As medical advancements continue to shape the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of disability and illness, technology is often presented as a path to autonomy. Rebecca Monteleone shows how such technologies contribute to a cruel double bind, forcing disabled people to be accountable for adapting to a world built by and for nondisabled people while dismissing their lived experiences in favor of medical expertise. In the new book The Double Bind of Disability, Monteleone explores anecdotes about prenatal genetic screening, deep brain stimulation, and do-it-yourself artificial pancreas systems, exposing new relationships among disability, authority, knowledge, and responsibility. Monteleone is joined here in conversation with Ashley Shew. 

Rebecca Monteleone is associate professor of disability and technology at the University of Toledo and author of The Double Bind of Disability: How Medical Technology Shapes Bodily Authority. 
 

Ashley Shew is a professor of science, technology, and society at Virginia Tech and author of Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement.

EPISODE REFERENCES:

-Ally Day

-“Transmobility: Possibilities in Cyborg (Cripborg) Bodies,” Mallory Kay Nelson, Ashley Shew, and Bethany Stevens / Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 

-Jackie Leach Scully

-Dana Lewis

-Biomedicalization: Technoscience, Health, and Illness in the U.S. / Adele E. Clarke, Laura Mamo, Jennifer Ruth Fosket, Jennifer R. Fishman, Janet K. Shim, editors

Praise for the book:
"A generous, timely, and essential contribution to understanding the current politics that shape medical technology and disability in the context of neoliberal ableism. A book that I will be thinking-making-feeling with for many years to come!"
—Laura Forlano, Northeastern University
 

The Double Bind of Disability: How Medical Technology Shapes Bodily Authority by Rebecca Monteleone is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.