(Mal)adjusted to the Crisis, Disabled for Citizenship? Disability and Race in Discourses of "the Crisis"
Abstract
Interrogating the austerity measures introduced by the Czech government under the Prime ministry of Petr Nečas (2010-2013), this essay wishes to highlight the import of the translations of the political into the registry of morality, which Chantal Mouffe identifies as features of postpolitics, for (re)establishing of social hierarchies and inequalities based in difference. In particular, I establish the strategic importance of "disability" and racialised concept of "maladaptation" - for such postpolitical reformulations of the political and the normative outlines of the abled citizenship.
After mapping out the ideological deployment of the idea of crisis for ethics of austerity, the essay concludes by posing questions about possible limits and drawbacks of relying upon crisis as a trope of intersectional feminist critique.