The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability

Abstract

There is a massive disconnect between the way disability is understood in the disability rights and disability pride movements and the way disability is understood within analytic philosophy. The former see being disabled as primarily a social phenomenon—a way of being a minority, a way of facing social oppression, but not a way of being inherently or intrinsically worse off. But while this view of disability has been widely incorporated into academic disability studies, it remains at the margins of analytic philosophy. The idea that disability is not inherently bad or suboptimal is one that many philosophers treat with open skepticism, and sometimes even with scorn. The goal of this book is to articulate and defend a version of the view of disability that is common in the disability rights movement. This book argues that to be physically disabled is not to have a defective body, but simply to have a minority body.