Disability and the Medical Posthumanities

This paper makes a case for being in but not of the medical posthumanities, cognisant of our contemporary times that continue to render some human beings as valued and others as expendable. I provide a brief reading of medical posthumanities before turning to a field (critical disability studies), an event (the deployment of Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation notices to disabled people during the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK) and a response (reflected in the activism of People First, the international movement of people with learning disabilities). I contemplate some tensions that emerge when the field, event and response rub up against the medical posthumanities, working with the humanist register, more-than-human possibilities, and human troubles. I conclude with the argument that unless the medical humanities engage with disability then they are in danger of 'ability-washing' their research and scholarship.