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Liat Ben-Moshe

University of Illinois at Chicago, Criminology, Law & Justice, Faculty Member

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https://www.liatbenmoshe.com/ Liat Ben-Moshe is an Associate Professor of Criminology, Law and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of "Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition" (University of Minnesota Press, Spring 2020). Dr. Ben-Moshe is the co-editor (with Chris Chapman and Allison Carey) of Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada (Palgrave 2014) and Building Pedagogical Curb Cuts: Incorporating disability in the university classroom and curriculum (Syracuse University Press 2005); as well as special issues of Disability Studies Quarterly on disability in Israel/Palestine (Summer 2007) and Disability Studies Pedagogy (2015) and Women, Gender and Families of Color on race, gender and disability (2014).

She has written on such topics as deinstitutionalization and decarceration; the politics of abolition; disability, anti-capitalism and anarchism; queerness and disability; inclusive pedagogy; academic repression; and representations of disability. https://www.liatbenmoshe.com/
Address: https://www.liatbenmoshe.com/
Liat Ben-Moshe, Ph.D.
Criminology, Law and Justice
4056B BSB (M/C 141)
University of Illinois at Chicago
1007 W. Harrison Street
Chicago, IL 60607-7140

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Papers by Liat Ben-Moshe

Depathologization as Healing Justice

QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking, Oct 1, 2022

Challenge to What Is: The Effect and Aftermath of Exposing Intolerable Conditions of Confinement

Foucault Studies, 2021

This collection could not have come in a more prescient time. As the editors suggest, “The presen... more This collection could not have come in a more prescient time. As the editors suggest, “The present volume is, at once, then, a historical archive, a conceptual challenge, and a tactical tool kit.”1 I will focus my comments on some tactical questions regarding the effect and aftermath of the GIP investigation on the intolerability of incarceration. What effect did it have on those incarcerated? On prison conditions? On the rationale of confinement? My own work focuses on the connections between prison abolition and anti-disability confinement, especially the movements of deinstitutionalization and anti-psychiatry. To me, this monumental collection/translation project highlights again the continuity of disability confinement – mental crisis in prison is a general condition not an exception, as seen by many testimonies; in addition, “prison suicides in France marked not only a symptom of these desperate conditions, but also a final form of protest and escape;”2 and the GIP, through Fou...

Abolishing the Broom Closets in Omelas: Feminist Disability Analysis of Crisis and Precarity

Feminist Formations, 2021

Ursula K. Le Guin's 1973 short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" depicts a... more Ursula K. Le Guin's 1973 short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" depicts a utopian city where the happiness of most of the citizens depends on the misery of a child who lives in a broom closet. We activate the story in the midst of a global pandemic which is laying bare the pre-existing conditions of precarity under gendered settler racial capitalism. We interpret Le Guin's story through an intersectional feminist disability lens, emphasizing the necessity of attending to disability and the carceral institutionalization of disabled people as key to understanding how precarity is distributed. We make the case that "Omelas" represents places of disability confinement, specifically the institutionalization of disabled people in psychiatric and congregate facilities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. By examining two such institutions in Salem, Oregon (Omelas spelled backwards), we make explicit the connections between capitalist precarity and carceral disablement. We argue that disability is key to understanding the capitalist crisis because disablement and the construction of the ability/disability binary has been a key mechanism for constructing disposability in the crisis of capitalism. Turning from crisis of late stage capitalism to the crisis of genre, we show that Le Guin's story forces us to confront the role of ongoing eugenics and ableism in the imagination of feminist abolition. We show how "Omelas" offers a different kind of abolitionist horizon in the form of the "ones who walk away." We, however, push to identify with the child in the broom closet and not the ones for whom the story poses a dilemma. We end with the psych survivors and self-advocacy organizers who cannot physically "walk away," but who instead lead the fight for the abolition of the broom closet from within.

The State of (Intersectional Critique of) State Violence

WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, 2018

Radical Disability Politics

Routledge Handbook of Radical Politics, 2019

The Tension Between Abolition and Reform

The End of Prisons, 2013

Dis-orientation, dis-epistemology and abolition

Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, 2018

What is the relation between knowledge and orientation? How does being disoriented lead one to ne... more What is the relation between knowledge and orientation? How does being disoriented lead one to new knowledge or/and to being humbled (tenderized) about not knowing? How can not knowing aid in liberatory struggles, in alleviating oppression or even in being in community with like-minded people in an ethical manner? These are some of the questions that Ami Harbin’s work “Disorientation and Moral Life” brought up for me and which I would like to explore below, using prison abolition as one brief example.

Dis-epistemologies of Abolition

Critical Criminology, 2018

There are various critiques laid out against the framework of carceral abolition (as it appears c... more There are various critiques laid out against the framework of carceral abolition (as it appears currently in prison abolition and deinstitutionalization): that it is abstract, only critiques but does not suggest specific solutions; that it is a utopian vision of the world; and that it is unrealistic in the world we currently occupy. Throughout this article I will demonstrate how such critiques can be conceptualized as strengths of these movements and frameworks for liberation. I argue that carceral abolition (as it appears in prison abolition and deinstitutionalization) is a form of knowledge, an ethical position. My first claim is that this knowledge is rooted in maroonage and I show the consequences of not engaging with abolition from intersectional frameworks. My second claim is that we can understand abolition as a dis-epistemology that rejects ways of knowing tied to certainty, optimism and certain notions of futurity and temporality.

Mad Futures: Affect/Theory/Violence

American Quarterly, 2017

We are delighted to announce the publication of Mad Futures: Affect/Theory/Violence in American Q... more We are delighted to announce the publication of Mad Futures: Affect/Theory/Violence in American Quarterly, Volume 69, Number 2, June 2017, pp. 291-302 Edited by Tanja Aho, Liat Ben-Moshe, and Leon Hilton Table of contents: Mad Futures: Affect/Theory/Violence pp. 291-302 Tanja Aho, Liat Ben-Moshe, Leon J. Hilton Mad Is a Place; or, the Slave Ship Tows the Ship of Fools pp. 303-308 La Marr Jurelle Bruce Quagmires of Affect: Madness, Labor, Whiteness, and Ideological Disavowal pp. 309-313 Rachel Gorman Queer History, Mad History, and the Politics of Health pp. 315-319 Regina Kunzel On Affect Theory&#39;s Hidden Histories: Toward a Technological Genealogy pp. 321-326 Jaspertina Lim /Jasper J. Verlinden Mad Data: Between Symptom and Experience pp. 327-331 Zahari Richter Turning Mad Knowledge into Affective Labor: The Case of the Peer Support Worker pp. 333-338 Jijian Voronka Agitation and Sudden Death: Containing Black Detainee Affect pp. 339-345 Louise Tam This forum traces its origins to a roundtable, &quot;Affect Theory Meets Mad Studies,&quot; that took place at the 2015 American Studies Association conference, one of the first panels to be sponsored by the ASA&#39;s then newly reconstituted Critical Disability Studies Caucus (CDSC). In responding to the ASA&#39;s notably &quot;affective&quot; orientation within its recent conference themes—from the &quot;pleasure and pain&quot; of 2014 to the &quot;misery&quot; of 2015—members of the CDSC felt the need to address the often-unmarked ableist potential of such keywords, which have too often led to the centering of privileged affective states. With this panel the caucus sought &quot;to trouble the ways that mental illness is theorized and employed without consideration for the lived reality of an ableist and sanist society&quot; (as noted in the original panel description). Since affective registers are distributed unevenly among those who bear them, both the panel and this subsequent forum emphasize the situational differences of affect under racial capitalist settler colonialism. That year&#39;s ASA conference&#39;s location in Toronto, Canada—known internationally as a hub of antipsychiatry and mad activism / mad studies work—further confirmed the importance of centering hemispheric and transnational perspectives that could invite critical engagements with the differential developments of mad studies and antipsychiatry activism, which has until recently been quite pronounced in Canada and rather more lacking in the US academy. More specifically, contributors to this forum address madness, mental illness, and psychiatric disability by engaging with the wider, cross-disciplinary attention to the politics of affect and emotion that has surfaced over the past several decades. In light of affect theory&#39;s ongoing importance within the far-reaching theoretical challenges to models of liberal subjectivity, settler colonial sociality, and racial capitalist knowledge production that have defined American studies scholarship in recent years, this forum offers urgent engagements with (and at times critiques of) discrete traditions and genealogies of affect theory by insisting on the necessity of critical disability and mad studies perspectives to these debates. The forum can be accessed via Jstor and other academic databases (https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/36559). For those who would like a copy but cannot access these databases, contact one of the editors for PDFs. (While you are there check out the stellar adjacent forum on “Tracing the Settler&#39;s Tools: A Forum on Patrick Wolfe&#39;s Life and Legacy” and Rober Warrior’s presidential address). Content warning: academic language, theory heavy, numerous mentions of violence (including racism, ableism, sanism, colonialism, homophobia, slavery, DSM, deportation and more).

Why prisons are not “The New Asylums”

Punishment & Society, 2017

This paper will offer an antidote to the axiom that jails and prisons are becoming “the new asylu... more This paper will offer an antidote to the axiom that jails and prisons are becoming “the new asylums” in the U.S. Without disregarding the reality of having disproportioned numbers of people with disabilities (psychiatric, cognitive, learning disabilities in particular) in jails and prisons, I will caution against declarations that prisons are becoming “the new asylums” in the U.S. and offer a more nuanced explanation that incorporates perspectives from those critiquing incarceration, institutionalization and psychiatry to shed new light on the connections between incarceration and deinstitutionalization at present and in the past. The claims that post-deinstitutionalization people with psychiatric disabilities were “abandoned to their fate” and re-incarcerated in jails and prisons via being homeless will be critically examined. While doing so, I will also discuss the processes of disablement inherent in prisons and in being housing insecure.

Genealogies of resistance to incarceration: Abolition politics within deinstitutionalization and anti-prison activism in the U.S

The Contested meaning of “Community” in Discourses of Deinstitutionalization and Community Living in the Field of Developmental Disability

Research in Social Science and Disability, 2011

Purpose – This chapter focuses on notions of community as related to the discourse around “commun... more Purpose – This chapter focuses on notions of community as related to the discourse around “community living” for people with labels of developmental disabilities, especially as they emerged during and after deinstitutionalization. Following Foucault, this chapter asks whether institutionalization and community living should be conceived of as two separate epochs or as governed by similar logic. The second focus of the chapter is in the ways notions of “community” were evoked by various stakeholders such as parents of children with labels of mental retardation, professionals in the field of developmental disability, and those of formerly institutionalized peoples themselves. Methodology/approach – This chapter employs the methodological aspects of the work of Michel Foucault and constructs a genealogy of notions of community in relation to deinstitutionalization and the field of developmental disabilities. Findings – “Community” has been discursively produced in several forms: as a binary opposite of “institution,” as a set of human relationships, and as a paradigm shift in relation to the way developmental disabilities should be conceptualized. It remains unclear whether we have truly moved from an institutional model to a “community-based” model for those with developmental disabilities. Originality/value of the chapter – Reconceptualizing deinstitutionalization and community living as discursive formations aids in the understanding of the difference between abolition of institutionalization as a mindset and other formulations of the concept of “community” in the field of developmental disabilities.

An Introduction to Race, Gender, and Disability: Intersectionality, Disability Studies, and Families of Color

Women, Gender, and Families of Color, 2014

The idea for this special issue of Women, Gender, and Families of Color on race, gender, and disa... more The idea for this special issue of Women, Gender, and Families of Color on race, gender, and disability came from a deep commitment to foregrounding intersectional analysis and doing so from crossand multidisciplinary perspectives. We, the guest editors, represent both this commitment and the potential of going across disciplinary boundaries. We come with understandings in the fields of disability studies, critical race theory, feminist of color critique, Latino/a/Chicana studies, critical prison studies, racial and ethnic health disparities, and policy implications for families of or with disabled individuals. We say this at the beginning of this introduction not only as a form of identification (or disidentification) but to disavow from the outset the idea that “disability,” “race,” “gender,” or “family” are monolithic constructs that can be interrogated on their own. It would be useful from the outset to define what we mean by the term “disability.” As stated elsewhere (Ben-Moshe et al. 2013), under the critical framework of disability studies,

The Icons of Access: From Exclusion to Inclusion

Alternatives to (Disability) Incarceration

Disability Incarcerated

Disabling Incarceration: Connecting Disability to Divergent Confinements in the USA

Critical Sociology, 2011

This article suggests the merits of conceptualizing incarceration as including institutionalizati... more This article suggests the merits of conceptualizing incarceration as including institutionalization in a wide variety of enclosed settings, including prisons, jails, institutions for the intellectually disabled, treatment centers, and psychiatric hospitals. Such formulations conceptualize incarceration as a continuum and a multi-faceted phenomenon. This article will highlight the importance of moving beyond analogies between criminalization, institutionalization and psychiatrization to discuss the intersection of these phenomena, by highlighting several social science perspectives that have integrated these spheres already; taking up an analysis of the political economy of incarceration; and re-examining the reality of prisoners with disabilities in the growing prison machine. Lastly, I propose a re-examination of the forces of trans-incarceration, the move from one carceral edifice such as a psychiatric hospital to another such as a jail. I will demonstrate the ways in which engagi...

8. Homage to Spencer: The Politics of “Treatment” and “Choice” in Neo-liberal Times

Madness, Violence, and Power, 2019

Decarcerating Disability

Carceral protectionism and the perpetually (in)vulnerable

Criminology & Criminal Justice

The United States relies on carceralism—mass incarceration and institutionalization, surveillance... more The United States relies on carceralism—mass incarceration and institutionalization, surveillance and control—for its continued operation. The criminalization of difference, particularly in relation to race, disability and queerness, renders certain people as perpetually subject to state violence due to their perceived unruliness. This article relies on two case studies, in Toledo, Ohio and Brooklyn, New York to question the construction and co-optation of vulnerability by state agents and focus on interrelated instances of state violence done under the guise of protectionism of and from unruly subjects. We then discuss the response to these instances of violence- from the state in the form of carceral ableism and sanism, and from local activists trying to navigate the shifting contours of protectionist violence by enacting queer transformative justice.

The State of Disability in Israel/Palestine: An Introduction

Disability Studies Quarterly, 2007

The State of Disability in Israel/Palestine: An Introduction Liat Ben-Moshe Sociology, Disability... more

Depathologization as Healing Justice

QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking, Oct 1, 2022

Challenge to What Is: The Effect and Aftermath of Exposing Intolerable Conditions of Confinement

Foucault Studies, 2021

This collection could not have come in a more prescient time. As the editors suggest, “The presen... more This collection could not have come in a more prescient time. As the editors suggest, “The present volume is, at once, then, a historical archive, a conceptual challenge, and a tactical tool kit.”1 I will focus my comments on some tactical questions regarding the effect and aftermath of the GIP investigation on the intolerability of incarceration. What effect did it have on those incarcerated? On prison conditions? On the rationale of confinement? My own work focuses on the connections between prison abolition and anti-disability confinement, especially the movements of deinstitutionalization and anti-psychiatry. To me, this monumental collection/translation project highlights again the continuity of disability confinement – mental crisis in prison is a general condition not an exception, as seen by many testimonies; in addition, “prison suicides in France marked not only a symptom of these desperate conditions, but also a final form of protest and escape;”2 and the GIP, through Fou...

Abolishing the Broom Closets in Omelas: Feminist Disability Analysis of Crisis and Precarity

Feminist Formations, 2021

Ursula K. Le Guin's 1973 short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" depicts a... more Ursula K. Le Guin's 1973 short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" depicts a utopian city where the happiness of most of the citizens depends on the misery of a child who lives in a broom closet. We activate the story in the midst of a global pandemic which is laying bare the pre-existing conditions of precarity under gendered settler racial capitalism. We interpret Le Guin's story through an intersectional feminist disability lens, emphasizing the necessity of attending to disability and the carceral institutionalization of disabled people as key to understanding how precarity is distributed. We make the case that "Omelas" represents places of disability confinement, specifically the institutionalization of disabled people in psychiatric and congregate facilities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. By examining two such institutions in Salem, Oregon (Omelas spelled backwards), we make explicit the connections between capitalist precarity and carceral disablement. We argue that disability is key to understanding the capitalist crisis because disablement and the construction of the ability/disability binary has been a key mechanism for constructing disposability in the crisis of capitalism. Turning from crisis of late stage capitalism to the crisis of genre, we show that Le Guin's story forces us to confront the role of ongoing eugenics and ableism in the imagination of feminist abolition. We show how "Omelas" offers a different kind of abolitionist horizon in the form of the "ones who walk away." We, however, push to identify with the child in the broom closet and not the ones for whom the story poses a dilemma. We end with the psych survivors and self-advocacy organizers who cannot physically "walk away," but who instead lead the fight for the abolition of the broom closet from within.

The State of (Intersectional Critique of) State Violence

WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, 2018

Radical Disability Politics

Routledge Handbook of Radical Politics, 2019

The Tension Between Abolition and Reform

The End of Prisons, 2013

Dis-orientation, dis-epistemology and abolition

Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, 2018

What is the relation between knowledge and orientation? How does being disoriented lead one to ne... more What is the relation between knowledge and orientation? How does being disoriented lead one to new knowledge or/and to being humbled (tenderized) about not knowing? How can not knowing aid in liberatory struggles, in alleviating oppression or even in being in community with like-minded people in an ethical manner? These are some of the questions that Ami Harbin’s work “Disorientation and Moral Life” brought up for me and which I would like to explore below, using prison abolition as one brief example.

Dis-epistemologies of Abolition

Critical Criminology, 2018

There are various critiques laid out against the framework of carceral abolition (as it appears c... more There are various critiques laid out against the framework of carceral abolition (as it appears currently in prison abolition and deinstitutionalization): that it is abstract, only critiques but does not suggest specific solutions; that it is a utopian vision of the world; and that it is unrealistic in the world we currently occupy. Throughout this article I will demonstrate how such critiques can be conceptualized as strengths of these movements and frameworks for liberation. I argue that carceral abolition (as it appears in prison abolition and deinstitutionalization) is a form of knowledge, an ethical position. My first claim is that this knowledge is rooted in maroonage and I show the consequences of not engaging with abolition from intersectional frameworks. My second claim is that we can understand abolition as a dis-epistemology that rejects ways of knowing tied to certainty, optimism and certain notions of futurity and temporality.

Mad Futures: Affect/Theory/Violence

American Quarterly, 2017

We are delighted to announce the publication of Mad Futures: Affect/Theory/Violence in American Q... more We are delighted to announce the publication of Mad Futures: Affect/Theory/Violence in American Quarterly, Volume 69, Number 2, June 2017, pp. 291-302 Edited by Tanja Aho, Liat Ben-Moshe, and Leon Hilton Table of contents: Mad Futures: Affect/Theory/Violence pp. 291-302 Tanja Aho, Liat Ben-Moshe, Leon J. Hilton Mad Is a Place; or, the Slave Ship Tows the Ship of Fools pp. 303-308 La Marr Jurelle Bruce Quagmires of Affect: Madness, Labor, Whiteness, and Ideological Disavowal pp. 309-313 Rachel Gorman Queer History, Mad History, and the Politics of Health pp. 315-319 Regina Kunzel On Affect Theory&#39;s Hidden Histories: Toward a Technological Genealogy pp. 321-326 Jaspertina Lim /Jasper J. Verlinden Mad Data: Between Symptom and Experience pp. 327-331 Zahari Richter Turning Mad Knowledge into Affective Labor: The Case of the Peer Support Worker pp. 333-338 Jijian Voronka Agitation and Sudden Death: Containing Black Detainee Affect pp. 339-345 Louise Tam This forum traces its origins to a roundtable, &quot;Affect Theory Meets Mad Studies,&quot; that took place at the 2015 American Studies Association conference, one of the first panels to be sponsored by the ASA&#39;s then newly reconstituted Critical Disability Studies Caucus (CDSC). In responding to the ASA&#39;s notably &quot;affective&quot; orientation within its recent conference themes—from the &quot;pleasure and pain&quot; of 2014 to the &quot;misery&quot; of 2015—members of the CDSC felt the need to address the often-unmarked ableist potential of such keywords, which have too often led to the centering of privileged affective states. With this panel the caucus sought &quot;to trouble the ways that mental illness is theorized and employed without consideration for the lived reality of an ableist and sanist society&quot; (as noted in the original panel description). Since affective registers are distributed unevenly among those who bear them, both the panel and this subsequent forum emphasize the situational differences of affect under racial capitalist settler colonialism. That year&#39;s ASA conference&#39;s location in Toronto, Canada—known internationally as a hub of antipsychiatry and mad activism / mad studies work—further confirmed the importance of centering hemispheric and transnational perspectives that could invite critical engagements with the differential developments of mad studies and antipsychiatry activism, which has until recently been quite pronounced in Canada and rather more lacking in the US academy. More specifically, contributors to this forum address madness, mental illness, and psychiatric disability by engaging with the wider, cross-disciplinary attention to the politics of affect and emotion that has surfaced over the past several decades. In light of affect theory&#39;s ongoing importance within the far-reaching theoretical challenges to models of liberal subjectivity, settler colonial sociality, and racial capitalist knowledge production that have defined American studies scholarship in recent years, this forum offers urgent engagements with (and at times critiques of) discrete traditions and genealogies of affect theory by insisting on the necessity of critical disability and mad studies perspectives to these debates. The forum can be accessed via Jstor and other academic databases (https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/36559). For those who would like a copy but cannot access these databases, contact one of the editors for PDFs. (While you are there check out the stellar adjacent forum on “Tracing the Settler&#39;s Tools: A Forum on Patrick Wolfe&#39;s Life and Legacy” and Rober Warrior’s presidential address). Content warning: academic language, theory heavy, numerous mentions of violence (including racism, ableism, sanism, colonialism, homophobia, slavery, DSM, deportation and more).

Why prisons are not “The New Asylums”

Punishment & Society, 2017

This paper will offer an antidote to the axiom that jails and prisons are becoming “the new asylu... more This paper will offer an antidote to the axiom that jails and prisons are becoming “the new asylums” in the U.S. Without disregarding the reality of having disproportioned numbers of people with disabilities (psychiatric, cognitive, learning disabilities in particular) in jails and prisons, I will caution against declarations that prisons are becoming “the new asylums” in the U.S. and offer a more nuanced explanation that incorporates perspectives from those critiquing incarceration, institutionalization and psychiatry to shed new light on the connections between incarceration and deinstitutionalization at present and in the past. The claims that post-deinstitutionalization people with psychiatric disabilities were “abandoned to their fate” and re-incarcerated in jails and prisons via being homeless will be critically examined. While doing so, I will also discuss the processes of disablement inherent in prisons and in being housing insecure.

Genealogies of resistance to incarceration: Abolition politics within deinstitutionalization and anti-prison activism in the U.S

The Contested meaning of “Community” in Discourses of Deinstitutionalization and Community Living in the Field of Developmental Disability

Research in Social Science and Disability, 2011

Purpose – This chapter focuses on notions of community as related to the discourse around “commun... more Purpose – This chapter focuses on notions of community as related to the discourse around “community living” for people with labels of developmental disabilities, especially as they emerged during and after deinstitutionalization. Following Foucault, this chapter asks whether institutionalization and community living should be conceived of as two separate epochs or as governed by similar logic. The second focus of the chapter is in the ways notions of “community” were evoked by various stakeholders such as parents of children with labels of mental retardation, professionals in the field of developmental disability, and those of formerly institutionalized peoples themselves. Methodology/approach – This chapter employs the methodological aspects of the work of Michel Foucault and constructs a genealogy of notions of community in relation to deinstitutionalization and the field of developmental disabilities. Findings – “Community” has been discursively produced in several forms: as a binary opposite of “institution,” as a set of human relationships, and as a paradigm shift in relation to the way developmental disabilities should be conceptualized. It remains unclear whether we have truly moved from an institutional model to a “community-based” model for those with developmental disabilities. Originality/value of the chapter – Reconceptualizing deinstitutionalization and community living as discursive formations aids in the understanding of the difference between abolition of institutionalization as a mindset and other formulations of the concept of “community” in the field of developmental disabilities.

An Introduction to Race, Gender, and Disability: Intersectionality, Disability Studies, and Families of Color

Women, Gender, and Families of Color, 2014

The idea for this special issue of Women, Gender, and Families of Color on race, gender, and disa... more The idea for this special issue of Women, Gender, and Families of Color on race, gender, and disability came from a deep commitment to foregrounding intersectional analysis and doing so from crossand multidisciplinary perspectives. We, the guest editors, represent both this commitment and the potential of going across disciplinary boundaries. We come with understandings in the fields of disability studies, critical race theory, feminist of color critique, Latino/a/Chicana studies, critical prison studies, racial and ethnic health disparities, and policy implications for families of or with disabled individuals. We say this at the beginning of this introduction not only as a form of identification (or disidentification) but to disavow from the outset the idea that “disability,” “race,” “gender,” or “family” are monolithic constructs that can be interrogated on their own. It would be useful from the outset to define what we mean by the term “disability.” As stated elsewhere (Ben-Moshe et al. 2013), under the critical framework of disability studies,

The Icons of Access: From Exclusion to Inclusion

Alternatives to (Disability) Incarceration

Disability Incarcerated

Disabling Incarceration: Connecting Disability to Divergent Confinements in the USA

Critical Sociology, 2011

This article suggests the merits of conceptualizing incarceration as including institutionalizati... more This article suggests the merits of conceptualizing incarceration as including institutionalization in a wide variety of enclosed settings, including prisons, jails, institutions for the intellectually disabled, treatment centers, and psychiatric hospitals. Such formulations conceptualize incarceration as a continuum and a multi-faceted phenomenon. This article will highlight the importance of moving beyond analogies between criminalization, institutionalization and psychiatrization to discuss the intersection of these phenomena, by highlighting several social science perspectives that have integrated these spheres already; taking up an analysis of the political economy of incarceration; and re-examining the reality of prisoners with disabilities in the growing prison machine. Lastly, I propose a re-examination of the forces of trans-incarceration, the move from one carceral edifice such as a psychiatric hospital to another such as a jail. I will demonstrate the ways in which engagi...

8. Homage to Spencer: The Politics of “Treatment” and “Choice” in Neo-liberal Times

Madness, Violence, and Power, 2019

Decarcerating Disability

Carceral protectionism and the perpetually (in)vulnerable

Criminology & Criminal Justice

The United States relies on carceralism—mass incarceration and institutionalization, surveillance... more The United States relies on carceralism—mass incarceration and institutionalization, surveillance and control—for its continued operation. The criminalization of difference, particularly in relation to race, disability and queerness, renders certain people as perpetually subject to state violence due to their perceived unruliness. This article relies on two case studies, in Toledo, Ohio and Brooklyn, New York to question the construction and co-optation of vulnerability by state agents and focus on interrelated instances of state violence done under the guise of protectionism of and from unruly subjects. We then discuss the response to these instances of violence- from the state in the form of carceral ableism and sanism, and from local activists trying to navigate the shifting contours of protectionist violence by enacting queer transformative justice.

The State of Disability in Israel/Palestine: An Introduction

Disability Studies Quarterly, 2007

The State of Disability in Israel/Palestine: An Introduction Liat Ben-Moshe Sociology, Disability... more

Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition

University of Minnesota Press , 2020

Liat Ben-Moshe provides groundbreaking case studies that show how abolition is not an unattainabl... more Liat Ben-Moshe provides groundbreaking case studies that show how abolition is not an unattainable goal but rather a reality, and how it plays out in different arenas of incarceration—antipsychiatry, the field of intellectual disabilities, and the fight against the prison-industrial complex.
Ben-Moshe discusses a range of topics, including why deinstitutionalization is often wrongly blamed for the rise in incarceration; who resists decarceration and deinstitutionalization, and the coalitions opposing such resistance; and how understanding deinstitutionalization as a form of residential integration makes visible intersections with racial desegregation. By connecting deinstitutionalization with prison abolition, Decarcerating Disability also illuminates some of the limitations of disability rights and inclusion discourses, as well as tactics such as litigation, in securing freedom.

Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada

by Liat Ben-Moshe and Chris Chapman

Disability Incarcerated gathers thirteen contributions from an impressive array of fields. Taken ... more Disability Incarcerated gathers thirteen contributions from an impressive array of fields. Taken together, these essays assert that a complex understanding of disability is crucial to an understanding of incarceration, and that we must expand what has come to be called 'incarceration.' The chapters in this book examine a host of sites, such as prisons, institutions for people with developmental disabilities, psychiatric hospitals, treatment centers, special education, detention centers, and group homes; explore why various sites should be understood as incarceration; and discuss the causes and effects of these sites historically and currently. This volume includes a preface by Professor Angela Y. Davis and an afterword by Professor Robert McRuer.

Review of Disability incarcerated in Aferican American Review 2017.pdf

by Liat Ben-Moshe and Claire Spivakovsky

Review of "Disability incarcerated" by Claire Spivakovsky

Book review of Disability Incarcerated in Punishment and Society

In the past decade, there have been increased scholarly, advocacy and government engagements acro... more In the past decade, there have been increased scholarly, advocacy and government engagements across western jurisdictions with the 'problem' of the overrepresenta-tion of people with cognitive impairments and psychosocial disabilities in the criminal justice system, particularly in prison. Central to these engagements are recommendations of how to reform criminal justice systems in order to more humanely and effectively punish people with disability notably through increased use of community-based disability and mental health services and, relatedly, how to more effectively identify people with disability in order to direct them to these punishment options. Some critical criminology, critical disability studies (CDS), social work and socio-legal scholars are beginning to question the logics of disability and state power that underpin and are produced through these engagements and caution that these recommendations might affirm medicalised understandings of disability and further entrench people with disability in an ever expanding car-ceral system (see,

Miller H-Disability review of Disability Incarcerated

Liat Ben-Moshe, Chris Chapman, Allison C. Carey, eds. Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and D... more Liat Ben-Moshe, Chris Chapman, Allison C. Carey, eds. Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. xvi + 297 pp. $95.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-137-39323-4; $30.00 (paper), ISBN 978-1-137-40405-3.

Reviewed by Ian Miller (University of Ulster)
Published on H-Disability (April, 2015)
Commissioned by Iain C. Hutchison

לימודי מוגבלות בחו"ל ובארץ

by Liat Ben-Moshe and nili R Broyer

Radio Interview on Incarceration, Ableism, Anarchism and more

Radio interview from 2014 on total Liberation Radio. Take a listen at http://www.totalliberation... more

Radio Interview on Capitalism, Incarceration and Disability

Interview on Against the Grain from 2014 on Capitalism, Incarceration and Disability. Take a lis... more

Interview on EqualityTime

Email interview with Joe Reddington about Disability Incarcerated. http://equalitytime.co.uk/3840... more

Ben-Moshe website

Go to https://www.liatbenmoshe.com/ for access to all articles, interviews and talks open access