Interrogating disability and prosthesis through the conceptual framework of NEODISABILITY

Abstract

This article investigates the emerging field of critical disability studies in order to explore understandings of disability and prosthesis through the intersection of dis/ability studies, studies in ableism, and philosophical enquiries into the biopolitics of disability and neoliberal psychopolitics. We present the interpretation that contemporary Western ableism is confi gured by neoliberal arrangements operating on the individual in ongoing processes of self-improvement. People who fail in the achievement society see themselves as being responsible for their own situation, blaming themselves as individuals instead of questioning the ableism that organises contemporary societal orderings in the neoliberal production of inferiority. We offer a conceptual framework of neodisability by unfolding internalised disabling processes in which the bifurcation of ‘dis’ and ‘ability’ operates through the forward-slash in dis/ability. The forward-slash captivates the optimistic cruelty in the workings of contemporary ableism in search of excellence through prosthetic confi gurations in an achievement economy: desiring the invisible prosthesis of willpower in the constant pursuit of overcoming the ‘dis/’. Neodisability engenders contemporary psycho-neoliberal-ableism, with people turning their aggressions against themselves in never-ending processes of dis-ing parts of themselves as ‘notfit-enough’, while being in constant need of therapeutic interventions to employ and promote the self-optimising efforts in times of neodisableism.

Keywords

• Dis/ability
• ableism
• dis-ing
• neoliberalism
• biopolitics
• psychopolitics