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      Key Concerns for Critical Disability Studies

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            Abstract

            The International Journal of Disability and Social Justice is a timely intervention into the interdisciplinary field of Disability Studies. Any new initiative, especially in a pre-existing and maturing field of inquiry, should encourage us all to think critically and reflexively about the key questions and issues that we should be grappling with today. This paper offers an inevitably partial take on some of the key concerns that we think scholars, activists and artists of Disability Studies should be engaging with. Everything we do these days takes place in the shadows cast by the global pandemic. While it is important to acknowledge the centrality of COVID-19 – and the threat this poses to the mind-bodies, politics and everyday realities of disabled people – we want to foreground some preoccupations, ideas and debates emerging from within the field of Disability Studies that will have resonance beyond the pandemic. We will begin the paper by offering a perspective on the contemporary nature and state of Disability Studies; suggesting that many of us are Critical Disability Studies thinkers now. Next, in order to narrow the focus of the discussion in this brief paper, we choose one emergent and popular theoretical orientation – posthuman Disability Studies. Then, we introduce and elaborate on four broad concerns that we think we should engage with; desire, alliances, non/humans and their implications for conceptualising social justice. Throughout the paper we will work through some of the power dynamics, questions of accountability and requirements for a generosity of engagement that these concerns provoke.

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            Contributors
            Journal
            10.2307/j50022886
            intljofdissocjus
            International Journal of Disability and Social Justice
            Pluto Journals
            2732-4036
            2732-4044
            1 November 2021
            : 1
            : 1 ( doiID: 10.13169/intljofdissocjus.1.issue-1 )
            : 27-49
            Affiliations
            iHuman and The School of Education, University of Sheffield, Sheffield
            iHuman and The School of Education, University of Sheffield, Sheffield
            iHuman and The School of Education, University of Sheffield, Sheffield
            iHuman and The School of Education, University of Sheffield, Sheffield
            Article
            intljofdissocjus.1.1.0027
            10.13169/intljofdissocjus.1.1.0027
            c48ba98f-a3e7-475b-a5e8-e04c384a94fc
            © 2021 Pluto Journals

            All content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or the author. Articles published in the journal are distributed under a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

            History
            Custom metadata
            eng

            Social & Behavioral Sciences
            Desire,Critical Disability Studies,Social justice,Alliances,Non-humans,Posthuman

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