Special Education as Neoliberal Property: The Racecraft, Biopolitics, and Immunization of Disability

• In Event: "What's Disability Got to Do With It?" Social Contexts of Education and Its Intersectionalities

Abstract

This presentation argues that special education is a neoliberal property that works to recruit disability through scientific-juridical qualifications of educational life that are more likely to be available for white students who have essentialized disabilities than students of color who are ascribed disability labels. Extending Cheryl Harris’ original formulation of whiteness as property, this presentation argues that special education policy not only propertizes certain disabilities but also renders childhood a possession. This presentation draws from a variety of theoretical perspectives—including, racecraft, biopolitics, and immunization—to formulate a crip reading of present special education policy. Moving from a racecraft of disability labeling to a biopolitics of special education, this essay argues that whiteness recruits disability into its self-enclosed and propertied boundaries with the effect that educational life is contractually immunized against communal obligations of human difference.

Author

• Benjamin Kelsey Kearl, Indiana University - Bloomington