Bending over Backwards
Essays on Disability and the Body

This text re-examines issues concerning the relationship between disability and normality in the light of postmodern theory and political activism. It argues that disability can become the new prism through which postmodernity examines and defines itself.

This text re-examines issues concerning the relationship between disability and normality in the light of postmodern theory and political activism. Davis takes up homosexuality, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the legal system, the history of science and medicine, eugenics and genetics. Throughout, he maintains that disability is the central category of postmodernity because it redefines the body in relation to concepts of normalcy which underlie the very foundations of democracy and humanistic ideas about the body. Davis argues that disability can become the new prism through which postmodernity examines and defines itself, supplanting the categories of race, class, gender and sexual orientation.