Introduction: Philosophies of Disability and the Global Pandemic

• Published in: International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies 2021-06, Vol.4 (1), p.6-9
• Main Author: Tremain, Shelley Lynn
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bioethics; Colonialism; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Disability; Epidemics; Epistemology; Feminism; Gay and lesbian studies; Grass roots movement; Nursing homes; Pandemics; People with disabilities; Philosophers; Philosophy; Power
• ISSN: 2516-550X; 2516-5518
• DOI: 10.13169/intecritdivestud.4.1.0006

When, in the context of the pandemic, philosophers have considered disability at all, their focus has been directed almost exclusively at questions that pertain to the distribution of so-called scarce healthcare resources - including questions about the development of triage protocols; about whether disabled people can justifiably retain their ventilators if COVID-19 hospital units require them; and about which disabled people, in which countries, should or should not be prioritized for vaccination. Taken as a whole, the peer-reviewed contributions to the issue resist the obfuscation of these lacunae by considering (among other things) how the circumstances of the current COVID-19 pandemic sharpen the focus of various critical conceptions of disability and ableism; how this pandemic has affected disabled people economically, socially, institutionally, and internationally; the implications (especially for disabled people) of novel forms of social organization, mechanisms of (dis)association, and practices of division that characterize the COVID-19 pandemic; and the extent to which or even whether the current pandemic - which has thrown into relief social, economic, national, racial, and other disparities, as well as exacerbated them - will lead to systemic social, economic, political, and institutional change that benefits disabled people and members of other marginalized and disenfranchised social groups. [...]I adopt an approach derived from critical genealogy to closely examine the nursing home-industrial-complex that lies at the center of the COVID-19 pandemic in many jurisdictions, concentrating on how the COVID-19 tragedy has unfolded in nursing homes, so-called long-term care facilities, and other institutions in which elders and younger disabled people across Canada are confined. Bergstresser situates psychiatric diagnosis and hospitalization within the context of decades of social and historical research, as well as emergent fields of inquiry - including feminist philosophy of disability, CDS, and mad studies - in order to argue that a socially mediated process, legitimated with appeals to "health" and "safety," should not be maintained during a pandemic of a communicable virus that especially endangers people in congregate settings such as psychiatric wards, prisons, and nursing homes.