The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability

195 Pages·2016·4 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Barnes

Title Pages
The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability
Elizabeth Barnes
Print publication date: 2016
Print ISBN-13: 9780198732587
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2016
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198732587.001.0001
Title Pages
(p.i) The Minority Body
Series Information
(p.iii) The Minority Body
(p.ii) Studies in Feminist Philosophy is designed to showcase cutting-edge
monographs and collections that display the full range of feminist approaches to
philosophy, that push feminist thought in important new directions, and that
display the outstanding quality of feminist philosophical thought.
Studies in Feminist Philosophy
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Advisory Board
Harry Brod, University of Northern Iowa
Claudia Card, University of Wisconsin
Lorraine Code, York University, Toronto
Kimberle Crenshaw, Columbia Law School/UCLA School of Law
Jane Flax, Howard University
Ann Garry, California State University, Los Angeles
Sally Haslanger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Alison Jaggar, University of Colorado, Boulder
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Helen Longino, Stanford University
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Uma Narayan, Vassar College
James Sterba, University of Notre Dame
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(p.iv)
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Dedication
The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability
Elizabeth Barnes
Print publication date: 2016
Print ISBN-13: 9780198732587
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2016
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198732587.001.0001
Dedication
(p.v) To Clay Barnes—Thanks for these wacky genes, and for teaching me how
to live with them (p.vi)
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Preface
The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability
Elizabeth Barnes
Print publication date: 2016
Print ISBN-13: 9780198732587
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2016
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198732587.001.0001
(p.ix) Preface
Elizabeth Barnes
This book is personal. Maybe it’s strange to admit that about a philosophy book,
when we so easily buy into the myth that philosophy is supposed to be a purely
rational endeavor unclouded by messy things like emotions. But there’s no point
in hiding it. I’m disabled, and this is a book about disability. Of course it’s
personal.
I used to think I couldn’t philosophize about disability precisely because the
topic is so personal. But on reflection, that’s absurd. Disability is a topic that’s
personal for everyone. The last time I checked, most non-disabled people are
pretty personally invested in being non-disabled. The fact that this sort of
personal investment is so easy to ignore is one of the more pernicious aspects of
philosophy’s obsession with objective neutrality. It’s easy to confuse the view
from normal with the view from nowhere. And then it’s uniquely the minority
voices which we single out as biased or lacking objectivity. When it comes to
disability, I’m not objective. And neither are you. And that’s true whether you’re
disabled or (temporarily) non-disabled.
My introduction to disability as an area of academic study was as an
undergraduate, through the English department. It was there that I encountered
the cross-disciplinary conversation in the humanities and parts of the social
sciences that gets labeled disability studies. The ideas I discovered there were,
with no exaggeration, life-changing. My disability (which is called Ehlers-Danlos
syndrome, if you’re curious) is complicated, and requires ongoing complex
medical care. I see a lot of doctors, I’ve had a lot of surgeries, I take a lot of
medicine. And like many people with complicated and rare conditions, I spent a
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Preface
lot of time bouncing around from misdiagnosis to misdiagnosis. In short, my
experience of disability was extremely medicalized.
The ideas I encountered in disability studies were—or at least felt—radical. It
had never occurred to me that there might be a social dimension to the
difficulties I was experiencing. That my disability might be something more than
my own sad, little tragedy was a revelation. It wasn’t exactly that I became
convinced by the books I read arguing for disability pride and inclusion. It was
more that reading these things made (p.x) clear, for the first time, something I
had always felt, but had never been able to express—even to myself. That
experience was transformative.
But as much as the work I found through the English department moved me, I
was already in love with analytic philosophy. So I enrolled in an applied ethics
class, eager to discover what insight philosophy would offer into disability. I
encountered two philosophical arguments, as an undergraduate, that dealt
specifically with disability—Peter Singer’s argument for the permissibility of
infanticide and Derek Parfit’s ‘handicapped child’ case. To say that I was
disappointed would be a massive understatement. ‘Heartbroken’ might be closer
to the truth.
My disappointment with much of the philosophical engagement with disability I
encountered only strengthened in grad school. Of course there were amazing
exceptions—Eva Kittay, Anita Silvers—but most of the philosophical work on
disability that I managed to find seemed to focus primarily on who can do what
to which kinds of fetuses in which very abstract circumstances. So I kept my
head down, kept reading non-philosophy disability studies on the side, and
mostly focused on metaphysics.
I decided that I could actually do philosophy about disability when I read Sally
Haslanger’s work on adoption. She openly acknowledges that the topic is
personal for her—that the moral significance of her own family is at stake in the
debate. And then she proceeds to give completely clear and compelling
arguments. Reading Sally’s work taught me several crucial things. The first is
that it’s possible to do excellent philosophy on topics in which you’re personally
invested. The second, and perhaps more important, is that philosophy needs the
voices of those who are personally invested. The literature on adoption wouldn’t
be complete without the perspective of adoptive mothers. Likewise, there’s a
reason why much of the philosophical engagement with disability didn’t resonate
with me. It’s dominated by non-disabled people. And philosophical discussion of
disability is always going to be incomplete if disabled people are largely on the
sidelines. A key slogan of the disability rights movement is ‘Nothing about us
without us.’ That includes philosophy. If I didn’t like what I was reading—and I
didn’t—I needed to get involved. So here we are.
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Preface
Portions of chapters 2 and 5 were previously published in Elizabeth Barnes,
‘Valuing disability, causing disability’, Ethics 125 (1) (2014), (p.xi) pp. 88–113;
sections of chapter 4 were previously published in Elizabeth Barnes, ‘Disability
and adaptive preference’, Philosophical Perspectives 23 (1) (2009), pp. 1–22.
I have benefited, over the course of writing this book, from the help and insight
of more people than I am going to remember to acknowledge. Thanks for helpful
comments and feedback to Kate Abramson, Joel Anderson, Teresa Blankmeyer-
Burke, Tim Button, Steve Campbell, Ben Caplan, Ruth Chang, Shannon Dea, Tom
Dougherty, Janice Dowell, Daniel Elstein, Delia Graff Fara, Miranda Fricker, Brie
Gertler, Elizabeth Harman, Sally Haslanger, Jonathan Jacobs, Katharine Jenkins,
Jeff King, Eva Kittay, Meena Krishnamurthy, Gerald Lang, Rae Langton, Heather
Logue, Ofra Magidor, Kris McDaniel, Jeff McMahan, Trenton Merricks, Sarah
Moss, Daniel Nolan, Laurie Paul, John Protevi, Mike Rea, Jonathan Schaffer,
Miriam Schoenfield, Alex Skiles, Paulina Sliwa, David Sobel, Joe Stramondo, Eric
Swanson, Amie Thomasson, Kevin Timpe, Christina Van Dyke, Pekka Vayrynen,
David Wasserman, and audiences at Cambridge University, Durham University,
Leeds University, MIT, Ohio State University, Oxford University, Rutgers
University, Syracuse University, the University of Virginia, and the Arizona
Ontology Conference. I’m also very grateful to the amazing students I had the
opportunity to interact with at Leeds University and the University of Virginia,
most especially Dani Adams, Sarah Adams, Richard Caves, Jim Darcy, Matt
Duncan, Fran Fairbarn, Jade Fletcher, Derek Lam, Robb Muckle, Nick Rimmel,
Alex Roberts, Adam Tiller, and Carl Warom. I’m sure I learned more from getting
to teach each of them than they could possibly have learned from getting taught
by me. Thanks also to the Mind Association for funding a semester of research
leave in order for me to work on this book.
I’m especially grateful to Jenny Saul. I would have been completely at sea, in
writing this book, without the help and insight of feminist philosophy. And it was
Jenny who (gently, patiently) encouraged me to give feminist philosophy more
than a passing glance. She also challenged me, pushed me, and helped me—in
the best ways—on so many sections of this book. I can’t even begin to thank her
for everything she’s done, both for this book and for me as a person.
And then there are my dear friends, my best allies, my partners in crime—Jason
Turner and Robbie Williams. The best philosophers are the ones who can have
amazing, insightful things to say about pretty (p.xii) much anything, whether
it’s their area or not. The best friends are the ones who always make you feel
accepted, encouraged, and valued. Jason and Robbie are the best philosophers
and the best friends. There’s no way in hell I’d have had the guts to write this
book without them.
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Preface
And finally, thanks to my other half, my love, and my favorite thing in the world—
Ross Cameron. Ross has read and commented on multiple drafts of everything in
this book, and there isn’t an idea in here that hasn’t benefited from discussion
with him. He has been unfailingly supportive, unfailingly generous, unfailingly
obnoxiously smart. And he has always loved me just the way I am.
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