Charlotte Puiseux passed away on August 9, 2026, at the age of 39. A researcher and activist for ableism and anticapitalism, she leaves behind a profoundly political body of work. With her passing, a unique voice is lost, but certainly not the struggles she helped to bring to light and amplify. --- Afflicted with a rare form of myopathy, she experienced from childhood the ableism of our society, which seeks to "correct" bodies deemed deviant and exclude those who cannot be. Throughout her life, she sought to politicize this experience of oppression, combining theory with grassroots activism.
Her book, *Of Flesh and Iron: Living and Fighting in an Ableist Society*, published in 2022, is a prime example. Drawing on both her philosophical research and her life experiences, this book, one of the first in French, theorizes and denounces the ableist system of oppression, thus making a significant contribution to making disability studies[1]accessible to Francophone activist circles.
Faced with prejudice related to her status as a disabled mother, she became involved in the Handiparentalité association and spoke out publicly for the reproductive rights of crip[2]and queer women. When the Departmental Center for Disabled Persons (MDPH) refused to renew the financial assistance necessary for her independent living, she took action. With Les Dévalideuses, a disabled feminist collective in which she had been active for several years, she conducted an investigation into the violence perpetrated by the MDPH. This investigation, supported and disseminated by Mediapart in the spring of 2025, provides unprecedented documentation of the institutional violence suffered by disabled people in France[3].
Deeply rooted in intersectionality, her work falls within the field of crip studies, which highlight the links between the oppressions experienced by LGBTQ+ people and people with disabilities. She notably conceptualizes the notion of ableism, a standard of good health, which is imposed and subordinates those who do not meet it, in the same way that heteronormativity imposes the heterosexual model as hegemonic.
A staunch anti-capitalist, she denounces the links between ableism and productivism, which excludes people who cannot contribute to the enrichment of the capitalist class. One of her last battles was opposing the "assisted dying" bill, a product of a society that does not consider an unproductive life desirable. In August 2025, she published *Rather Live* with Chiara Kahn. Understanding ableism and promoting crip culture, in response to the exclamation "I'd rather die than be disabled," which she repeatedly encounters.
While she wanted to live, Charlotte Puiseux died on August 9, 2026, during an unprecedented heat wave in France that claimed thousands of lives, the majority of whom were elderly and disabled[4]. Although her death was not directly linked to the heat wave, it nonetheless serves as a reminder of how climate change, caused by the deadly capitalism she fought against, disproportionately affects the most vulnerable, exploited, and oppressed people.
Julie (UCL Fougères)
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[1]Disability studies is a field of research that emerged in the 1970s and examines the social, cultural, and political dimensions of disability.
[2]Crip comes from the English word "cripple" (crippled, lame), a reversal of the stigma, mirroring the reappropriation of the word "queer" within LGBTQ+ communities. Crip studies draw on disability studies and queer theory within an intersectional approach.
[3]"Ending the violence of the MDPHs," Les Dévalideuses, May 26, 2025.
[4]"Heatwave: 7,300 'excess deaths' were recorded this summer in France during successive periods of intense heat," Le Monde, August 19, 2026.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Hommage-a-Charlotte-Puiseux-vivre-et-lutter
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