# name
Disability Justice is Collective Liberation: Pragmatist Approaches to Tactile Aesthetics and Reorganizational Tactics in Access Arts

# metadata.dc.contributor.other[].value
Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat de Filosofia

# metadata.dc.description.abstract[].value
[eng] The aim of this dissertation is to provide a theoretical framework where the double significance
of Disability Justice artistic practices aesthetic and political can be accounted for , and to show
the emancipatory and coalitional potential of DJ as a place for collective liberation that interlaces
social justice movements in solidarity and care bonds . To do so, the thesis elaborates on the
intersections between Pragmatist politics and ethics, and the artistic practices that are flourishing
in the discipline of Access Art, which constitutes a central territory of activism for Disability
Justice. This connection revolves around a recovery of embodiment, which is paradigmatically
exemplified by an attention to the sense of touch.
Therefore, three steps are performed . In the first one, we undertake an archaeology of
touch which shows how Western philosophy has been shaped by an Ocularcentric conception of
knowledge and culture that has led to a tactile amnesia which is used to reinforce ableist structures
that leaven on visual learners behind in many territories, and emphatically in museums. From
this, we argue that paying attention to embodiment and touch constitutes a shift of standpoint with
deep philosophical implications, which entails restructuring the sensory regimes ordering how we
inhabit the world. Secondly, the ten Disability Justice principles are presented as the guiding
regulations that establish how this reordering of the world is performed in Access Art practices.
The function of each principle is examined in relation to precedent theoretical frameworks that
come from Feminist Pragmatism and Critical Theory’s ideas of community, interdependence and
care. Thirdly, a series of case studies built around the key work of Car men Papalia in Access Arts
are narrated to show how different practitioners deploy reorganizational tactics that aim at
transformative justice actions by way of revolting everyday ways of sensing, saliently redirecting
our attention to the broad senses of touch.
This thesis is framed in a broader project arguing that building bridges between the
principles of Disability Justice and the tenets of critical Pragmatist theoretical frameworks
provides a bidirectional enrichment for both fields: for Disability Justice activists and artists,
existing frameworks provide a tradition in relation to which they can make sense of their praxis;
and for the Pragmatist scholars, it enlivens the discipline by proving it useful to analyze and take
charge of current oppressions, as w ell as affording a new standpoint from which new aspects
become salient when we revisit classical texts.

# metadata.dc.title[].value
Disability Justice is Collective Liberation: Pragmatist Approaches to Tactile Aesthetics and Reorganizational Tactics in Access Arts