Rejected Body

This study applies a feminist philosophical perspective to theoretical and practical issues of physical disability, such as who should be identified as disabled, whether disability is biomedical, social or both, what causes disability and what could "cure" it, and whether scientific efforts to eliminate disabling physical conditions are morally justified. The book also argues that feminist theorizing has been skewed toward non-disabled experience, and that the knowledge of people with disabilities must be integrated into feminist ethics, feminist discussions of bodily life, and feminist criticism of the cognitive and social authority of medicine. The story of the author's own experience of chronic illness is woven through the text.

"...Wendell has significantly expanded the scholarship on impairment, a critical and underdeveloped area in disability studies." -- Signs"The Rejected Body is both a very human and a very humane book. The author, Susan Wendell, a person living with disabilities, shines through this book, and invites the reader to engage with the issues in which she is interested." -- Canadian Journal of Philosophy"Even within the feminist framework, our definitions, knowledge, perceptions, and treatments of disabilities require rethinking. A well-informed deconstruction." -- Ms. Magazine"The Rejected Body makes an important contribution offeminist and disability literature and provides aninteresting look at a topic that has been considered as'other' by many writers and researchersWomen andHealth.""Wendell's book lends extra voice to the position that we need to re-conceptualize human worth in order to arrive at an ethic that can provide for a broad range of life experiences." -- American Reporter ...the author ponders the definition of disability and the social and cultural factors that create it..."The book is highly recommended to those who are, have been, or will be disabled in any way (which as Wendell points out, includes nearly all of us). It is also recommended to everyone else." -- Philosophy inReview"The Rejected Body is a 'must-read' for anyone interested in important human differences of which phlosophy has heretofore been ignorant." -- Ethics

Susan Wendell is Associate Professor of Women's Studies at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia. She is the co- editor, with David Copp, of Pornography and Censorship (1983).