Critical Disability Studies: From Social Model to Mad and Neurodiversity Paradigms

In 2022, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha provocatively titled her monograph The Future Is Disabled, indicating that the issue of disability is by no means only of relevance to those who currently have an impairment. Instead, her work suggests that what she calls “disabled wisdom” or “crip genius” – skills in mutual aid, interdependence and survival developed by communities marginalised (not only by) ableism – is actually essential for everyone as we face global instability and anthropogenic climate change. The question is why such knowledge has as of yet largely been subjugated. This lecture begins by tracing the shift from medicalised deficit models to the social model of disability, which identifies societal barriers and oppression as the primary causes of disablement, to Critical Disability Studies frameworks, which foreground intersectionality, postcolonial perspectives and the various ways in which people are debilitated (Puar). In the second part, we will, more specifically, talk about the interrelation between Critical Disability Studies and Mad Studies, the latter prioritising first-person survivor knowledge to challenge the dominance of biomedical psychiatry and investigate the epistemic injustice faced by psychiatrised individuals. We will, moreover, discuss the neurodiversity paradigm, questioning the hegemonic standard of the “neurotypical”.