All Our Families: Disability Lineage and the Future of Kinship

Disability in a family history is often described as a tragedy, a crisis, or an aberration that perhaps science could one day prevent. In All Our Families, disability scholar Jennifer Natalya Fink argues that when a family or society institutionalizes, dehumanizes, and cuts a disabled member out of the narrative, disability remains a trauma as opposed to a shared and ordinary experience.

Weaving together the stories of members of her own family with sociohistorical research, Fink illustrates how the eradication of disabled people is rooted in racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic sorting systems that have been inherited from Nazis. By examining the rise of genetic testing, she shows that a fear of disability begins before a child is even born and that a fear of disability is, fundamentally, a fear of care.

Inspired by queer theory, Fink calls for a lineage of disability a reclamation of disability as a history, culture, and identity. Such a lineage offers a means of seeing disability in the context of a collective sense of belonging, as cause for celebration, and a call for a radical reimagining of care work. All Our Families challenges us relineate disability within the family as a means of repair towards a more inclusive and flexible structure of care and community.