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ERIC Number: EJ1223750
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-1946
EISSN: N/A
Special Education as Neoliberal Property: The Racecraft, Biopolitics, and Immunization of Disability
Kearl, Benjamin
Educational Studies: Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, v55 n4 p473-488 2019
Through the juxtaposition of 2 recent Supreme Court actions--"Allston v. Lower Merion County School District" (2015) and "Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District" (2017)--this article 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. This thesis draws from a variety of theoretical perspectives--including, racecraft, biopolitics, and immunization--to formulate a crip reading of present special education policy. Although critiquing overrepresentation and disproportionality, this article also suggests a way of dialectically attenting to the uses of disability labeling toward the reciprocal production of pathological ableism and biopolitical racism. Moving from a racecraft of disability labeling to a biopolitics of special education, this article concludes by arguing that Whiteness recruits disability into its self-enclosed and propertied boundaries with the effect that educational life is contractually immunized against communal obligations to human difference. James Baldwin's (1963/1998), "A Talk to Teachers," critically inflects this conclusion and also motivates the article's analytical excursion into the troubling nexus of special education policy, neoliberalism, and Whiteness.
Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Laws, Policies, & Programs: Plessy v Ferguson; Brown v Board of Education
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A