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Posthumanist Disability Studies

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Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism

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Abstract

Disability can be considered to be the quintessential posthuman condition. This chapter makes a case for a posthumanist disability studies: one that emphasizes the ethical, theoretical, and political interplay between critical posthumanism and critical disability studies. First, we introduce the emergence of critical disability studies – the interdisciplinary community of scholarship from which we write – and identify a theoretical approach; critical posthumanist theorization. We briefly outline the offerings of this approach to disability and, conversely, the offerings of disability to critical posthumanism. Second, we describe a research study that seeks to foreground the aspirations and experiences of disabled young people in relation to capital in their lives. We drew upon documentary analysis and co-produced online methods to access the perspectives of disabled young people. We describe how, as a research team, we provisionally analyze the emerging findings and the development of an assemblage methodology. Third, in experimenting with a posthumanist analysis, we elaborate on modeling the capacities, functionings, and possibilities of disabled young people in relation to the notion of the assemblage. We conclude with some thoughts on the future of posthumanist disability studies, ethics, and politics.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. iHuman, School of Education, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Dan Goodley, Kirsty Liddiard, Katherine Runswick-Cole, Lucy Watts & Sally Whitney

  2. Scope, London, UK

    Hannah Dobbin & Craig Moss

Authors
  1. Dan Goodley
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  2. Kirsty Liddiard
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  3. Katherine Runswick-Cole
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  4. Lucy Watts
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  5. Sally Whitney
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  6. Hannah Dobbin
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  7. Craig Moss
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dan Goodley .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Stefan Herbrechter

  2. Department of English, Faculty of Arts, University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Ivan Callus

  3. Basel, Switzerland

    Manuela Rossini

  4. University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Marija Grech

  5. University of Southampton, Winchester, UK

    Megen de Bruin-Molé

  6. Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Christopher John Müller

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Goodley, D. et al. (2022). Posthumanist Disability Studies. In: Herbrechter, S., Callus, I., Rossini, M., Grech, M., de Bruin-Molé, M., John Müller, C. (eds) Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04958-3_9

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