Arguing with “at least” constructions

Based on corpus data from the Hebrew web corpus HeTenTen, I analyze the discourse argumentative functions of constructions associated with superlative minimum modifiers (e. g. at least). I adopt Kay’s (1992. At least. In Adrienne Lehrer & Eva Feder Kittay (eds.), Frames, fields, and contrasts: New essays in semantic and lexical organization, 309–331. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum) distinction between three such sub-constructions: Scalar, Rhetorical and Evaluative, but I offer further distinctions within these constructions. Most importantly, despite the differences between them, I argue that all three constructions are used to construct non-optimal, yet sufficient arguments.

Care Communities

The feminist philosophy of “ethics of care” has been important for disability studies inasmuch as it helps us see caregiving as widespread and admirable, rather than as a failure of autonomy. Care ethicists usually imagine care as either an institutional situation or an intimate dyad. However, in “Critical Care,” I add a third case in a midrange scale: the care community. The care community is a voluntary social formation, composed of friends, family, and neighbors, that coalesces around someone in need. It is my contention that by exploring the care community, we can make important aspects of care visible and rethink care relationships. What we see in care communities is a process, rather than a preset care structure, and that fluidity allows us to interrogate the conditions under which care can develop and the dynamics of extended care. I use Victorian fiction to showcase care communities, since novels of this period are marked by ubiquitous spontaneous small groups forming around people who are ill or hurt, but I also make a case that care communities continue to exist today, particularly among queer communities and people of color, performing a vital function in our ordinary lives. Finally, I argue that care communities can help us fundamentally rethink disability as a need like any other need rather than an inherent identity. Eva Feder Kittay has argued that care relations are the foundation of civic society; in that case, disability and the care community that arises in response to it are not marginalized cases but are what, profoundly, makes social life possible.

A Multiplicidade do Cuidado na Experiência da Deficiência

A categoria cuidado é central na teoria feminista da deficiência. Ainda assim, enquanto um termo êmico e também analítico, o cuidado tem sido objeto de controvérsias entre teóricas e ativistas do campo da deficiência. No presente trabalho, pretendemos traçar a trajetória desta categoria dentro do movimento social e das teorias que embasam o modelo social da deficiência, a fim de apontar os conflitos que permeiam este diálogo. A abordagem parte de pesquisas realizadas em Porto Alegre e Belo Horizonte, Brasil, respectivamente junto a mães/cuidadoras de adultos com deficiência cognitiva e a mulheres com deficiência física com histórico de violências, bem como a fontes secundárias. Problematizaremos quatro aproximações comumente acionadas no cotidiano de nossas(os) interlocutoras(es) - o cuidado como “superproteção”, o cuidado como “educar” e o cuidado como “violência” - por entendermos que elas proporcionam uma reflexão teórica em torno da polarização entre os conceitos “cuidado”, “autonomia” e “independência”. Refletiremos, a partir das teorias feministas do cuidado, em especial a obra da filósofa Eva Feder Kittay, o cuidado não apenas enquanto uma prática social e emocional e uma categoria moral sob a qual incide múltiplas valorações, mas também uma “entrada etnográfica” para refletirmos sobre os modos como a deficiência é coproduzida no cotidiano de nossas(os) interlocutoras(es), permitindo-nos uma melhor compreensão acerca da experiência da deficiência em si.

“Every Man his Specialty”

Chapter 4 discusses the dialectics of dependency—the interplay between a social contract based on free, equal agents and one that recognizes contingent interrelationships—by looking at one modernist writer, Samuel Beckett, whose work challenges liberal theories of autonomy and independent agency. Beckett’s characters are often disabled and exist in tragi-comic relations of co-dependence that seem to mock communitarian ideals of charity and mutual aid while laying bare the edifice of liberal individualism. Through readings of Happy Days, Rough for Theater I, and Endgame this chapter complicates disability rights’ advocacy of independent living while building upon recent developments in dependency theory advanced by Eva Feder Kittay, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Martha Nussbaum.

L’inclusion du Black feminism dans la philosophie politique : une approche féministe de la décolonisation des savoirs

Fondé sur ce que l’autrice nomme l’« approche féministe de la décolonisation des savoirs », cet article aborde la place du féminisme noir dans la philosophie politique. L’autrice montre que la pensée féministe noire est une philosophie de la justice sociale. À partir de la notion de « modestie épistémique » proposée par Eva Feder Kittay, l’autrice examine comment l’ignorance du système de valeurs et des expériences des femmes noires dans les théories libérales constitue une injustice herméneutique pour les intellectuelles qui édifient le Black feminism comme théorie de la justice raciale et de genre.

La dépendance, les services publics, le care et le discours familialiste

En renouant le lien entre éthique ducareet politique égalitariste, Eva Feder Kittay propose une théorie éthico-politique qui donne l’une des justifications les plus fortes à l’inclusion au contrat social des personnes en situation de handicap et des femmes qui en ont soin. Le modèle d’État-providence ducarepromu par l’auteure s’appuie cependant sur une vision distributive de la justice de genre qui n’est que partielle. Il ravive l’idéologie familialiste s’appuyant sur une vision romancée de la vie privée et fournit du même coup des munitions aux adeptes néolibéraux de la désinstitutionnalisation. Enfin, il contribue à sceller l’alliance entre les femmes et le foyer à l’heure où le ressac antiféministe se fait le plus vivement ressentir.