Thomas Abrams
Biographic Data
| ID | 154003 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas Abrams |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas |
| FAMILY NAME | Abrams |
| SIGNATURE | ABRAMS T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queen's University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3908-4446 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 29 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 24 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Critical Inquiry Across Disciplinary Divides
Sick kids versus whom? Childhood disability and charitable campaigns on Instagram
Platform media are changing the disability charity landscape. This paper employs a hybrid critical disability studies – platform media studies lens to explore the SickKids VS campaign, aiming to ‘fight’ childhood illness and disability. Employing a social media thematic analysis, we analyzed social media content distributed through the campaign, consisting of images, videos, and captions ( n =620). We found three dominant narratives: heroic sick …
Vagues de capacitisme
Drawing on critical disability studies and affect theory, this paper centers the affective arrangements that have governed the COVID-19 pandemic, and looks ahead to new articulations that might emerge in which disability and ableism structure state responses. While the last two plus years have demonstrated in powerful ways how COVID-19 is a space brimming with affective energies, they have also shown us that health emergencies can be the occasion…
Waves of Ableism
Drawing on critical disability studies and affect theory, this paper centers the affective arrangements that have governed the COVID-19 pandemic, and looks ahead to new articulations that might emerge in which disability and ableism structure state responses. While the last two plus years have demonstrated in powerful ways how COVID-19 is a space brimming with affective energies, they have also shown us that health emergencies can be the occasion…
Tragic Affirmation
Enacting objects and subjects in a children's rehabilitation clinic
In health care clinics, problems are constructed through interactions, a choreography of human and non-human actors together enacting matters of concern. Studying the ways in which a body, person, family, or environment is objectified for clinical purposes opens discussion about advantages and disadvantages of different objectification practices, and exploration of creative ways to handle the diversity and tensions that exist. In this analysis, w…
Disability, affect theory, and the politics of breathing
Assistive spectacles
Affect, intensity, and moral assemblage in rehabilitation practice
Cheer* in Health Care Practice
Clinicians' positive demeanor and "strengths based" focus can include working to create a cheerful atmosphere in health care environments, cheering for improvements in assessment outcomes, and cheering up clients in situations of decline. Drawing from philosopher Karen Barad's theories of inclusions and exclusions, we investigated what comes to matter (and what is excluded from mattering) when there is cheerfulness, cheering, and so forth (cheer*…
Living with Death in Rehabilitation
Braidotti, Spinoza and disability studies after the human
Disability studies has begun to employ Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanism, as a means to challenge the exclusionary model of man, dominant both in the academy and in everyday life. Braidotti argues that we must embrace a new form of subjectivity to effectively address the academic, environmental and species challenges characterizing the posthuman condition. This critical posthuman subject is inspired, in part, by Baruch de Spinoza, read as a monistic …
Putting Gino's lesson to work
This article argues that rehabilitation enacts a particular understanding of "the human" throughout therapeutic assessment and treatment. Following Michel Callon and Vololona Rabeharisoa's "Gino's Lesson on Humanity," we suggest that this is not simply a top-down process, but is cultivated in the application and response to biomedical frameworks of human ability, competence, and responsibility. The emergence of the human is at once a materially c…
Disability and Bureaucratic Forms of Life
This paper employs a hybrid actor-network theory/phenomenological approach to a frequent bother in the lives of disabled persons: bureaucratic forms. I argue that these forms are key sites where disabled personhood emerges, something I examine through the lens of what philosopher Annemarie Mol calls ‘ontological politics’. To be disabled is to be entered into the bureaucratic form of life. These forms translate human existence into a categorize-a…
Disability, economic agency, and embodied cognition
Heidegger, subjectivity, disability
Cartesian dualism and disabled phenomenology
In this paper, I critically examine phenomenological disability studies' critique of so-called ‘Cartesian Dualism’. I argue that it is not a metaphysical divide between mental and extended substance that disability studies must overcome, but rather a more fundamental understanding of world understood only in terms of substance, what Martin Heidegger calls the ‘ontology of objective presence’. This view of ‘the world’ passes over being-in-the-worl…
From Homines Inhabiles to Homo Economicus and Back Again
Michel Callon's economic sociology frequently addresses the topic of disability. Though his Actor-Network Theory (ANT) contributions are often cited within mainstream disability studies, his economic sociology has not. In this paper, I seek to present it to disability studies, and argue that it is complimentary to existing inquiries into the political economy of disablement. After sketching out ANT and Callon's economic sociology, which I read as…
Is everyone upright? Erwin Straus’ “The Upright Posture” and disabled phenomenology
This paper provides a close reading of Erwin Straus’ “The Upright Posture” from a disability studies perspective. Straus argues that the upright posture dominates the human world. But he excludes those who dwell in it otherwise. By reviewing phenomenological disability literature, this paper asks what a disabled phenomenology would look like, one rooted in the problem of inclusion from the outset. Disabled phenomenology addresses ‘subjectivity’ c…
Flawed by Dasein? Phenomenology, Ethnomethodology, and the Personal Experience of Physiotherapy
The Ontological Politics of Disablement
What does it mean to be disabled? To answer this question, this dissertation uses Martin Heidegger's concept of the 'ontological difference', the difference between human existence and that of everything else. I argue that a key issue facing disabled people, and thus disability studies, is the administration of the experience of disability via objective categories; to be disabled is to be administered. To make this case, I look to three diverse s…
Re-Reading Erving Goffman as an Emancipatory Researcher
Erving Goffman's work is often employed within Disability Studies. However, in Canada and the UK, most authors only discuss his Stigma (1963) or Asylums (1961), and his work is often dismissed as: a) individualistic; b) lacking a notion of social structure; and c) politically benign. In this paper, I argue that a re-reading of Erving Goffman is in order. In particular I examine his "Mental Symptoms and Public Order" (1967) and "The Insanity of Pl…
Boon or bust? Heidegger, disability aesthetics and the thalidomide memorial
Disability Studies has begun to interrogate the aesthetics of disability, both in terms of artwork and sensuous apprehension more generally. The present paper is a contribution to this burgeoning literature. Here I seek to demonstrate what the aesthetics of Martin Heidegger offer to that project. I do so in three stages. I begin by reviewing some relevant disability studies literature, highlighting some general themes in Disability Studies’ recen…
Habituation revisited
Re-Reading Erving Goffman as an Emancipatory Researcher
Erving Goffman's work is often employed within Disability Studies. However, in Canada and the UK, most authors only discuss his Stigma (1963) or Asylums (1961), and his work is often dismissed as: a) individualistic; b) lacking a notion of social structure; and c) politically benign. In this paper, I argue that a re-reading of Erving Goffman is in order. In particular I examine his "Mental Symptoms and Public Order" (1967) and "The Insanity of Pl…
Cheer* in Health Care Practice
Clinicians' positive demeanor and "strengths based" focus can include working to create a cheerful atmosphere in health care environments, cheering for improvements in assessment outcomes, and cheering up clients in situations of decline. Drawing from philosopher Karen Barad's theories of inclusions and exclusions, we investigated what comes to matter (and what is excluded from mattering) when there is cheerfulness, cheering, and so forth (cheer*…
Flawed by Dasein? Phenomenology, Ethnomethodology, and the Personal Experience of Physiotherapy
Putting Gino's lesson to work
This article argues that rehabilitation enacts a particular understanding of "the human" throughout therapeutic assessment and treatment. Following Michel Callon and Vololona Rabeharisoa's "Gino's Lesson on Humanity," we suggest that this is not simply a top-down process, but is cultivated in the application and response to biomedical frameworks of human ability, competence, and responsibility. The emergence of the human is at once a materially c…
Cartesian dualism and disabled phenomenology
In this paper, I critically examine phenomenological disability studies' critique of so-called ‘Cartesian Dualism’. I argue that it is not a metaphysical divide between mental and extended substance that disability studies must overcome, but rather a more fundamental understanding of world understood only in terms of substance, what Martin Heidegger calls the ‘ontology of objective presence’. This view of ‘the world’ passes over being-in-the-worl…
Boon or bust? Heidegger, disability aesthetics and the thalidomide memorial
Disability Studies has begun to interrogate the aesthetics of disability, both in terms of artwork and sensuous apprehension more generally. The present paper is a contribution to this burgeoning literature. Here I seek to demonstrate what the aesthetics of Martin Heidegger offer to that project. I do so in three stages. I begin by reviewing some relevant disability studies literature, highlighting some general themes in Disability Studies’ recen…
Is everyone upright? Erwin Straus’ “The Upright Posture” and disabled phenomenology
This paper provides a close reading of Erwin Straus’ “The Upright Posture” from a disability studies perspective. Straus argues that the upright posture dominates the human world. But he excludes those who dwell in it otherwise. By reviewing phenomenological disability literature, this paper asks what a disabled phenomenology would look like, one rooted in the problem of inclusion from the outset. Disabled phenomenology addresses ‘subjectivity’ c…
Living with Death in Rehabilitation
The Ontological Politics of Disablement
What does it mean to be disabled? To answer this question, this dissertation uses Martin Heidegger's concept of the 'ontological difference', the difference between human existence and that of everything else. I argue that a key issue facing disabled people, and thus disability studies, is the administration of the experience of disability via objective categories; to be disabled is to be administered. To make this case, I look to three diverse s…
Habituation revisited
Boon or bust? Heidegger, disability aesthetics and the thalidomide memorial
Disability Studies has begun to interrogate the aesthetics of disability, both in terms of artwork and sensuous apprehension more generally. The present paper is a contribution to this burgeoning literature. Here I seek to demonstrate what the aesthetics of Martin Heidegger offer to that project. I do so in three stages. I begin by reviewing some relevant disability studies literature, highlighting some general themes in Disability Studies’ recen…
Is everyone upright? Erwin Straus’ “The Upright Posture” and disabled phenomenology
This paper provides a close reading of Erwin Straus’ “The Upright Posture” from a disability studies perspective. Straus argues that the upright posture dominates the human world. But he excludes those who dwell in it otherwise. By reviewing phenomenological disability literature, this paper asks what a disabled phenomenology would look like, one rooted in the problem of inclusion from the outset. Disabled phenomenology addresses ‘subjectivity’ c…
Flawed by Dasein? Phenomenology, Ethnomethodology, and the Personal Experience of Physiotherapy
The Ontological Politics of Disablement
What does it mean to be disabled? To answer this question, this dissertation uses Martin Heidegger's concept of the 'ontological difference', the difference between human existence and that of everything else. I argue that a key issue facing disabled people, and thus disability studies, is the administration of the experience of disability via objective categories; to be disabled is to be administered. To make this case, I look to three diverse s…
Re-Reading Erving Goffman as an Emancipatory Researcher
Erving Goffman's work is often employed within Disability Studies. However, in Canada and the UK, most authors only discuss his Stigma (1963) or Asylums (1961), and his work is often dismissed as: a) individualistic; b) lacking a notion of social structure; and c) politically benign. In this paper, I argue that a re-reading of Erving Goffman is in order. In particular I examine his "Mental Symptoms and Public Order" (1967) and "The Insanity of Pl…
Heidegger, subjectivity, disability
Cartesian dualism and disabled phenomenology
In this paper, I critically examine phenomenological disability studies' critique of so-called ‘Cartesian Dualism’. I argue that it is not a metaphysical divide between mental and extended substance that disability studies must overcome, but rather a more fundamental understanding of world understood only in terms of substance, what Martin Heidegger calls the ‘ontology of objective presence’. This view of ‘the world’ passes over being-in-the-worl…
From Homines Inhabiles to Homo Economicus and Back Again
Michel Callon's economic sociology frequently addresses the topic of disability. Though his Actor-Network Theory (ANT) contributions are often cited within mainstream disability studies, his economic sociology has not. In this paper, I seek to present it to disability studies, and argue that it is complimentary to existing inquiries into the political economy of disablement. After sketching out ANT and Callon's economic sociology, which I read as…
Disability and Bureaucratic Forms of Life
This paper employs a hybrid actor-network theory/phenomenological approach to a frequent bother in the lives of disabled persons: bureaucratic forms. I argue that these forms are key sites where disabled personhood emerges, something I examine through the lens of what philosopher Annemarie Mol calls ‘ontological politics’. To be disabled is to be entered into the bureaucratic form of life. These forms translate human existence into a categorize-a…
Disability, economic agency, and embodied cognition
Braidotti, Spinoza and disability studies after the human
Disability studies has begun to employ Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanism, as a means to challenge the exclusionary model of man, dominant both in the academy and in everyday life. Braidotti argues that we must embrace a new form of subjectivity to effectively address the academic, environmental and species challenges characterizing the posthuman condition. This critical posthuman subject is inspired, in part, by Baruch de Spinoza, read as a monistic …
Putting Gino's lesson to work
This article argues that rehabilitation enacts a particular understanding of "the human" throughout therapeutic assessment and treatment. Following Michel Callon and Vololona Rabeharisoa's "Gino's Lesson on Humanity," we suggest that this is not simply a top-down process, but is cultivated in the application and response to biomedical frameworks of human ability, competence, and responsibility. The emergence of the human is at once a materially c…
Living with Death in Rehabilitation
Affect, intensity, and moral assemblage in rehabilitation practice
Cheer* in Health Care Practice
Clinicians' positive demeanor and "strengths based" focus can include working to create a cheerful atmosphere in health care environments, cheering for improvements in assessment outcomes, and cheering up clients in situations of decline. Drawing from philosopher Karen Barad's theories of inclusions and exclusions, we investigated what comes to matter (and what is excluded from mattering) when there is cheerfulness, cheering, and so forth (cheer*…
Assistive spectacles
Disability, affect theory, and the politics of breathing
Waves of Ableism
Drawing on critical disability studies and affect theory, this paper centers the affective arrangements that have governed the COVID-19 pandemic, and looks ahead to new articulations that might emerge in which disability and ableism structure state responses. While the last two plus years have demonstrated in powerful ways how COVID-19 is a space brimming with affective energies, they have also shown us that health emergencies can be the occasion…
Tragic Affirmation
Enacting objects and subjects in a children's rehabilitation clinic
In health care clinics, problems are constructed through interactions, a choreography of human and non-human actors together enacting matters of concern. Studying the ways in which a body, person, family, or environment is objectified for clinical purposes opens discussion about advantages and disadvantages of different objectification practices, and exploration of creative ways to handle the diversity and tensions that exist. In this analysis, w…
Vagues de capacitisme
Drawing on critical disability studies and affect theory, this paper centers the affective arrangements that have governed the COVID-19 pandemic, and looks ahead to new articulations that might emerge in which disability and ableism structure state responses. While the last two plus years have demonstrated in powerful ways how COVID-19 is a space brimming with affective energies, they have also shown us that health emergencies can be the occasion…
Sick kids versus whom? Childhood disability and charitable campaigns on Instagram
Platform media are changing the disability charity landscape. This paper employs a hybrid critical disability studies – platform media studies lens to explore the SickKids VS campaign, aiming to ‘fight’ childhood illness and disability. Employing a social media thematic analysis, we analyzed social media content distributed through the campaign, consisting of images, videos, and captions ( n =620). We found three dominant narratives: heroic sick …
Critical Inquiry Across Disciplinary Divides
Sociology (16 works) · Disability Rights and Representation (14 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Political science (13 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Disability studies (9 works) · Politics (9 works)