Social suffering in the neoliberal age : surplusisty and the partially disabled subject

This chapter illustrates that the sociopolitical location of partially disabled people is one of surplusisity, generating a unique form of surplus value with the global mobility of neoliberal biopolitical governmentality. It examines the concept of social suffering as form of collective disability (dis)embodiment with the emergence of neoliberal governance as political hegemony and its dispossessing power. The chapter explores the everyday forms of social suffering that have emerged for disabled people as a consequence of the global mobility of neoliberalism, particularly in its latest guise–austerity. Helen Meekosha proceeds to argue that the significance of the concept of social suffering enables the reading of disability within the southern context to be understood through examining processes of dispossession, pursued through northern nations and the global political economic regimes that sustain the continuity of colonial relations of power. Neoliberal biopolitical technologies of reclassification move from site to site, along with design experts.