Book Review: Jasbir K. Puar's The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability

Abstract

Jasbir K. Puar’s 2017 monograph The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability is a veritable landmark intervention into a number of theoretical fields. Puar is Professor and Graduate Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University and obtained her Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. In her analysis of the Israeli state’s policies of maiming, predicated on ideological reference to Palestinian homophobia, Puar extends and recontextualizes themes in affect theory, disability studies, queer theory, trans studies, critical race theory, rights-based discourse and activism, posthumanism, and de/postcolonial theory. The work is published by Duke University Press, 221 pages.