Disability, Revolution (American Studies Now: Critical Histories of the Present) - Softcover

McRuer, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520388178 ISBN 13: 9780520388178

Publisher: University of California Press, 2026

Synopsis

What revolutionary disability politics look like today, with lessons for larger liberatory movements.

In recent political times, disability identity has been mobilized in ways that paradoxically compound bodily injury and disability. This single-issue approach obscures the oppression of disabled people and prevents solidarity across difference.

In Disability, Revolution, Robert McRuer introduces alternatives to “one-dimensional disability,” providing an accessible overview of disability justice movements and their relevance to larger emancipatory coalitions. Exploring the most prominent examples from the past several decades, the book focuses on the convergence of queer and crip movements, mad pride, intersectional disability justice work, neurodiversity, and the globalization of disability alliances. Essential for anyone interested in disability politics, this book shows how these multivalent movements help us imagine alternative disabled worlds.

About this title

About the Author

Robert McRuer is Professor of English at George Washington University and author of Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability and Crip Times: Disability, Globalization, and Resistance. 

From the Back Cover

“Disability, Revolution has the power of those books that, as soon as you read them, make you think, ‘Of course.’ It names formations that have been in front of us all the time, but that we have lacked a framework for understanding.”―Roderick Ferguson, author of One-Dimensional Queer

“This volume speaks to the unease of our moment, in which disability is paradoxically more visible and less variable, flattened and weaponized. Robert McRuer offers a compelling introduction to the multidimensional, diverse, community-based disability politics that have always been with us and that offer transformative potential.”―Elizabeth Ellcessor, author of In Case of Emergency: How Technologies Mediate Crisis and Normalize Inequality

“Mapping out a diversity of embodied politics, McRuer pointedly tells us that knowledge, art, and activism from the margins of neoliberal capitalism are transformational when resisting the devastating reproduction of the status quo. Disability, Revolution is a necessary address to those of us working within mad, queer, trans, and disability studies to rethink self-assured one-dimensional politics.”―Tanya Titchkosky, author of Reading and Writing Disability Differently: The Textured Life of Embodiment and coeditor of DisAppearing: Encounters in Disability Studies

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520388178
• ISBN 13: 9780520388178
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 168