Disability, Empathy, the Ethics of Care and Beyond

This chapter surveys the most influential and significant contemporary perspectives in Disability Studies as they intersect with the Humanities and literary studies. By advancing the current state of the field and clarifying its future directions, the chapter examines the diversity of contemporary critical writing on disability, with particular attention to intersectional approaches that conceptualize disability in productive relation to race, class, gender, sexuality, and nationality. The theoretical section also engages with the concepts of empathy and the ethics of care. Taking as its point of departure the disciplinary divide between feminist studies and disability studies, marked in recent years by divergent and at times conflicting perspectives on care, the chapter explores more recent scholarship that seeks to foster dialogue between the two fields. These integrative approaches lay the groundwork for new theoretical frameworks with significant potential for the development of accessible and transnational models of care. In addition, the chapter draws on literary examples and genres within Anglophone literature and culture. It further considers examples from graphic medicine in order to investigate how representations of disability in sequential art intersect with other identity categories, such as gender, race, class, and sexuality, and how they articulate issues of care, dependency, and relationality.