Metaeugenics and Metaresistance: From Manufacturing the ‘Includeable Body’ to Walking Away from the Broom Closet

Abstract

The governance of rights is a complex project of exercising ethical discretion in a systemically unethical society. This paper troubles the efficacy of rights as governable by exposing tensions within and between the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Grounded in a critical disability studies perspective, I question the possibility of respecting disability as a natural part of human diversity while simultaneously proposing that disabled children have a right to intervention. Who governs the definition of “health”, of “development”, of “access”, or of “best interests”? I interrogate the function of rights-based discourses in a global culture that has yet to fully abandon the project of eugenics. I present disturbing relations between researcher and subject in case studies of wearable technologies for autism intervention as a challenging site of analysis for the ethics of these interventions. I call us to question who truly benefits when we engage in the production of ‘includable bodies’ rather than the deconstruction of exclusionary environments.