Taking disability seriously on the feminist disability studies critic to the mainstream feminism
| Autor | Maria Giulia Bernardini |
| Cargo | Università di Ferrara |
| Páginas | 148-164 |
Periódico do Núcleo de Estudos e Pesquisas sobre Gênero e Direito
Centro de Ciências Jurídicas - Universidade Federal da Paraíba
Nº 02 - Ano 2015
ISSN | 2179-7137 | http://periodicos.ufpb.br/ojs2/index.php/ged/index
148
DOI: 10.18351/2179-7137/ged.2015n2p148-164
TAKING DISABILITY SERIOUSLY
ON THE FEMINIST DISABILITY STUDIES CRITIC TO THE MAINSTREAM
FEMINISM
Maria Giulia Bernardini
1
Abstract: The discipline of Feminist
Disability Studies (FDS) emerges in the mid-
Eighties as a critique of both Feminist and
Disability Studies, considered “guilty” of
excluding women with disabilities from their
theorization and, therefore, incapable to
represent them as subjects. After a brief
analysis of the similarities and the differences
between the conditions of oppression
experienced by people with disabilities and
women, in this paper I first analyse some of
the reasons that may be present behind the
silence of Feminism on disability, then I
show the importance of FDS for the feminist
inquiry. Finally, I conclude by focusing on a
recent and interesting point of convergence
between Feminism and FDS, namely, the
theme of vulnerability and dependency.
Keywords: Feminist Disability Studies;
care; disability; vulnerability; dependency
1. Against “neutral universality”
Critical theories have been focusing
for a long time on the normalising power of
what appear to be neutral norms and
practices, on the performative power of
language and on mechanisms of exclusion
that allow to draw reassuring lines between
1
Università di Ferrara, e-mail: brnmgl@unife.it.
2
There are many forms of feminism: the use of the singular (feminist theory) here is j ustified by the fact that they all
criticise the concept of “neutral universality”.
included subjects and the not too generic
others. The existing different perspectives on
this issue share a common trait: the
opposition to the falsely abstract liberal
universalism, which relies on formal equality
to resolve all those differences that must not
matter.
Feminist theory,
2
in particular, has
historically stood out for its theoretical and
political identification, demystification of
and opposition to established sexist
ideologies that, while emerging in a range of
different contexts, have chosen as their only
subject (whether a political, legal or
institutional) the “neutral universality”
actually based on Man’s anthropological
characteristics.
Over time, the notion of “neutral
universality” has been criticised by the
feminist thought for its logic of exclusion and
segregation not only with regards to women,
but also to members of other, non-socially
Periódico do Núcleo de Estudos e Pesquisas sobre Gênero e Direito
Centro de Ciências Jurídicas - Universidade Federal da Paraíba
Nº 02 - Ano 2015
ISSN | 2179-7137 | http://periodicos.ufpb.br/ojs2/index.php/ged/index
149
DOI: 10.18351/2179-7137/ged.2015n2p148-164
dominant, groups. However, individuals with
disabilities have rarely been included among
them, even though at an international level
these – let us say – “new” subjects have been
gaining greater and greater visibility, at first
from a political and then from a theoretical
point of view.
3
Moreover, and oddly enough,
while the theory of intersectionality enjoys a
large following within feminist movements,
until quite recently this critique has not taken
disability into consideration. As a result, the
condition of women with disabilities has
rarely been object of a critical analysis.
After a brief analysis of the
similarities and the differences between the
conditions of oppression experienced by
people with disabilities and women (section
two), in this paper I present some of the
reasons behind the silence of Feminism on
disability. For this purpose, in section three I
will examine the contribution of Feminist
Disability Studies (FDS), a school of thought
that criticises mainstream Feminism for
failing to take into account disability and
disabled women in particular. I will then
discuss some of the most relevant issues
regarding justice and women with disabilities
3
The birth of the disability rights movement,
which eventually led to the affirmation of disability
studies as a specific theoretical field, took place in the
(section four) and I will conclude by briefly
illustrating the importance of FDS in the
feminist debates on vulnerability and
dependency.
2. Abstract convergences
Women and disabled individuals
have historically shared a common destiny:
the dominant rhetoric has shaped them as
“bodies” rather than as thinking subjects, thus
stating their social, legal and political
inferiority, by relying on the assumed
objectivity of a “nature” which seems to be
inevitably linked to corporeality and biology.
Medical knowledge and power have played a
far from marginal role in this, by relying on
pseudo-scientific data to demonstrate the
difference between these individuals and
what is statistically and normatively
considered as “normality”. Indeed, the
divergence from normality has historically
been construed as moral inferiority, a radical
otherness that justified, both for women and
for disabled people, exclusion,
discrimination and deprivation of rights.
First, this exclusion was the result of
techniques that, by focusing specifically on
Sixties, at the same time as that of the anti-psychiatry,
feminist and black movements.
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