In my 2016 book Disability Studies1, and reflecting on recent writings2, I argued3 that Critical disability studies is a 'location populated by people who advocate building upon the foundational perspectives of disability studies whilst integrating new and transformative agendas associated with postcolonial, queer and feminist theories'. So, critical disability studies:

• Acknowledges the importance of analysing disability through materialism and is respectful to the building blocks of disability studies especially the social model of disability;
• Recognises that our contemporary times are complex as they are marked by austerity, a widening gap between rich and power, globalisation of the guiding principles of late capitalism and therefore require sophisticated social theories that can make sense and contest these processes;
• Remains mindful of global, national and local economic contexts and their impact on disabled people;
• Adopts a position of cultural relativism whilst seeking to say some things about the global nature of disability;
• Recognises the importance of the constitution of the self in relation to others (and is therefore always attuned to the relational qualities of disability);
• Brings together disability alongside other identities as a moment of refection that Lennard Davis4 terms as dismodernism;
• Adopts the practice of criticality in order to be critical of all kinds of disability studies (including critical disability studies);
• Keeps in mind the view that any analysis of disability should not preclude consideration of other forms of political activism.

Critical disability studies is not:

• A futile exercise that simply adds the word 'critical' to disability studies to suggest all previous examples of disability studies have not been critical;
• Just another approach to sit alongside traditional approaches like materialist social model perspectives;
• The insertion of a discursive preoccupation with culture that ignores the material realities of disablism;
• Simply the study of disability or ability for that matter;
• An academic exercise without political commitment;
• Incapable of having values and ambitions that it wants to share with the world.

(Goodley, 2016: 191-192)5

We have entered a period of scholarship and activism that we can - and should - define as critical disability studies.