Thinking with disability in a Post-Trump era
Wednesday 25 November 2020
16.30–17.30 pm
Join us for an online seminar with Professor Dan Goodley, to discuss the remnants of Trumpism that still exist in the world and specifically, how these ideas relate to the rather general question of who’s allowed to be human?
Professor Goodley will ponder the meaning of the human category and consider who is invited to have access to this category. He seeks to explore the ways in which normal, everyday and typical understandings of the human being are, in reality, incredibly exclusionary: including some and omitting others. And this potential for the human category to divide and rule — to let in some and force out others — is a category that is currently, worryingly and deplorably being rewritten in popular discourse. The consequences are potentially wide-reaching and terrifying. And so, our responses have to be immediate and inclusive. Here disability activism and theory can help us in our responses.
Dan Goodley is Professor of Disability Studies and Education in the School of Education and co-director of iHuman: the research institute for the study of the human. Dan is interested in theorising and challenging the conditions of disablism (the social, political, cultural and psycho-emotional exclusion of people with physical, sensory and/or cognitive impairments) and ableism (the contemporary ideals on which the able, autonomous, productive citizen is based). Recent work includes Disability Studies (2016, Sage, 2nd edition) and Dis/ability Studies (2014, Routledge)
