MOSPUS research seminar: Antiproductivism, Autonomist Refusal and the Disabled Surplus Class

Co-written with Morgan Berg (University of Victoria, Canada), this presentation attempts to develop a materialist analysis of disability in order to refuse our participation as disabled people in the (re)production of capital. We argue that disabled people are part of the surplus class whose enforced impoverishment, social exclusion and spatial marginalization informs labour conditions. We argue further that disabled people are made economically productive through the process of extractive abandonment. We draw on autonomist Marxist, feminist, and abolitionist perspectives to critique productivism in the lives of disabled people.

Lawrence Berg is Professor of Critical Geography at the Department of Community, Culture and Global Studies at the University of British Columbia, in Canada, where he also leads a cluster at the Institute for Community Engaged Research. He is well known for his work on neoliberalism and the politics of academic knowledge production, and on the intersections of place and identity, postcoloniality and white supremacy. He co-founded and long edited ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies and served as Editor-in-Chief of The Canadian Geographer, and his recent books include the co-edited Placing Critical Geographies (2022).

Registration

All welcome, no registration required. For more information, please write to dpinder@ruc.dk 

The seminar is organised by MOSPUS, a research group in the Department of People and Technology that focuses on Mobility, Space, Place and Urban Studies.