Mortonian Insights for a Phenomenological Re-reading of Disability Law

The article offers a critical analysis of Timothy Morton’s “post-environmentalist” theories through the lens of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology to explore their potential contribution to a philosophy of disability law. The first part investigates the concept of ‘vulnerability’ and how its traditional doctrinal understanding can be deepened through Morton’s speculative thought. The next part compares some aspects of the two authors’ thinking in order to introduce a reflection on the legal relevance of the “embodied” experiences of women with disabilities and, then, with autism. The reflection on vulnerability is therefore connected to that on ‘care’ in order to adopt an intersectional perspective, on the double front of Feminist Disability Studies and Autism Studies. Subsequently, the theme of ‘time’ in autism is explored as an example of a peculiar way of approaching the legal, but also social and affective “positioning”. Then, the ‘phenomenological’ approach outlined through the contributions of Merleau-Ponty and Morton is integrated with the ‘hermeneutic’ one of Paul Ricoeur for the purpose of a broader reflection on the narrative identity that the act of writing about the self inevitably implies.