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Living On; Not Getting Better

Bibliographic Data

ID3945537
AuthorsM Shildrick (0000-0002-9360-0931, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume111
Issue1
Pages10-24
Publication date2015-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-7789 • E-ISSN: 1466-4380
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/fr.2015.22
OpenAlexW2122046706
LanguageEN
Citations received30
References cited47

The contemporary emergence of the concept 'debility', which pertains to a broad swathe of humanity whose ordinary lives simply persist without ever getting better, shares a time span with an acute critique of neo-liberal biopolitics. Where capital has historically relied on a population that through its labour necessarily becomes debilitated, the newer model of understanding references the intrinsic profitability of debility itself. The two dimensions overlap and co-exist, but what I shall pursue here are the implications of recognising that, at the most fundamental level, it is in the interests of neo-liberalism to produce and sustain bodies as debilitated and therefore susceptible to a range of market commodities that hold out the promise of therapeutic interventions into the relative failures of physical, cognitive and affective embodiment. In previous work, I have argued strongly for the inherent vulnerability of all bodies, but in considering here a more overtly politicised context, it becomes possible to readdress the questions posed by Jasbir Puar: 'which bodies are made to pay for "progress"? Which debilitated bodies can be reinvigorated for neoliberalism, and which cannot?' And at the present moment, writing at a time of imposed austerity, I would add, what, if anything, is lost in the deployment of the term debility instead of disability

Aesthetics · Austerity · Biopower · Context (archaeology) · Debility · Economics · Epistemology · Neoliberalism (international relations) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Positive economics · Sociology · Biomedical Ethics and Regulation · History · Law · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations · Philosophy · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism

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Unique citing works30
Citations per year3
Citation span2016 - 2026 (11)
Citation velocitycurrent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 28
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