Goethe Lecture Offenbach on ableist discrimination

Regina Schidel presented a critique of ableist discrimination in our society as part of the Goethe Lectures Offenbach.

At the opening of the long-standing joint lecture series by the Klingspor Museum, the City of Offenbach’s Economic Development Department and the Research Centre Normative Orders at Goethe University, Dorothee Ader, Director of the Klingspor Museum, presented a lecture-related object from the museum’s exhibition collection, in this case an extension of Braille conceived by designer Anna Weinzettl. Among other things, extended Braille enables blind and non-blind people to read together at the same time.

In contrast, Regina Schidel began her presentation by referring to various acts of violence against disabled people in recent years. In her lecture “Critique of Ableist Discrimination in our Society”, Schidel deconstructs these acts, their public reaction and recurring narratives of ableist thinking. Ableistism refers to networks and practices that target a specific group of people who are perceived as “disabled”. People are marginalized and devalued on the basis of this classification. Following the discussion of practical violence, Schidel shed light on the philosophical origins of ableism. In doing so, she deliberately highlighted a few points, not to suggest a history of continuity, but to show that “formations of our thinking are permeated by ableist motifs”. This lecture focused in particular on utilitarian and animal ethical theories, including those of Peter Singer, and the comparisons made with and understanding of people with disabilities.

Schidel finds counterpoints and other ideas of “disability” in Wolfgang Jansen, the Frankfurt School and its perspectives on human suffering, as well as in feminist philosophies and their relational understanding of social relationships.

Regina Schidel is an academic councilor at the Research Centre Normative Orders at Goethe University. She received her doctorate in 2022 with the thesis “Relationality of human dignity”, in which she examines the status of people with competing impairments in terms of justice theory. The work was awarded the WISAG Prize 2024 for the best dissertation in the humanities and social sciences. Her book “”Disability” and Society. Ableism from a philosophical and social-theoretical perspective” will be published by Suhrkamp in December.