UPSalon Reading Cycle: Philosophy of Disability

Philosophy of disability is a relatively recent subfield which has come to influence a variety of areas of philosophy, including epistemology, ethics, philosophy of language and phenomenology. It attempts both to further our understanding of the diverse phenomena surrounding disability as well as incorporate disabled perspectives into traditional areas of philosophical inquiry.
With this Reading Cycle, we want to dive into a variety of questions raised by the topic of disability. We will cover issues such as the nature and concept of disability, how disablement relates to epistemic injustice, and the social construction and phenomenology of particular disabilities. Moreover, we aim to critically examine how philosophy and philosophical writing contributes to ableism and the ongoing discrimination of people with disabilities by reflecting on the language and stereotypes used by philosophers, especially within the bioethics literature.

Contact

Prior knowledge on debates in philosophy of disability is not necessary. The idea is to get to know together the central concepts mentioned in the readings.
If you want to participate, please let us know via upsalon.philosophy(Replace this parenthesis with the @ sign)univie.ac.at. We will send you the readings and the Zoom links.

Dates&Readings

18.03.22: Introduction: Concepts of Disability, Elizabeth Barnes (2016): “Constructing Disability”. The Minority Body, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 9-53.

01.04.22: Foucauldian Perspectives on Disability, Shelley Tremain (2018): “Philosophy and the Apparatus of Disability”. Adam Cureton & David Wasserman (eds.): Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

29.04.22: Medical Gaslighting & Intersectional Perspectives, Elena Ruìz (2020): “Cultural Gaslighting”. Hypatia 35, 687-713.

13.05.22: Ableism in Bioethics, Joseph A. Stramondo (2021): “Bioethics, Adaptive Preferences, and Judging the Quality of a Life with Disability”. Social Theory and Practice 47(1), 199-220.

27.05.22: Ableist Language in Academic Philosophy, Sami Schalk (2013): “Metaphorically Speaking: Ableist Metaphors in Feminist Writing”. Disability Studies Quarterly 33(4). Shelley Tremain (2011): “Ableist language and philosophical associations”. New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science.

10.06.22: Phenomenological Approaches, Kim Q. Hall (2021): „Limping Along: Toward a Crip Phenomenology”. The Journal of Philosophy of Disability 1, 11-33.

24.06.22: Social Construction & Otherism, Craig Collinson (2020): “Ordinary language use and the social construction of dyslexia”. Disability & Society 35(6), 993-1006.