Philosophy

Earthly Plenitudes Gulli, Bruno

Published by Temple University Press

Gulli, Bruno. Earthly Plenitudes. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009. Project MUSE., https://muse.jhu.edu/.

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The critique of productivity and sovereignty yields a radically diff er-ent concept of labor. Th is is the concept of labor as care, which has been recently worked out in gender and feminist philosophy. Eva Feder Kittay (1999), in par tic u lar, speaks of it as the work of dependency— a concept which, not confi ned to the economic sphere, has the power to re- draw the map of po liti cal philosophy as a whole, as well as of the study of culture.1 It does so by showing the falseness of the notion of the in de pen- dent, fully autonomous, individual, and by replacing it with the infi nitely more sensible notions that de pen den cy is an inescapable condition of human experience and care is the only truly adequate way to relate to the fact of

C h a p t e r F i v e

Sovereign, Productive, and Efficient: The Place of Disability

in the Ableist Society

w Look: this is my reward / For taking care of you

—Sophocles, Antigone

“What is that word ‘menial’? I never heard it,” said Edith. “It is obsolete now,” remarked her father. “If I understand it rightly, it applied to persons who performed particularly disagreeable and unpleasant tasks for others, and carried with it an implication of contempt. Was it not so, Mr. West?”

—Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward. 2000– 1887

Th e rule of capital through the wage compels every ablebodied person to function, under the law of division of labor, and to function in ways that are if not immediately, then ultimately profi table to the expansion and extension of the rule of capital.

—Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, Th e Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community

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de pen den cy. Typically, the in de pen dent and fully autonomous individual is male;2 the work of de pen den cy and care is, as typically, seen as what “natu- rally” belongs to women; it is, as Diemut Elizabeth Bubeck says, “women’s work” (1995: 24).3 Needless to say, this is only due to the fact that histori- cally the work of care has been done (and it is still mostly done) by women (pp. 40– 41). As Kittay also says, the fact that this type of work is “largely gendered” does not entail that it needs to be (1999: xiv).

Th e aim of this chapter is to show that the centrality of the concept of care requires that the logic of productivity and sovereignty be dismantled; in other words, care cannot become the new essential diff erence, the new modal- ity of or ga niz ing po liti cal communities and society as a whole, of managing individual lives and communal situations, unless the realities of exploitation and domination are eliminated. Under such realities, care can be a bureau- cratic and mechanical application of police mea sures, a paternalistic attitude and practice, but it could not become the adequate response to the condition of dependency— a response that includes adequate agency. Indeed, adequate agency constitutes the univocal and common ground of the carer and the cared for; in true care, they can both display and experience adequate agency— adequate not to some institutional mea sures of society, but to the actual conditions of their existence.4 At the same time, the critique of pro- ductivity and sovereignty would reach a blind spot without a concept such as care, capable of off ering a viable and powerful alternative to the condition of the present, and, indeed, to the history of the human adventure. It is in this sense that I review here some of the literature on the labor of care and on the question of disability (where the inescapability of dependence and the neces- sity of care become most evident). Th at is, I try to think care, de pen den cy, and disability in the light of the critique of productivity and sovereignty and, at the same time, confi rm the importance of such a critique from the point of view of the centrality of care and the inescapability of the condition of de pen den cy, which includes what is problematically called disability.5

In Labor of Fire, I indicated— along the lines of a concretely utopian thinking— that after productive labor (as the labor that produces and in- creases capital), the time/space of creative labor would open up. Yet, the category of creative labor did not acquire there a specifi c connotation. It was only put in relation to its most obvious occurrence, artistic labor; yet it was not given the amplitude required by an activity responsible for the constitu- tion of the social as a whole. In reality, creative labor, and this includes the specifi city of art, is nothing but labor as care; or, put it another way, care is the result of the merging of labor and art. Th is approach eff ectively chal- lenges the view that both art and care are forms of unproductive labor, or

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rather it problematizes the productive/unproductive labor dichotomy. With respect to artistic labor, a similar analysis can be found in the recent work of José Maria Durán (2008).

In volume 3 of Capital, Marx distinguishes between freedom within the realm of necessity and the (true) realm of freedom.

Th e realm of freedom really begins only where labour determined by necessity and external expediency ends; it lies by its very nature be- yond the sphere of material production proper. (1981: 958– 959)

However, he soon makes clear that these two spheres or realms are not, as they would be in a metaphysical scheme, completely separate and in de pen- dent from one another; rather, in a way that recalls the base/superstructure model, freedom (even “true” freedom) always remains grounded in necessity. In the following passage, Marx says what freedom is when it remains within the realm of necessity and what true freedom is beyond necessity. Interest- ingly, even the second moment, of true freedom, is not completely detached from necessity and material production but it fl ourishes on the basis of it:

Freedom, in this sphere [i.e., the sphere of necessity and material production], can consist only in this, that socialized man, the associ- ated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a ra- tional way, bringing it under their collective control instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropri- ate for their human nature. But this always remains a realm of neces- sity. Th e true realm of freedom, the development of human powers as an end in itself, begins beyond it, though it can only fl ourish with this realm of necessity as its basis. Th e reduction of the working day is the basic prerequisite. (p. 959; emphasis added)

We are reading about the inescapability of necessity and de pen den cy. Th e two spheres, of necessity and freedom, are not stages that are at one and the same time separated yet connected by a transition; rather, they belong to- gether insofar as necessity itself is socially reappropriated, that is, insofar as it returns from the realm of alienation and death and becomes proper to the human condition, structural to the good life for everybody. Th ere cannot be true freedom unless freedom itself is fi rst found in necessity and necessity redefi ned in freedom. Th e communal positing of needs for the sake of liber- ating time and grounding human dignity is the overcoming of the necessity

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posited by capital. Only on the basis of this, can true freedom fl ourish. Th is fl ourishing, “the development of human powers as an end in itself,” is noth- ing but the fl ourishing of time and care. Indeed, time and care are the most important concepts in the above quoted passage. When necessity is collec- tively controlled instead of being a blind dominating power, time is liberated and true care becomes possible. Th us, Marx ends the passage with the no- tion of the reduction of the working day as a prerequisite. And indeed, as Dalla Costa and James say, “[t]o ‘have time’ means to work less” (1972: 40).

It is evident that all labor does not end with the liberation of time. In the Grundrisse, speaking of automated labor, Marx says that, at one point, the contradiction created by machinery (i.e., the simultaneous creation of dispos- able time and its conversion into surplus value) can no longer be contained. Th en, “the mass of workers must themselves appropriate their own surplus labour” (1973: 708). He continues with one of the few descriptions in his work of the labor of the future:

Once they have done so— and disposable time thereby ceases to have an antithetical existence— then, on one side, necessary labour time will be mea sured by the needs of the social individual, and, on the other, the development of the power of social production will grow so rapidly that, even though production is now calculated for the wealth of all, disposable time will grow for all. For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. (Ibid.)

Although Marx is here using the expression “productive power,” it might be important to note that “productive” has nothing to do with the logic of pro- ductivism, but is instead related to the creative dimension of labor. Th is la- bor is called productive either by equivocation or because the word productive itself has returned to its originary meaning of bringing forth— thus, inclusive of the labor which, under capitalism, is known as unproductive (typically, “women’s work”).6 Even more important is the fact that the growth of dis- posable (free) time will make it possible for individuals to care for those ac- tivities and situations that remain beyond the range and power of automated labor. In fact, disposable time cannot be a time in which one does nothing at all. Rather, it is the time in which time itself grows, the time of fertility (to recall Neruda),7 poetic time, when the doing is done in accord with the spirit of the end, which is the doing’s own essence.

It is the time of care, when the subject and object merge, not into the one, but into the other— other from subject and object alike. Th is is not the other of alienation and antithesis, but that of the return to the proper. Yet, upon

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the return, there is no rest. Most of the work is yet to be done. Th e freedom with which the return was accomplished fi nds a new necessity in the object of care, as impenetrable now to the logic of automation as it was earlier ignored and disdained by the traditional logic of productivity and sovereignty.

Obviously, Marx’s analysis of automated labor points in the direction of the labor of care only implicitly— whereas liberated time is explicitly thema- tized by him. As Bubeck notes, there is “a part of necessary labour that Marx obviously overlooked completely because it certainly does not lend itself to being mechanized or automated.” She continues: “I mean (a part of ) that part of necessary labour that is overwhelmingly performed by women— women’s work” (1995: 24). Bubeck divides this work into three categories: house work, child care, and caring work. Focusing on care, she says, “Com- pletely automated ‘care’ for the needy is an abandonment of people to ma- chines. It ceases to be care” (p. 29).

Th e work of care has the liberation of time as a precondition. It is the labor that must be done even when most of the remaining necessary labor is accomplished with the least expenditure of energy by means of machinery. In this sense, it is the time and labor that fl ourishes in the true realm of freedom— a labor that has human welfare as its main aim, that is, the devel- opment of human powers as an end in itself. For the end of care is the activa- tion and development of human potentialities, not for the sake of profi t, but rather for the sake of letting the dignity of individuation emerge in full visi- bility, outside of the dichotomy of norm and exception, productivity and unproductivity, paid and unpaid labor. As Bubeck says, it “involves human beings, carers and those cared for as human beings, communicating and in- teracting with each other” (p. 29). Th is labor must be highly creative, and indeed constitute an art, for it

requires the exercise of our most distinctive capacities: language and thought and a complex emotional life which allows us to empathize with and understand others and meet their very individual needs. (Ibid.)

Th e fact that care has been historically seen as the work of women does not imply that this should continue to be the case in the future society of liberated time and labor. For Bubeck, the “theory of women’s work as care” only shows the historically unjust treatment and exploitation of women (p. 11). Obviously, “women’s work” can also be (and to an extent is) performed by men. Th is has been the case historically and even more so presently, particularly in the regime of fl exibility and contingency characteristic of

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globalization, where the problem is recognized as the feminization of labor.8 Whether it is performed by women (which is overwhelmingly the case) or by men, women’s work, the labor of care, always remains in a state of super- exploitation. Although its social importance is seldom recognized, for it is taken for granted that someone (usually women) will do it, the labor of care, Bubeck says,

could be seen as a paradigm or model of social interaction, and per- sona carans could replace homo economicus as the individual theo- rized in social and po liti cal theory. (p. 12)

Th is is a very important point, which stresses the possibility of rethink- ing the fundamental fact of the economy as a total social fact. Th e nomos of the oikos, that is, the way in which the space and time of life must be run, the management of a dwelling (which has both a spatial and temporal connota- tion), is contained in the concept of the caring person. Th is would not simply be a description of the house hold economy in Aristotle’s sense, for instance, for which women and children and slaves were totally or partially excluded from citizenship, and the house hold itself, just like the city- state, was a place of inclusion and exclusion, ruled by the master, husband, and father, yet truly managed and cared for by those who did not rule it. Typically, in Aristotle too, one of the central concepts is time, more precisely, the distinction be- tween the time of necessary labor and the time liberated from that necessity. Someone will have to perform the necessary tasks: slaves in the house hold, common laborers in the community (1998: 1278a5– 10). However, the car- ing person, persona carans, does more than perform the necessary tasks, for she is the force reinventing the community, the being- with, the merging of object and subject in the mode of care.

Bubeck’s analysis shows the complexity of care: “ ‘Caring’ can refer to an emotional state or to an activity or to a combination of the two” (1995: 127). After reviewing some traditional, broad defi nitions of care and caring, she off ers her own, restricted defi nition:

Caring for is the meeting of the needs of one person by another per- son where face- to- face interaction between carer and cared for is a crucial element of the overall activity and where the need is of such a nature that it cannot possibly be met by the person herself. (p. 129)

For instance, she distinguishes between care and ser vice: “the house wife cooking a meal for her husband is providing a ser vice, whilst her cooking

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the same meal for an infant would be care” (p. 132). Although Bubeck’s restricted defi nition is very precise and useful, for the purpose of this chap- ter I employ a broader concept of care in order to indicate that virtually any type of work and activity might and perhaps should relate to the mode of care. Kittay stresses that care is work (1999: 30). Of course, Bubeck is right in saying that “presumably nobody would think it adequate to describe the production of a car as ‘caring’ ” (1995: 130). Yet it is not inadequate to think of caring as a fundamental disposition of human praxis. Th us, for instance, caring for the environment is not a form of care essentially diff erent from that which relates to a person in need (and in this sense even the production of a car falls into the problematics of care). Certainly, it is not diff erent in terms of the disposition required of the carer, although it may entail a completely diff erent set of activities. And although there are diff erent types of needs, some of them met by ser vice, others by care in a more precise and restricted sense of the word, it might be argued that a general mode of care is essential to both; that is, ser vice itself— redefi ned outside the paradigm of hierarchical relations and sovereignty— requires care as its essential moment.

For Bubeck, care and activities that are an expression of love may coin- cide, although they do not need to. Restricted to activities that “meet a need which the person in care could not meet herself ” (p. 134), care does not al- ways have to have an emotional dimension. For instance, “in the public sphere, care does not require the existence of an emotional bond between carer and cared for” (ibid.). Nor are, Bubeck says, “activities and acts of an emotional bond . . . necessarily care according to my defi nition” (ibid.). Ofe- lia Schutte notes that “de pen den cy work is work,” regardless of its motiva- tion (2002: 138).

Indeed, a general economy of care (I here use “general economy” in Ba- taille’s sense),9 cannot be exclusively concerned with one’s emotions, nor with one’s fundamental ethical disposition and sense of justice; it is instead a total fact, linking an individual to a world. However, it is precisely because of this that a broader concept of care might be more useful than a restricted one. Th e fact that the work of care has historically been assigned to women on the basis of the still now commonly accepted notion of a “natural” distinc- tion between the genders in terms of emotionality and rationality (women being considered more emotional, men more rational) only shows that gener- alizing the concept of care so as to make it a prerequisite of human praxis signals the exit from a regime of productivity and sovereignty alike. As Bu- beck notes, “What has characterized women’s work in history so far is pre-

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cisely that it has been done by women” (1995: 40). Typically, men stay aloof from the mode of care, as if by caring they might lose the essence of their masculinity. Bubeck also says:

Women are supposedly “naturally” caring and nurturing and there- fore naturally suited to do women’s work. Women’s work, therefore, seems to be irredeemably women’s work. (pp. 40– 41)

But it is evident that domination and slavish labor (that is, sovereignty and productivity) cannot end until men start doing women’s work on a regular basis and women’s work itself consequently ceases being women’s work. Th is is not entirely diff erent from the Marxian idea that revolutionizing society entails the dissolution of the proletariat as a class. Indeed, the logic is the same. Th e end of dominated labor equals a new distribution of labor. Th e reduction of the working day cannot be limited to wage labor, but it has to take into consideration the time of reproduction of that labor, the work of care, unpaid labor, “women’s” work. Necessary labor (not of the necessity posited by capital, or by any other sovereign regime) must be done by all, but it can be done slowly, carefully, and creatively. Th e division of labor along the lines of gender is one of the most per sis tent and stubborn modalities of social domi- nation. Too often, even in situations that should be characterized by pro- gressive and open thinking and praxis, for instance among left intellectuals and activists, women’s work continues to be women’s work— even when oc- casionally performed by men. However, if the mode of care becomes the univocal and common concept of human praxis, if it is care that labor fi nds upon its return from alienation, that is, if labor is care, then caring is no longer an ancillary (although in truth structural) moment aiding the more serious occupation of production; rather, production itself becomes bringing forth in the mode of care: a creative activity, an art. It is in reality the com- ing together of poiesis and praxis: a poetic praxis, a practical poiesis.

As I noted in Chapter 4, Eva Feder Kittay says that some forms of caring, such as childcare, require “a talent as precious as an artist’s” (1999: 156). In- deed, this might be true of most or all forms of caring. In the introduction to Th e Subject of Care, Kittay and Ellen K. Feder, who co- edited the volume, speak of caregiving in general as “a thoughtful, intentional work” (2002: 2). What has been historically considered as women’s work, and devalued on that account in societies in which sovereignty pertains to men, contains within itself the seed of a future society, the future of labor. For Kittay this is the labor of de pen den cy and care, which becomes most visible in one of the

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most invisible existential realities, the reality of disability, particularly of se- vere mental disability.

Kittay sees de pen den cy as the inescapable condition of human life. Care is socially necessary because of the inescapability of de pen den cy. Disability is one of the names given to the fact of de pen den cy. Although degrees of de pen- den cy are always present in everybody’s life, de pen den cy is most conspicuous at the beginning of life, in illness, and in frail old age, for those who reach that stage in life. No one would say that a newborn is disabled, provided that he or she is “normal,” but the category of disability can be attached to people who become seriously ill (for instance stroke victims) and to the very el der ly. In addition to these cases, and in a more specifi c manner, the category of dis- ability is reserved for those who have permanent physical and/or mental im- pairments. Although the attention to disability, from the academic and insti- tutional worlds, is growing, our societies are far from placing this question at the center of po liti cal, social, philosophical, and quotidian discourse. To be sure, what is essential to radical change in our societies is not simply that dis- ability issues be discussed, academically or otherwise. Rather, the essential thing is that structures are put in place so that people who are regularly mar- ginalized under the stigma of disability can develop their potentialities, se- cure the good life, and fl ourish rather than wither in oblivion and lack of developmental activities. Th e essential thing, in other words, is the constitu- tion of a society in which ability is not the mea sure of all things. To this end the critique of productivity and sovereignty is a prerequisite.

In Love’s Labor, Kittay formulates the concept of de pen den cy work as “the work of caring for those who are inevitably dependent” (1999: ix). She off ers a “de pen den cy critique of equality” (p. 4), since the latter concept “masks inequitable dependencies, those of infancy and childhood, old age, illness and disability” (p. xi) and it remains “elusive for women” (ibid.; also pp. 4– 5). Th e critique of the myth of in de pen dence and of society as an association of equals shows de pen den cy as an inescapable condition of human life and care as the adequate response to the fact of de pen den cy. While recognizing the general category of interdependence (yielded by the critique of the myth of in de pen dence), Kittay focuses on the more fundamental fact of depen- dence, from which interdependence itself may arise.

She reviews various critiques of equality before speaking of the de pen- den cy critique. Th ey are the diff erence critique, the dominance critique, and the diversity critique. Generally speaking, however, the traditional concept of equality proves incapable of becoming common, for it entails the idea of “man as the mea sure of humanity” (p. 5). It is then equalities, if anything, that might reach into the common with a view to the fundamental aspect of

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diff erence: “We are diff erent from another and we are equal to another” (p. 11). Indeed, diff erence is a relative category, whether understood together with identity or with equality. In the former case, every being is diff erent from any other in virtue of being identical with itself; but precisely in this there is commonality. In the latter, a being is diff erent from those to which it is not equal in virtue of being equal to those that are not diff erent from it. Obvi- ously, the former situation is, ontologically speaking, more fundamental and common than the latter, of which it must constitute the inner structure.10 Of the latter, Kittay gives an example that might be useful to quote:

For instance, to insist that diff erence is the property of a deaf child in a class of hearing children— and so the deaf child must accommo- date herself to her hearing peers— is to ignore the fact that the hear- ing child is also diff erent from the deaf child. Neither hearing nor deafness is inherently a diff erence. Instead the diff erence is in the relation these children bear to one another. (Ibid.; emphasis added)

Th e last two sentences show that the most fundamental and common reality is given by a being’s self- identity, or rather by it singularity, its thisness, which points to the commonality of diff erence as a relational concept, as well as to the problematic nature of a hastily posited equality.

For Kittay, it is only the de pen den cy critique that moves toward “an appreciation of the inevitable variety of human interaction and a more ade- quate understanding of what is morally acceptable in asymmetric relations” (p. 15). Th is critique addresses the question of a gendered labor and the ne- cessity of its redistribution; it also challenges the traditional logic of inclu- sion and exclusion, typical of the distribution of labor and justice. In par tic- u lar, Kittay argues, it highlights the contingent nature of the diff erence that has historically assigned women the role of de pen den cy workers and caregiv- ers (p. 16). However, she also notes that even among women the work of de pen den cy has not been evenly distributed (p. 28), for class and race are equally fundamental moments in the division of labor. Obviously, de pen- den cy work “must be done by someone” (ibid.). Th e question for Kittay is how to end the stigmatization of this type of work and of those who do it. One of the main reasons for this stigma, particularly in modern, capitalist societies, is that the work of care is not productive. In this sense, the critique of productivity and sovereignty becomes fundamental. Kittay says:

Rather than ask if women’s care of dependents results in them being marked as diff erent, we need to ask whether doing de pen den cy work

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excludes those who do it from the class of equals, and if so, what we must understand and do to end this exclusion. (Ibid.)

It is here that the concepts and realities of productivity and sovereignty show their per sis tence, here that their critique must be incensed and their danger exposed. Th us, for Kittay, the “de pen den cy critique considers . . . the ines- capable fact of human de pen den cy and the ways in which such labor makes one vulnerable to domination” (ibid.). In this sense, a formal discourse on justice remains far from creating the structures of true equality, which only an emphasis on non- productive, non- sovereign, care can bring about. In other words, the truth of a fundamental in e qual ity cannot be altered by a formal positing of the principle of equality (who is equal to whom?) that operates through a logic of inclusion and exclusion. True equality cannot be established empirically; that is, the standard of the equal must be a transcen- dental and univocal concept, such as the dignity of individuation— certainly not man as the mea sure.11 Otherwise, as in Aristotle, justice would remain equality for equals and in e qual ity for unequals (Politics 1280a10– 15). When the latter are excluded from the society of equals, the semblance of equality obtains; so does the shadow of in e qual ity. Merely demanding equality does not solve the problem of who will do the work that generates in e qual ity in the fi rst place: the labor of support and care, the labor without which there could not be a human community. As Kittay says, what is important is a new and fairer distribution of this labor “across the population” (1999: 19). Care and equality are to be brought into “a dialectical relation” (ibid.). In this sense, equality is not a reduction of diff erence to the same, with the conse- quent exclusion of the irreducible one(s). Rather, it is the neutrality of subject and object, of carer and cared for— the substance and product of care. It is “being with,” in Nancy’s sense (see Chapter 1). It is also care in Heidegger’s sense, as “being- ahead- of- oneself- already- in (the world) as being- together- with (innerworldly beings encountered)” (1996a: 180).

Kittay speaks of connection- based, rather than individual- based, equal- ity. Th is is a concept that is very close to the Heideggerian notion of being- together- with other beings encountered. Beyond Kittay, it is also a concept that points to the construction of genuine communism, that is, the meeting of need and (labor as) care. But it is Kittay herself who describes this as a community that transcends equality as the right of an individual, or as a right in general, and emphasizes the mutual and social responsibility in- scribed in the concept and reality of care, on the basis of need (1999: 28). She is here speaking of the system of exploitation in and by which de pen den cy work, the labor of care, is undervalued, with a consequent decrease of “the

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moral worth of the caregiver as well as the person cared for” (ibid.). She continues:

A society in which such a system of exploitation is the norm cannot be said to be a society in which equality, as both a moral and social value, thrives. (Ibid.)

Later on in her book, criticizing Rawls’s views, she says:

Principles of right and traditional notions of justice depend upon a prior and more fundamental principle and practice of care. (p. 108)

Th e social responsibility of care requires a new distribution of de pen den cy work (p. 32), which in turn entails the elimination of the division of labor. Th e latter, in fact, is always based on an idea of domination, on fi xed catego- ries hierarchically arranged. However, the new distribution of de pen den cy work, and of work in general, should happen on a horizontal plane, certainly across the genders.

Th e new distribution of work, and of de pen den cy work in par tic u lar, certainly requires a critique of productivity. Indeed, as Ofelia Schutte notes,

it is necessary to identify unpaid care work as productive work and to determine what proportions of time women and men spend, respec- tively, in unpaid work in the home. (2002: 140)

Th is work is considered unproductive because it is invisible and consequently cannot be mea sured (p. 143). Moreover, frustratingly for the po liti cal econo- mist, it does not result in a physical object, a commodity— it does not appear to have an end other than the activity itself (at least from the point of view of the logic of production). In reality, this labor is not productive only from the standpoint of capital. When Schutte says that it should be considered as productive, the implicit assumption is that the word “productive” is no lon- ger inscribed within the logic of capital, the logic of domination and exploi- tation, but it is instead understood as a social category. Th us, this labor is productive in a wider, or rather essentially diff erent, sense. It is certainly im- portant to grasp the distinction between productive and unproductive labor as a major source of social inequalities. It is as important to realize that the solution cannot lie in making all unproductive labor productive, but rather in eliminating the distinction as such. True equality cannot be brought about by reducing all human doing to the category of productivity (under the aegis

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of capital or other sovereign regimes), but rather by liberating its power for the necessity of care, the necessities of life, and of the good life for all. True equality then is the projecting and the being- with of care. Th is equality is not the result of the movement whereby an “inferior” is forced to mea sure up to a “superior,” nor is it the mere equation of two terms. Rather, it is their displacement into the neutral (the neither/nor) and the common. It is the pronounced parallax whereby the universal comes into sight.12 True equality can only be commonality and universality.

Disabling Potentialities

In her de pen den cy critique of Rawls’s theory of equality and social justice, Kittay points out the reiteration in the latter of a problem common to the Western tradition of po liti cal thought, that is, the exclusion of many from equality and citizenship. She calls attention to the fact that if we “begin our inquiry concerning the principles of justice with the idealization of a fully functioning person” (1999: 88), which is what Rawls requires, we will end up with a society in which equality, social justice, and full citizenship cannot belong to all. Given the fact that de pen den cy is unavoidable, the concept of person cannot be adequately formulated by bracketing de pen den cy out.

Forms of de pen den cy include very young and very old age, illness, and disability. In the case of disability, particularly in severe mental disability, where de pen den cy often constitutes a permanent feature of a person’s life, the diffi culty and danger of a formal discourse on equality become apparent. Here, too, the logic of productivity and sovereignty shows its problematic nature. In fact, a society that values productivity (for productivity’s sake)— and on the basis of productivity raises a hierarchical order of values for inclu- sion and exclusion— will invariably and necessarily marginalize and exclude those who cannot be productive in the same way and who, because of the high degree of their de pen den cy, are not sovereign. A discourse on equality and social justice will have to make this a high priority: dismantle the logic of productivity and sovereignty, slow down the gears, in the sense stressed by Kittay in her chapter on Sesha, her daughter, who has a severe mental dis- ability,13 and raise the mode of care to the univocal and unsurpassable condi- tion of the good life for everyone, that is, to the dignity of individuation.

Th e common objection of the need for effi ciency cannot stand. A society is not effi cient that speeds toward useless production and consumption while overlooking the needs of the neediest. Th e caring mode of production, distribu- tion, and consumption, seems to be the only exit from the obsessive logic of productivity that, as noted by William DiFazio (2006), purposefully forgets.14

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Th is new mode is what in substance Bubeck (1995) also suggests when she replaces the fi gure of homo economicus with that of persona carans (see above). What is produced through and by this obsessive logic is actual or potential disability: potentialities are systematically disabled whether there is a real (physical or mental) impairment or not; the full growth of individuals, re- gardless of the ways in which and the degree to which this growth might happen, is hampered; disabilities are made. By contrast, in the caring mode of production, which has the dignity of individuation as a precondition, what counts is the singularity of being- in- the- world and being- with- one- another. Moreover, the mode of care is a vindication of unproductive labor over speed, profi t, and exploitation, the becoming common of women’s work over productive labor (as the labor that produces and increases capital), a coming into full view (and recognition) of the highly creative yet often invis- ible skills required by the art of making the good life possible and, eventu- ally, common.

As one of the clearest examples of almost total social exclusion, the real- ity of disability, particularly severe mental disability, shows the importance of the mode of care as the negation of the logic of productivity and sover- eignty. To give full and fully radical meaning to the notion that another world is possible (a better world, of the good life for all), disability must be- come the mea sure of humanity.15 Concrete examples of how true, loving, and enabling care can alter the lot of individuals condemned otherwise to oblivion and waste, to a life of disability and poverty in a rich and able- bodied world, are found in the literature on disability. I have already men- tioned Kittay’s chapter on Sesha, her daughter. Among other things, Kittay there shows how, in a situation of severe disability, only adequate and true care can on the one hand alter the pattern and neutralize the specter of insti- tutionalization while, on the other hand, providing the conditions for the full development of one’s potentiality. It is important to understand (and Kittay’s chapter is fundamental in providing this understanding) that the mea sure of a person’s fl ourishing, thus the value of a person’s life, cannot be determined by quantity and pre- established external standards. Full devel- opment is not fuller if it develops more (a logical and ontological impossibil- ity), nor is adequate agency more or less adequate according to whether it meets or does not meet these same standards of externality. Th e dignity of individuation places value on the inherent potentialities of an individual be- ing (regardless of the kind of potency they sustain; and, indeed, even delicate potency, the potency of a little fl ower, is potency all the same). It places value on the thisness of this being, its identity and diff erence. Th e completeness and actuality of such thisness, a such this (Aristotle Metaphysics 1030b24), is

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the mea sure of its universality. It is, as McRuer puts it, a contingent universal- ization (2006: 157).

Equally critical of Rawls’s contractarian theory, but also critical of Kit- tay’s emphasis on de pen den cy as the most fundamental moment of the hu- man condition, Martha Nussbaum proposes her capabilities approach, which focuses on the individual and is therefore to be understood in the tradition of liberalism. However, Nussbaum’s would be “a new form of liberalism” (2006: 221). In her critique of Kittay’s “anti- liberal direction” (p. 218)— for, as we have seen, Kittay denies the importance of the notion of the in de pen dent individual— Nussbaum says:

By contrast, although my view insists that human beings are inevita- bly dependent and interdependent, and holds that dignity may be found in relations of de pen den cy, citizens enjoy full equality only when they are capable of exercising the whole range of capabilities. (Ibid.)

For her, liberalism runs into problems in relation to notions such as a con- tract for mutual advantage, but it is not altogether disabled (p. 221) insofar as its defense of individuality, that is, “the equal worth of persons and their liberty” (ibid.), still stands. However, the question is whether the individual and its individuality can adequately be understood in the atomistic way pro- posed by the liberal tradition. Th e individual is, of course, always social and that means, never truly in de pen dent from other individuals. Individuality, as we have seen in Chapter 1 (dealing with Nancy), is the result of a being- with, a plurality of more original singularities.

For Nussbaum, “the person, not the group, is the primary subject of po- liti cal justice, and policies that improve the lot of a group are to be rejected unless they deliver the central capabilities to each and every person” (p. 216). I do not see how this is necessarily liberal, provided that the concept of indi- vidual is properly defi ned and understood. Indeed, nothing can be more closely associated with the full growth of the individual than Marx’s state- ment: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” However, to become an axiom of po liti cal justice, this truth cannot be left to the mere individual (in his in de pen dence and isolation), but it has to become common— that is, common to all individuals, to society, to the individual as an inherently social being. Yet, while renouncing the contractarian view of an “idealized rationality” (p. 216), Nussbaum suggests a vision of the individual as the irreducible and in de pen dent subject of po liti cal justice— something which, it seems to me, would amount to the end of politics (a premature

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end). In this sense, Kittay’s suggestion of departing from the liberal tradition (p. 217) in order to grasp de pen den cy as the inescapable fact of the human condition seems not only more innovative and progressive, but also more attuned to the reality of everybody’s and everyday life.

Nussbaum says:

All citizens should have the chance to develop the full range of hu- man powers, at what ever level their condition allows, and to enjoy the sort of liberty and in de pen dence their condition allows. (p. 218)

Th is is a function of the capabilities approach. However, this approach can- not deny the facts of dependence and interdependence, which turn sheer in- de pen dence into a fi ction, as Kittay says. Nussbaum herself has to agree with this: “To be sure, nobody is ever self- suffi cient; the in de pen dence we enjoy is always both temporary and partial” (pp. 218– 219). But Nussbaum thinks “we need a lot more” (p. 219). Yet, this “more” (notably, liberty) cannot be the total negation of the fundamental condition of dependence. It is rather being- with, which must be at hand even in solitude and without which soli- tude itself would be unbearable. I think that what is most important in Nussbaum’s position is not her insistence on liberalism, but rather her atten- tion to the ways in which society must or ga nize its public policy to “fully include” people with disabilities and their caregivers (p. 222). It is also very important that, in her critique of the social contract (and implicitly of pro- ductivity), she recognizes that the kind of social change able to end the stigma of disability cannot happen “because we think we will gain thereby, in a narrow economic or self- interested sense of ‘gain’ ” (ibid.). As a matter of fact, here the fact of in de pen dence is weakened by the recognition of the un- surpassable condition of being- with, which forms the substance of Kittay’s notion of the inescapability of dependence. Nussbaum says that this change can only happen “out of our attachment to justice and our love of others, our sense that our lives are intertwined with theirs and that we share ends with them” (ibid.; emphasis added). However, this seems precisely to disqualify liberalism (even a new form of it) from being the theory of justice society needs.

In addition to Kittay’s chapter in Love’s Labor, there are other works that, often through personal accounts, show the importance of the mode of care in order to neutralize the stigma of disability and emphasize the dignity of individuation, which is proper to life, and, certainly, to human life. Among these works I can mention Michael Bérubé’s book on his son, Jamie, who has Down syndrome (Bérubé 1996), some essays in Pothier and Devlin’s Critical Disability Th eory (2006), and Sophia Wong’s essay on her brother,

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Leo, who also has Down syndrome (Wong 2002). In the already cited Fron- tiers of Justice, Martha Nussbaum (2006) also constantly refers to her nephew, Arthur, and his disability, as well as to Sesha Kittay and Jamie Bérubé. Regardless of the diff erence in philosophical approach, these works share the notion that the end of the mode of care must be empowerment and the constitution of those conditions able to bring about adequate agency; ad- equate not to some external standards but to the thisness of any given exis- tence. Certainly, from the point of view of the present study, they share a common understanding, whether implicit or explicit, of the problematic nature of a society built on categories of productivity and sovereignty; a soci- ety in which the end is often not that of enhancing people’s capacities, but rather of disabling and deactivating their potentialities. In par tic u lar, they all show how problematic the notion of disability is and that, certainly, “people with impairments and related disabilities are not unproductive” (p. 105; emphasis added)— if it were not for the stigmatization of individual exis- tential conditions as disabilities, the confi nement of forms of human activi- ties to the realm of the unproductive, and the inability or unwillingness of society to foster the necessary structural conditions for the full and adequate development of potentialities, or as Nussbaum (2006) and Sen (1999) say, capabilities.

In her version of the capabilities approach, a theory also developed by Amartya Sen in economics (Nussbaum 2006: 70), Martha Nussbaum says that “we begin with a conception of the dignity of the human being, and of a life that is worthy of that dignity” (p. 74). Th e concept of dignity she uses is po liti cal in the tradition of Aristotle and Marx, linking rationality and ani- mality, rather than limited to the concept of the person, as in Kant and contractarianism, particularly Rawls (p. 159). In this sense, and once the question of liberalism is bracketed, I would say that the concept of dignity of individuation I am trying to formulate here is in some important ways simi- lar to Nussbaum’s conception of dignity. She calls the capabilities approach “fully universal” and “similar to the international human rights approach” (p. 78). From the point of view of the capabilities approach, Nussbaum also points out the problem of productivity, although she is not interested in a critique of productivity as such. Indeed, she sees productivity as “necessary, and even good,” although not as “the main end of social life” (p. 160). Of course, this is correct when one uses, as Nussbaum seems to do, a broad and transhistorical concept of productivity. It might then be good to observe here that when I speak of the necessity of undertaking a critique of productivity, I mean productivity under the regime of capital. However, this is an impor- tant observation in order to highlight the fact that without an adequate

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concept of what it is to produce, to create, to make, any discourse on dignity and human rights risks losing sight of the material conditions of life, and of their production and reproduction. For instance, under the capitalist mode of production, in which productivity as the making of surplus value and profi t is “the main end of social life,” all values, including dignity, are sub- sumed under exchange value and price. It is consequently not possible to overcome the distinction between productive and unproductive labor under the sovereignty of capital, for the elimination of that distinction is the elimi- nation of capital itself. As I have already noted, Nussbaum stresses that

people with impairments and related disabilities are not unproduc- tive. Th ey contribute to society in many ways, when society creates conditions in which they may do so. (2006: 105)

And again: “Th eir relative lack of productivity under current conditions is not ‘natural’; it is the product of discriminatory social arrangements” (p. 113; emphasis added). Productive here means useful. However, under capital (i.e., under “current conditions”), some forms of human activity are called unpro- ductive not because they are not useful in a general sense, but because they are not useful in the sense specifi ed by capital itself, that is, the creation of surplus value. Th us being unproductive is not the result of unqualifi ed social arrangements, but it has to do, and fundamentally so, with the mode of pro- duction of capitalist society and with the notion of productivity arising from it. What I am saying is that the important move is not creating the condi- tions whereby people with impairments and related disabilities might more fully join the mechanism and machinery of capital. Th is might prove an unsurpassable obstacle, given capital’s ends, as well as the objective reality of some forms of physical and, especially, mental impairment. Rather, it is im- portant to understand that a new mode of production (geared toward the constitution of real wealth, proper to genuine human needs, and available to all) is necessary. Th is is the mode of enabling and empowering care, where the caring person and the person cared for reach an agency adequate to the this- ness of the situation at hand, not determined by the demands of productivity and profi t. Under this mode, enabling and empowering do not go in the di- rection of normalization; rather, they subvert the norm, as they dwell (and build new being) in the marginal spaces and interstices negated by the norm.

What I am saying is that the activities of people labeled as mentally dis- abled cannot be truly appreciated unless the substance and spirit of these ac- tivities is understood. Th is is an eff ort that it is the task of “normal” individu- als to make. As long as these people’s activities are seen as useless because of

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their obvious unproductive character from the standpoint of capital and, more generally, of effi ciency, no real change can take place. But when they are placed at the center of the attention, interests, and well- being of society, of a community (the family, for instance), they acquire a diff erent meaning, that is, they are valorized, for they are eventually grasped not only as useful, but also as creative (and, at times, highly creative) acts. Such valorization is possible when there is not compassion, but admiration— as is the case, for instance, in the Bérubé family with Jamie (Bérubé 1996) and in my experi- ence, in my own family, with my younger brother, Pino, to whom this book is dedicated. Th is is certainly the lesson anyone who has not had direct expe- rience with the condition of mental impairment can draw from Bérubé’s book, from Wong’s account of her family life with her brother in her essay on gender and disability, or from Kittay’s chapter on Sesha. Both Bérubé’s son, Jamie, and Wong’s brother, Leo, have Down syndrome, thus a condi- tion that does not impair what society might consider the accomplishment of “normal” and even great achievements, such as holding a job or even writ- ing a book, as Bérubé hopes his son might one day be able to do, and as some with the same condition have already done. However, the same holds true even when more severe conditions are present, such as is the case with Kit- tay’s daughter, Sesha: her ability to communicate her joy is a creative act.

Without a critique of productivity, that is, the displacement of priorities and ends from the strictly economic realm onto the social and ontological realms, there may be no suffi cient reason for radically changing the existen- tial conditions of people stigmatized as people with disabilities other than a recourse to moral principles (largely left to the disposition of individuals) or charity. As Nussbaum argues, contractarianism cannot adequately address the question. Indeed, the notion of a social contract always seems to involve and be based upon a logic of inclusion and exclusion, which makes the social contract invisible to many, and that is, to those who in the contract fi gure as the excluded and invisible ones.16 Even when cooperation is eyed, full inclu- sion remains a problem insofar as the ability to co- operate varies largely among people; moreover, if the end of cooperation is the making of profi t, speed, high effi ciency, and productivity, it is evident that those who cannot keep up the required rhythm and pace must be necessarily excluded. In this sense, Nussbaum criticizes Rawls’s idea of mutual advantage based on “nor- mal” social cooperation (2006: 118).

In her response to Nussbaum, Wong defends “a Rawlsian conception of moral personhood that explicitly includes all human beings, including those labeled ‘mentally retarded’ ” (2007: 583). She argues that “an idealizing approach to personhood accords people labeled ‘mentally retarded’ the respect

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and dignity that they deserve on a par with all other human beings” (pp. 583– 584). Going much beyond the limits of Rawls’s theory (which ex- cludes non- autonomous individuals from moral personhood and social con- tract capacity), yet claiming close affi nity with it, Wong shows how it is possible to virtually (i.e., in an idealized manner) confer autonomy to the nonautonomous. She starts from noticing that Rawls’s two moral powers (the capacity for a sense of justice and the capacity for a conception of the good) are “potential, rather than always actualized” (p. 586).17 Because they are potential properties, they can develop and become actual depending on the presence of what Wong calls “Enabling Conditions” (p. 589). In Wong’s view, while “every human being has the capacity to develop the two moral powers” (p. 592), the Enabling Conditions depend on the social circum- stances of life. As a matter of fact, she notes: “Th is is the diffi culty faced by people labeled ‘mentally retarded’ who grow up in institutions and have minimal or no contact with their families” (p. 589). However,

being included as members in families and other social associations along with peers of their own age and with competent adults en- ables them to develop the moral capacities of community members. (p. 590)

Here the theme of true care comes back as the determinant feature of the production of social life. In her defense of contractarianism and against Nussbaum, Wong opposes mere care and favors a fully inclusive social con- tract (although the inclusion may for some be only idealized). She says:

I argue that treating people as potential participants in negotiating principles of justice (even if they never actually participate in such negotiations) is better than treating them as recipients of care en- gaged in loving relationships designed to maximize their capabilities (p. 593).

For Wong this is a way of granting (idealized) autonomy to a person who, instead of being the mere recipient of someone’s care, becomes “a potential interlocutor” (ibid.).

Leaving aside the philosophical problems inherent in the notion of a so- cial contract, always hypothetical in nature and thus perhaps necessarily in- capable of full inclusion, I do not think that a choice must be made between the care that maximizes potentialities (or capabilities) and the establishing of an idealized relationship whereby the needs, desires, and interests of the less

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advantaged person may fi nd adequate expression. Indeed, the diff erence between these two attitudes may be one of pre sen ta tion more than of sub- stance. What I mean to say is that the latter can be understood from a per- spective of true care, while the former accomplishes its goal (the maximization of a person’s capabilities) only insofar as the person in question is provided with those conditions whereby her agency can fl ourish in a manner that is adequate to her actual situation. In my view, what is fundamental in either case is understanding that no real change can take place as long as our soci- ety remains entrenched in the sovereign logic of capital. True, an individual’s sense of justice will always make a diff erence in any given situation. How- ever, a universal ethics of the good life for everybody requires a passage to a transformed social order. Th is is an order in which, I repeat Bubeck’s formu- lation, homo economicus is replaced by persona carans, that is, one in which the essence and spirit of economic discourse and activities are not economic in nature (certainly not in the capitalist sense of the word) but ontological. Th is means that they have to be brought into a relation to the making and doing constituting a being other than that originally found in the immedi- acy of nature. On the one hand, the labor of care constituting this new being has the highest regard for the least advantaged; on the other, the labor of the least advantaged themselves (certainly useless from the standpoint of capital or other sovereign modes geared toward accumulation and, in an exclusive way, toward effi ciency) is of the highest kind, for it is the closest to art and poetry. It is closest to the heart of art and poetry, the essence of the earth, in the sense that, in this labor, any achievement uses the full potency of being, always fully contracted in any this. To the contrary, any effi cient expenditure of energy, which leaves an excess, or surplus, is merely instrumental.

Sovereign, Productive, and Effi cient

In his book on queerness and disability, McRuer off ers a critique of produc- tivity as compulsory able- bodiedness, “which in a sense produces disability” (McRuer 2006: 2). Th e alternative to able- bodied dogmas is that “a disabled world is possible and desirable” (p. 71). Th e idea that a better world is a dis- abled world is very provocative, but it is the necessary outcome of a critique of productivity. Of course, what this means is that disability must stop be- ing “the raw material against which the imagined future world is formed” (p. 72)— an idea, McRuer says, typical of liberationist models. Whenever able- bodiedness is the goal, perhaps unwanted, the specters of normaliza- tion, in de pen dence, productivity, and sovereignty also linger. For McRuer, the construction of able- bodiedness is linked to the construction of hetero-

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sexuality: “Th e institutions in our culture that produce and secure a hetero- sexual identity also work to secure an able- bodied identity” (p. 151). Th ese normalizing identities, essential to the logic of the same, are not diff erences among diff erences, nor do they open up the realm of the universal. Th ey are not diff erences because they have closed the gap between the norm they have established and the moments of anxiety that brought them to establish the norm. Indeed, they are not diff erent from that anxiety, as in having moved away from it. Rather, that anxiety no longer exists, and it has never existed. Th ey are what they have always been; what they will always be. Dif- ference to them is a matter of indiff erence. Yet, they are not universals be- cause they are incapable of the leap into what they are not, incapable of reaching into the univocal and neutral structure that connects the one to the other, the structure of otherness as such. Th ey have lost their contingency, no longer able not to be. McRuer speaks of “those [desirable] disabled/queer moments” as of “temporary or contingent universalization” (p. 157; emphasis added), that is, moments in which, as I understand it, we are what we have not been and would not be, able not to be what we are, and thus, able to reach into the other. However, it is not the idealized other that we encounter, nor ourselves as and in the other; rather, we encounter our own otherness, which is the same with what is diff erent from us, for it is diff erence itself— not merely what- is, but what- could- be. Th e universalizing potentiality pres- ent in this, that is, in the “dis-” of disability, just as in the “ab-” of the abnor- mal (the abyss surrounding the norm), subverts the logic of the contract and of a multitude united under the sovereign sign. Th e disunited multitude feared by Hobbes (1994: XVIII) the multitude that commits injustice, reaches, through the “dis-” of its disunity, and bears witness to, the most extreme forms of exclusion whereby citizenship is nothing but dis- citizenship.

In their introduction to Critical Disability Th eory, Dianne Pothier and Richard Devlin speak of “a system of deep structural economic, social, po- liti cal, legal, and culture in e qual ity in which persons with disabilities experi- ence unequal citizenship, a regime of dis- citizenship” (2006: 1; emphasis added). Th eir critique of contractarianism, of Rawls in par tic u lar and of liberalism in general, is very strong:

Rawls is quite blatant in expressly excluding the disabled from his social contract model, on the premise that their “fate arouses pity and anxiety” [Rawls 1999: 84].18 (p. 11)

What for Rawls is “beyond the theory of justice” and relating to “persons dis- tant from us” (1999: 84) becomes the basis of Kittay’s de pen den cy critique, as

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we have seen above, as well as of the politics of transformation sought by criti- cal disability theory (Pothier and Devlin 2006: 12). Th is politics of transfor- mation starts by acknowledging the fundamental truth that disability is “a social construct” (p. 13), “a systematically enforced pattern of exclusion” (p. 14). One of the fundamental moments of this politics of transformation has to do with the critique of productivity. Obviously, Pothier and Devlin do not deny the reality of physical and mental impairments, the “functional limita- tions” (p. 13) not equally experienced by all individuals in a society. How- ever, these functional limitations and impairments are of such a broad vari- ety (some visible, others invisible; some mild, others severe) that to simply label them as disabilities neutralizes their existential importance and speci- fi city (for the individual and for society as a whole). Th ey become nothing but “categories of inclusion and exclusion” (p. 14).

From the point of view of the present study, Pothier and Devlin’s intro- duction, as well as the other essays in Critical Disability Th eory, is very im- portant. Pothier and Devlin explicitly address not only the question of pro- ductivity, but also that of sovereignty, confi rming the basic insight of Earthly Plenitudes as to the importance of the critique of these concepts and realities in the eff ort to theorize the possibility of genuine social change: a world of all- inclusive citizenship, based on an appreciation of labor as adequate agency— adequate to the specifi city and singularity (that is, the thisness) of every and each individual. Th is singularity is what I refer to as dignity of individuation. Th is is not the concept of the individual, certainly not one in the liberal tradition; it is rather what sustains an individual in its singularity.

Pothier and Devlin’s challenge to liberalism and its concept of the indi- vidual is very explicit:

Liberalism tends to put great emphasis on the individual, assuming that the self is both sovereign and a foundational unit for analysis. However, critical disability theory forces us to refl ect on a number of profound ontological questions. Who is a self ? Is there such a thing as an authentic self? What is the signifi cance of disability to the con- ception of the self?. (p. 16; emphasis added)

I have already dealt with this question, especially in Chapter 1 of this book. Th e ontological critique of the self was part of the critique of sovereignty and of the formulation of the concept of the dignity of individuation. Th e impor- tance of the critique is intensifi ed when one deals with disability. Here, a defense of the in de pen dent individual cannot be justifi ed on the ground that those whose individuality has historically been denied deserve access to it

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(see Nussbaum 2006: 221– 222), for these are the very people whose existen- tial conditions eminently show the fi ctitious character of the in de pen dent individual, as Kittay has convincingly argued. As Pothier and Devlin say, liberalism “has put great store in the principles of liberty, autonomy, and choice” (2006: 16); however, these are principles that need to be challenged for reasons that are not dissimilar from those we saw in Kittay’s de pen den cy critique. In Pothier and Devlin we also fi nd a question that is seldom explic- itly asked: the question of productivity. Th ey ask: “What is meant by pro- ductivity?” (p. 18). Th is question is central to the present work, as I have often repeated. Pothier and Devlin also ask: “And, most importantly, why should productivity . . . be a legitimate criterion?” (ibid.). Indeed, if produc- tivity itself is not called into question, all discourse about ending a regime whereby large multitudes are excluded from citizenship and the good life ends in contradictions and aporias. In criticizing productivity and effi ciency (most eminent functions of sovereignty), Pothier and Devlin say:

Effi ciency and productivity are irretrievably ableist discourses that can only condemn (some) persons with disabilities to a presumptive inferior status. An enabling citizenship needs to be unshackled from the ideology of productivity and effi ciency. (p. 18)