The Right to Maim

<div>In <i>The Right to Maim</i> Jasbir K. Puar brings her pathbreaking work on the liberal state sexuality and biopolitics to bear on our understanding of disability. Drawing on a stunning array of theoretical and methodological frameworks Puar uses the concept of debility-bodily injury and social exclusion brought on by economic and political factors-to disrupt the category of disability. She shows how debility disability and capacity together constitute an assemblage that states use to control populations. Puar's analysis culminates in an interrogation of Israel's policies toward Palestine in which she outlines how Israel brings Palestinians into biopolitical being by designating them available for injury. Supplementing its right to kill with what Puar calls the right to maim the Israeli state relies on liberal frameworks of disability to obscure and enable the mass debilitation of Palestinian bodies. Tracing disability's interaction with debility and capacity Puar offers a brilliant rethinking of Foucauldian biopolitics while showing how disability functions at the intersection of imperialism and racialized capital.</div>