How Disability Activism Advances Disability Bioethics

In this paper, I argue that, even when disability rights activists are most clearly acting as activists, they can advance the scholarly activity of disability bioethics. In particular, I will argue that even engaging in non-violent direct action, including civil disobedience, is an important way in...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Stramondo, Joseph A. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2022
In: Ethical theory and moral practice
Year: 2022, Volume: 25, Issue: 2, Pages: 335-349
Further subjects:B Disability
B Narrative Ethics
B Bioethics
B Narrative Identity
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Summary:In this paper, I argue that, even when disability rights activists are most clearly acting as activists, they can advance the scholarly activity of disability bioethics. In particular, I will argue that even engaging in non-violent direct action, including civil disobedience, is an important way in which disability rights activists directly support the efforts of disability bioethics scholars. I will begin by drawing upon Hilde Lindemann’s work on relational narrative identity to describe how certain damaging master narratives about disability hinder the uptake of arguments from disability bioethics. Then, I will argue that disability activism, especially non-violent direct action and civil disobedience, provides an effective counterstory to some of the worst of these master narratives, thereby laying the groundwork for the scholarly argument s of disability bioethicists to be given more serious consideration. Ultimately, I conclude that the field of bioethics is improved when it abandons the gross grained, generalizations about who disabled people are and how they act put forth by oppressive master narratives in favor of the more nuanced self-descriptions offered by the counterstories being offered by disabled people themselves. So it is that, by challenging these oppressive master narratives that constrain and distort the social meaning of disability, disability activism can improve mainstream bioethics.
ISSN:1572-8447
Contains:Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10677-022-10283-y