Author: Anna McClennen

ANNA MCCLENNEN is a philosopher and critical disability studies scholar who teaches in the Critical Thinking Program at Borough of Manhattan Community College. She is currently writing a memoir about disability rights and the U.S. carceral regime.

The modern concept of disability—indeed, the conception of disability itself, as there was no identical concept before modern times—is a by-product of capitalism. Capitalism spawns disability both as the primary producer of impairment (through industrial workplace accidents, the physical and