My argument is that the ableist rhetorical framing of disability in the 2020 campaign trail has predominantly been used to delegitimize candidates for alleged disabilities—and in doing so, has contributed to an ableist project further stigmatizing disabled people and situating them as outside of the possibility of democratic agency. Furthermore, I argue that this ablenationalist project by which disabled bodyminds are delegitimized is more difficult to critique in a political culture of demagoguery which ultimately dismisses critiques of ableism as partisan critiques against a political party as well as uses authoritarian dismissal of disabled people as rhetorically suspect.

“I use epideictic rhetoric to examine how the intellectually disabled person was over time constructed and deconstructed via praise and blame.”

“Each of these essays explores the overlaps and tensions of disability and mothering in the context of subject positions and liminal spaces, the complex and often confusing space where the personal and social collide.”