Understanding oppression and exploitation through disability: Intersectionality, surplus populations, and radical needs

Abstract

What is oppression? What is exploitation? What is the relationship between the two? How a theory answers such questions may determine its scope and emancipatory politics. An answer that prioritizes oppression and makes exploitation its subset may sidestep class issues and economics. Whereas an answer that prioritizes exploitation and makes oppression a subset thereof may focus on class at the expense of other important parameters of oppression (such as race, gender, disability, etc.). In this thesis, I aim to put these two approaches into a productive dialectical relationship without losing sight of one or subsuming one under the other. Disability, relatively under-theorized under both types of approaches until recently, can be one paradigm that can help us understand the relationship between oppression and exploitation. I begin by offering a very provisional definition of oppression and exploitation. Next, I examine disability from two perspectives: First through the lens of an oppression prioritizing paradigm such as intersectionality, and second, through an exploitation prioritizing paradigm such as the theory of surplus populations. The two examinations yield two different answers: disability as non-exploitative oppression and disability as oppressive (non)exploitation. Finally, I put these two answers into a dialectical relationship through the theory of radical needs in order to arrive at a dynamic understanding of exploitation and oppression.