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This Is What a Historicist and Relativist Feminist Philosophy of Disability Looks Like

Shelley Tremain argues that disability should not be understood as a fixed biological condition or a stable identity, but as a product of historically specific relations of power and knowledge. Drawing on Foucault’s concepts of discourse and governmentality, she contends that disability is continually produced through social, political, and institutional practices that define what counts as normal, valuable, or functional. Tremain challenges liberal and bioethical approaches that assume disability merely needs to be accommodated, showing instead how such frameworks reinforce ableist norms by naturalizing them. Ultimately, she calls for a historicist and feminist genealogy of disability—one that exposes how philosophical and scientific traditions have governed disabled bodies and minds through the very act of defining them.

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Updated 2025-10-11

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Disability Studies

Educational Psychology

Social Science

Empirical Science

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Psychology