Disability Politics and Theory

Disability Politics and Theory, a historical exploration of the concept of disability, covers the late nineteenth century to the present, introducing the main models of disability theory and politics: eugenics, medicalization, rehabilitation, charity, rights, social and disability justice. A.J. Withers examines when, how and why new categories of disability are created and describes how capitalism benefits from and enforces disabled people’s oppression. Critiquing the currently dominant social model of disability, this book offers an alternative. The radical framework Withers puts forward draws from schools of radical thought, particularly feminism and critical race theory, to emphasize the role of interlocking oppressions in the marginalization of disabled people and the importance of addressing disability both independently and in conjunction with other oppressions. Intertwining theoretical and historical analysis with personal experience, this book is a poignant portrayal of disabled people in Canada and the U.S. -- and a call for social and economic justice.

This revised and expanded edition includes a new chapter on the rehabilitation model, expands the discussion of eugenics, and adds the context the growth of the disability justice movement, Black Lives Matter, calls for defunding the police, decolonial and Indigenous land protection struggles, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

A. J. Withers organized with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty for over 20 years, including as a paid organizer. They are the author of Fight to Win: Inside Poor People’s Organizing, A Violent History of Benevolence: Interlocking Oppression in the Moral Economies of Social Working (with Chris Chapman) and Disability Politics and Theory and numerous other articles and book chapters. They are the Ruth Wynn Woodward Jr. Chair in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University.
Robyn Maynard is an Assistant Professor of Black Feminisms in Canada at the University of Toronto-Scarborough in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, with a graduate appointment in the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the St. George Campus. She is the author of Policing Black Lives: State violence in Canada from slavery to the Present and the co-author of Rehearsals for Living. She has published writing in the Washington Post, World Policy Journal, the Toronto Star, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Canadian Woman Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies Journal, Scholar & Feminist Journal, and a number of peer-reviewed book anthologies. Maynard’s research and teaching focus on transnational Black feminist thought Black social movements, policing, borders and carceral studies, Black-Indigenous histories and praxis, Black Canadian studies, as well as abolitionist and anti-colonial methodologies.
Rachel da Silveira Gorman is an associate professor in York University’s Critical Disability Studies Program, where she is program development lead for a new undergraduate program in Racialized Health and Disability Justice with a certificate in Mad Studies and Critical Mental Health. She is an artist and activist with expertise in fine arts, cultural studies, transnational social movements, aesthetics of disability, and critiques of ideology.