics of In(ter)dependent Disability Cinema Three. Gay Pasts and Disability Future(s) Tense: Heteronormative Trauma and Parasitism in Midnight Cowboy Four. The Politics of Atypicality: International Disability Film Festivals and the Productive Fracturing of Identity Five. Permutations of the Species: Independent Disability Cinema and the Critique of Ablenationalism Part III. Medical Outliers: Navigating the Disability Bio(political) sphere Six. Corporeal Subcultures and the Specter of Biopolitics Seven. The Capacities of Incapacity in Antinormative Novels of Embodiment Afterword: Disability as Multitude: Reworking Nonproductive Labor Power Notes Filmography Works Cited Index Theorizing The Role Of Disabled Subjects In Global Consumer Culture And The Emergence Of Alternative Crip/queer Subjectivities In Film, Fiction, Media, And Art