Disability, Agency, and Moral Qualms

Abstract

This paper explores how disability is built into the functionality of industrialized farming practices but is not discussed in disability justice discourse. By analyzing works by Sunaura Taylor, Thomas Bretz, Temple Grandin, and Cary Wolfe, I examine ways to condemn the disability-causing functions of industrialized agriculture as well as address the rift between the animal rights and disability justice community caused by Singer’s Animal Liberation without detracting from the work done by disability activists to destigmatize disability. The driving question for this article grapples with how to celebrate disability while simultaneously acknowledging that disability-causing structures like factory farming are bad. Through a posthumanist approach, this paper contends that by rejecting human exceptionalism and moving past agency as a qualifier for moral consideration, the two communities can be reconciled and ensure their rights.