Disability and Difference in Global Contexts

This book explores the possibilities and limitations re-theorizing disability using historical materialism in the interdisciplinary contexts of social theory, cultural studies, social and education policy, feminist ethics, and theories of citizenship.

"The time for Disability and Difference in Global Contexts is now. At the forefront of both the global and materialist turns in disability studies, Erevelles provides readers with an indispensable analysis of the ways in which disability in the current world order is constructed in relation to systems of gender, race, class, caste, and sexual orientation. Erevelles calls for a transformative body politic that resists the compulsory subject positions and relations of domination generated by neoliberal, capitalist modes of production. In and through that call, she remaps, in emancipatory ways, the terrain of disability studies, feminist studies, Marxist theory, postcolonial theory, and education." –Robert McRuer, Professor of English, George Washington University, USA

"In this wide-ranging exploration through the often violent historical imbrications of disability and race, Erevelles brings us to questions we will never soon forget. This book demonstrates the historical production of disability and other social differences as they press upon us today making our bodies, minds, senses matter as the conflicting social scenes that they are. No one in disability studies, or any of its affiliated fields, should go without reading this book; and no one will rest easy with their current disability knowledge once having read Disability and Difference in Global Context." - Tanya Titchkosky, Associate Professor andAssociate Chair, Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Canada

"Disability and Difference in Global Contexts offers an important corrective to established scholarship in disability studies by demanding a focus on intersectionality. In language by turns provocative and heartbreaking, Nirmala Erevelles explains and enacts a 'carnal historical materialism': the theoretical yet everyday dance between identity, injury, privilege and hope." - Margaret Price, Associate Professor of English, Spelman College, USA

"At once deeply personal and sharply theoretical, personal and probing, this book gives us the big picture: 'disability' in its historical, material, and global settings. Erevelles' brilliant work of social theory marks a new and crucial advance in its rigorous explorations of confluences of disability, race, class, gender, and citizenship." - Susan Schweik, Professor of English, University of California at Berkeley, USA
"The time for Disability and Difference in Global Contexts is now. At the forefront of both the global and materialist turns in disability studies, Erevelles provides readers with an indispensable analysis of the ways in which disability in the current world order is constructed in relation to systems of gender, race, class, caste, and sexual orientation. Erevelles calls for a transformative body politic that resists the compulsory subject positions and relations of domination generated by neoliberal, capitalist modes of production. In and through that call, she remaps, in emancipatory ways, the terrain of disability studies, feminist studies, Marxist theory, postcolonial theory, and education." –Robert McRuer, Professor of English, George Washington University, USA

"In this wide-ranging exploration through the often violent historical imbrications of disability and race, Erevelles brings us to questions we will never soon forget. This book demonstrates the historical production of disability and other social differences as they press upon us today making our bodies, minds, senses matter as the conflicting social scenes that they are. No one in disability studies, or any of its affiliated fields, should go without reading this book; and no one will rest easy with their current disability knowledge once having read Disability and Difference in Global Context." - Tanya Titchkosky, Associate Professor andAssociate Chair, Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Canada

"Disability and Difference in Global Contexts offers an important corrective to established scholarship in disability studies by demanding a focus on intersectionality. In language by turns provocative and heartbreaking, Nirmala Erevelles explains and enacts a 'carnal historical materialism': the theoretical yet everyday dance between identity, injury, privilege and hope." - Margaret Price, Associate Professor of English, Spelman College, USA

"At once deeply personal and sharply theoretical, personal and probing, this book gives us the big picture: 'disability' in its historical, material, and global settings. Erevelles' brilliant work of social theory marks a new and crucial advance in its rigorous explorations of confluences of disability, race, class, gender, and citizenship." - Susan Schweik, Professor of English, University of California at Berkeley, USA

Nirmala Erevelles is Associate Professor of Social Foundations of Education at the University of Alabama, USA.