Vampires and Cyborgs: Transhuman Ability and Ableism in the work of Octavia Butler and Janelle Monáe

“For Butler and Monáe, transhuman disabled bodies offer possibility and freedom that simple humanity forecloses. Monáe’s use of disability as metaphor supports her alter ego’s search for a freedom in a world much like our own. However, by reducing disability to metaphor and by using ableist language, the real lives of disabled people are obscured. Butler’s depiction of Shori’s hybrid body serves as a flash point for eugenic impulse, allowing an investigation of the deep seated racial prejudices of our time. However, punishing characters through impairment makes disability into retribution, a just sentence for wrongdoing in an ableist world that doesn’t make accommodations for people who need them. Butler and Monáe open up conversations about disability that are messy and fraught, but they do so in arenas that traditional disabilities studies scholarship neglects.”

Interesting article worth reading, even if you (like myself) don’t entirely agree.