Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement

by Ashley Shew Narrated by Maria Pendolino

Overview

When Ashley Shew became a self-described "hard-of-hearing chemobrained amputee with Crohn's disease and tinnitus," there was no returning to "normal." Suddenly well-meaning people called her an "inspiration" while grocery shopping or viewed her as a needy recipient of technological wizardry. Most disabled people don't want what the abled assume they want-nor are they generally asked.



In vibrant prose, Shew shows how we can create better narratives and more accessible futures by drawing from the insights of the cross-disability community. To forge a more equitable world, Shew argues that we must eliminate "technoableism"-the harmful belief that technology is a "solution" for disability; that the disabled simply await being "fixed" by technological wizardry; that making society more accessible and equitable is somehow a lesser priority.



This badly needed introduction to disability expertise considers mobility devices, medical infrastructure, neurodivergence, and the relationship between disability and race. The future, Shew points out, is surely disabled-whether through changing climate, new diseases, or even through space travel. It's time we looked closely at how we all think about disability technologies and learn to envision disabilities not as liabilities, but as skill sets enabling all of us to navigate a challenging world.

Editorial Reviews

Science - Leslie Berntsen

"Shew helps readers recognize how deeply [tropes] are ingrained in public conversations about disability.… Against Technoableism contains many lessons."

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

"Necessary and delightful. Ashley Shew teaches us an important framework for understanding the intersection of technology and ableism with clear prose and incredible charm, as her wry sense of humor jumps off the page."

Stephen Kuusisto

"Against Technoableism reveals design justice not only for those with disabilities but for everyone who labors and lives with technology. It’s an outstanding book."

Ed Yong

"This is a crucial book. Authoritative, witty, thoughtful, and unafraid to throw a punch, Ashley Shew pushes us headlong toward a much-needed world in which disabled people are seen as experts in their lives, curators of their stories, and vibrant, essential, generative parts of our collective future."

The Cyborg Jillian Weise

"This book is a really big deal, the kind of book that—decades from now—people will still talk about. It marks a before and after. Before the word ‘technoableism’ and after the word ‘technoableism.’ People will say: We did not know what to call it. And then Ashley Shew named it."

New York Times Book Review

"In this series of short, wonderfully lucid essays, [Shew] argues that technoableism – the popular depiction of tech as a wholesale cure for disability – does real damage by positioning the disabled body as fundamentally broken."

Booklist

"Part memoir, part manifesto . . . this [is] an essential text for the nondisabled to use to educate themselves on the harms of technoableism. Highly recommend."

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2023-07-06
A powerful manifesto against ableist thinking.

Many nondisabled people think that disabled people just want to be “normal.” As this brief, outstanding text shows, that’s not only wrong, but cruel. Shew, a professor of science, technology, and society at Virginia Tech, lost a leg to cancer at age 30 and suffered damaged hearing and “chemo brain” from the follow-up treatment. The first lie she heard was how wonderful new high-tech prosthetics were. In reality, the simplest, noncomputerized below-the-knee replacement costs $8,000 to $16,000, and all require a lifetime of return visits, adjustments, and replacements. Private insurance and Medicaid will cover some of the cost but never all, so the poor do without. Shew denounces the stereotypical story of a paraplegic “overcoming” a disability by moving around with the aid of new technology even as walking remains difficult. A wheelchair—“the universal icon of disability” that “requires the world to adjust to the disabled person”—is a much better way to get around. Although framed as a denunciation of technoableism, the belief that technical advances will “cure” disability, this book is a more inclusive, intensely squirm-inducing attack on the almost universal conviction that disabled people are broken and require fixing. The author makes a convincing case that their first priority is to get on with their lives and that their leading problem is not technical but social. “The world is set up to exclude disabled people,” writes Shew, and readers who insist they are an exception will crumble before her list of the disability clichés that saturate the media. There are the “pitiable freaks,” in which “disabled people are cast as either objects of curious medical interest or as objects of pity and charity”; the “shameful sinners,” a trope that “frames disability as a punishment or penance for some kind of sinful action”; and the “inspirational overcomers,” sometimes known as “inspiration porn” in the disability community.

Essential reading for the disabled and nondisabled alike.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159326522
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	12/26/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

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