critques of Martha Nussbaum view of disability

Marta Russell ap888 at lafn.org
Thu Nov 15 08:45:22 PST 2001


http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/0501/0501cov.htm

Scholar Martha Nussbaum writes that "Extreme dependency comes in many forms." Here is Cal Montgomery's response. Critic of the Dawn

By Cal Montgomery

I. It shouldn't have happened to you," people say. Slight emphasis on you. Institutionalization, they mean.

Sometimes they stop there; sometimes they finish the thought. "You're okay." *********************

and one by David Pfieffer at http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/0901/0901pfeiffer.htm

Disabled Lives' -- a commentary

By David Pfeiffer My partner -- my wife -- and I are mutually dependent. We take care of each other, as do most married couples. I am no more dependent than most people are dependent. Yet many non-disabled people would describe me as severely disabled and dependent, solely because I use a wheelchair. That is what ethicist Martha Nussbaum seems to be doing in her "Disabled Lives: Who Cares?" in the January 11, 2001, issue of The New York Review of Books, which Cal Montgomery dissected so powerfully in her "Critic of the Dawn" piece (Ragged Edge, May). Nussbaum's discussion of people she calls "severely disabled" reinforces the widespread belief that all people with disabilities are very dependent upon non-disabled people.



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