Misfits: A Feminist Materialist Disability Concept
01 Aug 2011-Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy (Blackwell Publishing Inc)-Vol. 26, Iss: 3, pp 591-609
TL;DR: In this article, the concept of misfit and the situation of misfitting was proposed to further understand the lived identity and experience of disability as it is situated in place and time.
Abstract: This article offers the critical concept misfit in an effort to further think through the lived identity and experience of disability as it is situated in place and time. The idea of a misfit and the situation of misfitting that I offer here elaborate a materialist feminist understanding of disability by extending a consideration of how the particularities of embodiment interact with the environment in its broadest sense, to include both its spatial and temporal aspects. The interrelated dynamics of fitting and misfitting constitute a particular aspect of world-making involved in material-discursive becoming. The essay makes three arguments: the concept of misfit emphasizes the particularity of varying lived embodiments and avoids a theoretical generic disabled body; the concept of misfit clarifies the current feminist critical conversation about universal vulnerability and dependence; the concept of misfitting as a shifting spatial and perpetually temporal relationship confers agency and value on disabled subjects.
Citations
More filters
Journal Article•
4,902 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: This book is referred to read because it is an inspiring book to give you more chance to get experiences and also thoughts and it will show you the best book collections and completed collections.
Abstract: Downloading the book in this website lists can give you more advantages. It will show you the best book collections and completed collections. So many books can be found in this website. So, this is not only this the normal and the pathological. However, this book is referred to read because it is an inspiring book to give you more chance to get experiences and also thoughts. This is simple, read the soft file of the book and you get it.
494 citations
TL;DR: Genetics Laboratory Investigations is a compilation of practical exercises that form a strong foundation in both classical genetics and more recent molecular genetic techniques for students at degree level and is accompanied by an Instructors Manual that includes hints, sources of materials, and answers to the many questions posed.
Abstract: As a recent convenor for a genetics MSc. course, I was amazed how many students graduating with a degree in genetics lack practical laboratory experience and possess limited knowledge of classical genetics. A good foundation of laboratory investigations is important to complement the theoretical information given in lectures and tutorials, but has been adversely aected by the need to keep costs down in many academic institutions in recent years. Genetics Ð Laboratory Investigations, the twelfth edition of a book that has enjoyed success since its initial publication in 1952, addresses this problem. It is a compilation of practical exercises that form a strong foundation in both classical genetics and more recent molecular genetic techniques for students at degree level. Many of the investigations are fairly low budget, while for those that include more expensive elements, cheaper options or sample data sets are given as an alternative. For example, the exercise on PCR gives a manual procedure using dishes of heated oil as an alternative where no PCR machine is available. I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed reading this book! Although the investigations do form a logical progression through the book, it is clearly not designed to be read from cover to cover. However, for myself it was a short nostalgic trip through much of my own undergraduate degree in genetics, and I was left wondering whether earlier editions of this book had had any in ̄uence on the classical genetics practical classes I attended in the 1980s, such as using Drosophila stocks with curly wings and plum eye colour to locate an unknown mutant on a particular chromosome, or counting grey and black ascospores of Sordaria to investigate linkage and crossing-over during meiosis. This edition brings the content right up-to-date within a ®eld that is presently changing rapidly. The 26 exercises cover the range from classical Mendelian inheritance to molecular techniques such as PCR, RFLPs and DNA ®ngerprinting. Much of the human content is discussed in relation to the Human Genome Project where relevant, and also incorporated are new ideas, photographs, data sets and updated references and source material. All students' tastes are catered for with a wide variety of experimental organisms representing microbes, animals, plants and fungi. In particular the several humanbased investigations should appeal to most. The exercises on analysing ®ngerprint ridge numbers and patterns, and whether your urine smells foul after eating asparagus, are particularly intriguing. I was very impressed with the organisation and layout of this book. The text is written for degree-level students and is accompanied by an Instructors Manual that includes hints, sources of materials, and answers to the many questions posed. Each investigation is completely individual, independent and designed for use with no necessary modi®cations. All relevant references, notes and appendices are included in each exercise. Indeed the pages are perforated and hole-punched for easy removal and ®ling. Each exercise has a relevant introduction to the investigation, very clearly stated objectives, and all other information required for the exercise. Suitable data sheets for recording results, and relevant analyses are given, together with questions to test the understanding of the investigator. I was disappointed that the book makes so little use of online web resources. With so many students having both an interest in the Internet and also access to online computing facilities, I feel this is a weakness that should be addressed for the next edition. Another shortcoming is that the book is so clearly aimed at an American readership with all data sets provided based on American examples. Again, online resources could overcome this. I would certainly recommend the use of this book to anyone engaged in formulating or revising a degree-level genetics course.
472 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a crip politics of bodymind is proposed to account for the aspects of disability, including pain, that are sometimes bad, as well as the possibilities it opens for specifically located, collective forms of care.
Abstract: What is a crip politics of bodymind? Drawing upon Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's theory of the misfit, I explain my understanding of crip and bodymind within a feminist materialist framework, and argue that careful investigation of a crip politics of bodymind must involve accounting for two key, but under-explored, disability studies (DS) concepts: desire and pain. I trace the turn toward desire that has characterized DS theory for the last decade, and argue that while acknowledging disability desire, we must also attend to the aspects of disability, including pain, that are sometimes bad. Although I don't argue that pain is always and only bad, I call for recognition of the ways pain complicates disability desire, as well as the possibilities it opens for specifically located, collective forms of care.
202 citations
Cites background or methods from "Misfits: A Feminist Materialist Dis..."
...I now turn to a discussion of Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s article “Misfits” (Garland-Thomson 2011), suggesting that this new concept in feminist DS re-enacts the familiar gravitation to the physical and sensory—but also that its central concept, misfitting, opens the way to explore the possibilities of a more fully realized theory of bodymind....
[...]
...Most accounts of self-injury fail to recognize just how “rangy” the misfit becomes —borrowing Garland-Thomson’s term—when a person wishes to self-injure for palliative reasons (Garland-Thomson 2011, 600)....
[...]
...I now turn to a discussion of Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s article “Misfits” (Garland-Thomson 2011), suggesting that this new concept in feminist DS re-enacts the familiar gravitation to the physical and sensory—but also that its central concept, misfitting, opens the way to explore the…...
[...]
...What happens, then, if I attempt to supply those examples—that is, to expand misfit beyond “the physical realities of our lives” (Garland-Thomson 2011, 602) and into our mental landscapes as well?...
[...]
...THE VALUE OF MISFITTING Misfit, as Garland-Thomson explains it, is a materialist feminist concept that directs attention to “the co-constituting relationship between flesh and environment” (Garland-Thomson 2011, 594)....
[...]
192 citations
References
More filters
TL;DR: In this article, the Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary are discussed, as well as the Assumption of Sex, in the context of critical queering, passing and arguing with the real.
Abstract: Preface Acknowledgements Part 1: 1. Bodies that Matter 2. The Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary 3. Phantasmatic Identification and the Assumption of Sex 4. Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion Part 2: 5. 'Dangerous Crossing': Willa Cather's Masculine Names 6. Queering, Passing: Nella Larsen Rewrites Psychoanalysis 7. Arguing with the Real 8. Critically Queer. Notes. Index
10,391 citations
Book•
09 Dec 1999
TL;DR: In this article, Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African-American women outside academe and provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde.
Abstract: In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African-American women outside academe. She provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. The result is a superbly crafted book that provides the first synthetic overview of Black feminist thought.
10,052 citations
Book•
[...]
TL;DR: The Human Condition as mentioned in this paper is a classic in political and social theory, The Human Condition is a work that has proved both timeless and perpetually timely, it contains Margaret Canovan's 1998 introduction and a new foreword by Danielle Allen.
Abstract: The past year has seen a resurgence of interest in the political thinker Hannah Arendt, "the theorist of beginnings," whose work probes the logics underlying unexpected transformations-from totalitarianism to revolution. A work of striking originality, The Human Condition is in many respects more relevant now than when it first appeared in 1958. In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable. The problems Arendt identified then-diminishing human agency and political freedom, the paradox that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences of our actions-continue to confront us today. This new edition, published to coincide with the sixtieth anniversary of its original publication, contains Margaret Canovan's 1998 introduction and a new foreword by Danielle Allen. A classic in political and social theory, The Human Condition is a work that has proved both timeless and perpetually timely.
7,650 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: A preliminary demarcation of a type of Bourgeois public sphere can be found in this article, where the authors remark on the type representative publicness on the genesis of the Bourgois Public Sphere.
Abstract: Part 1 Introduction - preliminary demarcation of a type of Bourgeois Public Sphere: the initial question remarks on the type representative publicness on the genesis of the Bourgois Public Sphere. Part 2 Social structures of the Public Sphere: the basic blueprint institutions of the public sphere the Bourgois family and the institutionalization of a privateness oriented to an audience the public sphere in the world of letters in relation to the public sphere in the political realm. Part 3 Political functions of the public sphere: the model case of British development the continental variants civil society as the sphere of private autonomy: private law and a liberalized market the contradictory institutionalization of the public sphere in the Bourgeois constitutional state. Part 4 The bourgeois public sphere - idea and ideology: publicity as the bridging principle between politics and morality, Kant on the dialectic of the public sphere, Hegel and Marx the ambivalent view of the public sphere in the theory of liberalism, John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville. Part 5 The social-structural transformation of the public sphere: the tendency toward a mutual infiltration of public and private spheres the polarization of the social sphere and the intimate sphere from a culture-debating (kulturrasonierend) public to a culture-consuming public the blurred blueprint - developmental pathways in the disintegration of the bourgeois public sphere. Part 6 the transformation of the public sphere's political function: from the journalism of private men of letters to the public consumer services of the mass media - the public sphere as a platform for advertising the transmitted function of the principle of publicity manufactured publicity and nonpublic opinions - the voting behaviour of the population the political public sphere and the transformation of the liberal constitutional state into a social-welfare state. Part 7 On the concept of public opinion: public opinion as a fiction of constitutional law-and the social-psychological liquidation of the concept a sociological attempt at clarification.
6,328 citations
5,787 citations