Disability and social justice

Abstract

This article explores the significance of disability for social justice, using Nancy Fraser's theory of justice as a guideline. The article argues that the disability perspective is essential for understanding and promoting social justice, although it is often disregarded by critical thinkers and social activists. The article looks at three prominent strategies for achieving social justice under conditions of capitalism: economically, by decommodifying labour; culturally, by deconstructing self-sufficiency; and politically, by transnationalising democracy. The disability perspective reveals that decommodification of labour requires enhancement of disability support, deconstruction of self-sufficiency requires valorisation of disability-illuminated interdependence, and transnationalisation of democracy requires scrutiny of the transnational production of impairments. The article discusses each of these strategies in theoretical and practical terms by drawing on disability studies and Fraser's analyses. Points of interest • This article looks at social justice from the perspective of disability. • The article argues that a society is just only when it provides accessible and adequate disability support. • The article also argues that a society is just only when it does not stigmatise disabled people's 'dependency' but recognises that everyone is interdependent. • Finally, the article argues that a society is just only when it is possible for people impaired by global economy and violence to have a say in the policies that have affected them.

“We are not a ‘fix-it shop’”: The writing centre as a uniquely configured learning space

“…The recognition of human dignity comprises a central principle of social justice (Honneth 2004). According to Mladenov (2016), a strategy of redistribution could be either affirmative or transformative: the transformative strategy is appealing to our writing centre project. Redistribution, according to Mladenov (2016), could promote surface reallocations of economic outputs without touching the underlying structures that generate economic inequality, or it could attempt deep-level economic restructuring.…”

Performativity and the Disability Category: Solving The Zero Theorem

“…Yet autism is used by Crary as a way to condemn television that, according to a study quoted by Crary (2014: 86), 'might have a catastrophic physical impact on the developing human being … it could produce extreme, permanent impairments in the acquisition of language and in the capacity for social interaction'. In this account, autism is a pathology created by 24/7 capitalism rather than an impediment to its total instrumentalisation of life, as sleep is argued to be (Mladenov, 2016(Mladenov, : 1227. Such an individualised and pathologised rendering of disability has prevented Crary from engaging with the perspective championed by disability studies.…”

“…But how exactly could disability generate immanent resistance to performativity? In my previous work (Mladenov, 2016(Mladenov, , 2017, I have suggested that one of the ways of reversing the creeping performative dystopia of contemporary capitalism is by rescuing the disability category from its neoliberal effacement. Such countermovement requires liberalising disability assessment so that people who seek disability support have greater access to it (Mladenov, 2016(Mladenov, : 1231.…”

“…In the article quoted above (Mladenov, 2016), I conceptualised the possibility of relationality opened up by disability as yet another way of resisting capitalist performativity, on a par with liberalising the disability category. The counter-hegemonic strategy I proposed in this regard consists in normalising and universalising the interdependence illuminated by disabled people's lives and experiences, coupled with unmasking of self-sufficiency experienced by able-bodied people as underpinned by infrastructures of support and caring relationships (Mladenov, 2016(Mladenov, : 1235. This, I argued, amounts to a shift from the (capitalist) work ethic to the (feminist) ethic of care.…”

Theorising Disability Care (Non-)Personalisation in European Countries: Comparing Personal Assistance Schemes in Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom

“…The theory proposed by critical theorist Nancy Fraser can be very fruitful for disability policy analyses (for analyses in the Western capitalist context: Dodd, 2016;Knight, 2015;Mladenov, 2016; for analyses in the global context: Soldatic, 2013;Soldatic & Grech, 2014; for care policy: Swaton, 2017; for personal assistance: Mladenov, 2012;Mladenov, Owens, & Cribb, 2015;Owens, Mladenov, & Cribb, 2017). According to Fraser (2003), there are generally two dimensions of social justice: recognition justice and redistributive justice.…”