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This book offers a critical exploration of the interplay between law, care ethics, and the body, emphasizing how legal systems both reflect societal values and regulate and discipline bodies and sexualities that deviate from normative standards, branding them as deviant or pathological. The authors contend that visibility often celebrated as empowering frequently serves as a mechanism of state control, subjecting marginalized bodies to cycles of hyper-visibility and erasure. Grounded in critical disability studies, queer theory, and Foucault s theories of power, the book challenges liberalism s focus on rights and autonomy, advocating instead for a framework centered on care ethics.
List of contents
Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Disability, Valentine s Narrative and the Law.- Chapter 3. Discipline and Disgust
About the author
Riley Clare Valentine, Ph.D. is a political theorist. They obtained their Ph.D. from Louisiana State University. Their books include
Progressive Liberalism and Neoliberalism in American Politics: The Heterodoxical Imperative
(Palgrave, 2024) and
Be Gay, Do Crime: Everyday Acts of Radical Queer History
(2025).
Zane McNeill, M.A, is the co-editor of
Deviant Hollers: Queering Appalachian Ecologies for a Sustainable Future
(2024) and
Politics as Public Art: The Aesthetics of Political Organizing and Social Movements
(2023) and the editor of
Building Multispecies Resistance Against Exploitation: Stories from the Frontlines of Labor and Animal Rights
(2024).
Summary
This book offers a critical exploration of the interplay between law, care ethics, and the body, emphasizing how legal systems both reflect societal values and regulate and discipline bodies and sexualities that deviate from normative standards, branding them as deviant or pathological. The authors contend that visibility—often celebrated as empowering—frequently serves as a mechanism of state control, subjecting marginalized bodies to cycles of hyper-visibility and erasure. Grounded in critical disability studies, queer theory, and Foucault’s theories of power, the book challenges liberalism’s focus on rights and autonomy, advocating instead for a framework centered on care ethics.
