Disability and Debt [$20 Suggested]

Instructor: Madden | Sunday | October 30 | 8:00-9:30 PM ET

Most economics classes never mention disability, but in fact, disability is an economic issue. In particular, the study of disability has a lot to teach us about one key economic concern: debt. During this teach-in, we will center disability studies—it’s theory, organizing, and art—to think about debt in new ways. The link between disability and debt is maybe most apparent if you consider that medical care in the US is regularly debt-financed and 62% of bankruptcies are linked to illness and healthcare expenses. COVID and climate breakdown, both inextricable from discussions of capitalism, are among the reasons the future is disabled, although artist and activist Sunaura Taylor says that prediction “need not be foreboding.” We will study these links between disability and debt, but we will also explore theories of time and temporality emerging from feminist and queer disability studies, which can help us understand how debt functions and whom it fails. We will study questions of accounting that disabled people regularly ask themselves and one another as they organize and exchange care and support: What do we actually owe one another? And finally, we will study visual materials recently created by artist Christine Sun Kim, who writes that she’s “been obsessed with [American Sign Language] signs for debt, owe, afford, again, borrow, lend and echo.” This is not your typical economics class! Join us Sunday October 30 for this important discussion!

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