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Crip theory: Cultural signs of queerness and disability

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Crip Theory attends to the contemporary cultures of disability and queerness that are coming out all over. Both disability studies and queer theory are centrally concerned with how bodies, pleasures, and identities are represented as "normal" or as abject, but Crip Theory is the first book to analyze thoroughly the ways in which these interdisciplinary fields inform each other. Drawing on feminist theory, African American and Latino/a cultural theories, composition studies, film and television studies, and theories of globalization and counter-globalization, Robert McRuer articulates the central concerns of crip theory and considers how such a critical perspective might impact cultural and historical inquiry in the humanities. Crip Theory puts forward readings of the Sharon Kowalski story, the performance art of Bob Flanagan, and the journals of Gary Fisher, as well as critiques of the domesticated queerness and disability marketed by the Millennium March, or Bravo TV's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. McRuer examines how dominant and marginal bodily and sexual identities are composed, and considers the vibrant ways that disability and queerness unsettle and re-write those identities in order to insist that another world is possible.

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... Produzida no diálogo entre a teoria queer e os Estudos da deficiência, a teoria crip busca articular múltiplas diferenças a partir da problematização da "capacidade corporal compulsória" como um sistema que produz a deficiência, e que está entrelaçado com o sistema de heterossexualidade compulsória (McRuer, 2006). A obrigatoriedade se produz por meio da introdução da normalidade no sistema, de modo que a capacidade corporal e a heterossexualidade compulsórias revelam-se como formações disciplinares que, ao naturalizarem aquilo que produzem, ocultam suas origens. ...
... Trata-se, então, de problematizar normas majoritárias a partir de identidades minoritárias e de situar a abjeção reservada às pessoas com deficiência como reveladora da corponormatividade inerente a uma estrutura social onde não há lugar para a diversidade corporal (Magnabosco & Souza, 2019;McRuer, 2006 ). De acordo com Mello (2019, p. 133), o compromisso aleijado está no desenvolvimento de: uma analítica da normalização dos corpos, a partir da crítica aos sistemas de opressão marcados pelo patriarcado, pela heterossexualidade compulsória (Rich, 2010) e pela capacidade compulsória (Mcruer, 2006) que não questiona a naturalização e hierarquização das capacidades corporais humanas nos discursos, saberes e práticas sociais. ...
... Trata-se, então, de problematizar normas majoritárias a partir de identidades minoritárias e de situar a abjeção reservada às pessoas com deficiência como reveladora da corponormatividade inerente a uma estrutura social onde não há lugar para a diversidade corporal (Magnabosco & Souza, 2019;McRuer, 2006 ). De acordo com Mello (2019, p. 133), o compromisso aleijado está no desenvolvimento de: uma analítica da normalização dos corpos, a partir da crítica aos sistemas de opressão marcados pelo patriarcado, pela heterossexualidade compulsória (Rich, 2010) e pela capacidade compulsória (Mcruer, 2006) que não questiona a naturalização e hierarquização das capacidades corporais humanas nos discursos, saberes e práticas sociais. (Mello, 2018) É interessante notar como a problematização da normatividade já aparecia em trabalhos de Lígia Amaral, ainda que sem recorrer explicitamente às categorias de análise aqui apresentadas. ...
... Beyond models of disability there are many theories that have served to challenge biomedical conceptions of disability. For instance, whereas the biomedical model of disability has long positioned disability as an abnormality that resides internal to an individual, hinders one's ability to function in society, and thus requires fixing (Shakespeare, 2014), Crip theory draws upon cultural, queer, and disability studies to challenge the status quo of compulsory able-bodiedness, and able-mindedness (McRuer, 2006). ...
... First coined by Rosemarie Garland- , normate describes the array of "deviant others" whose bodyminds outline and provide the boundaries for subject positions; it is a term that "designates the social figure through which people can represent themselves as definitive human beings" and is "a very narrowly defined profile that describes only a minority of actual people" (Garland- Thomson, 2017, p. 8). Further, the normate position Crip theory offers infinite ways to consider how bodyminds falling outside of the normate have been marginalized and/or rendered (in)visible across periods of history through dominant discourses such as "pathological" or "deviant" (McRuer, 2006;see also McRuer & Cassabaum, 2021). Critically, in addition to identifying the status quo of societal preferences for heteronormative, compulsory able-bodiedness, and ablemindedness, Crip theory invites a politics of wonder (Titchkoysky, 2011, Ch. 6). ...
... Staying in conversation with history, for instance, has allowed disabled people to reclaim the pejorative term cripple (Sandahl, 2003). Crip Theory is also interwoven and committed to the histories and activism of political efforts, specifically the Disability Rights Movement (McRuer, 2006;McRuer & Cassabaum, 2021). Importantly, the roots of the Disability Justice movement align with Crip theory's commitment to respond to ableism with a demand for justice. ...
... This paper applies crip theory (McRuer, 2006(McRuer, , 2018 as well as other key conceptual tools from disabled childhood studies (Runswick-Cole et al., 2018) and disability studies in education (Cousik & Maconochie, 2017) as a tactic intended to question and resist the story of overcoming as it manifests itself within the discourses and practices of self-regulation in early learning classrooms. This paper offers a brief overview of the range of self-regulation strategies enacted within educational settings in Ontario, Canada, that purport to support young children in overcoming themselves on their way to normalcy. ...
... In response to this special issue's prompt to investigate how disabled children's activism, resistance, and presence challenge and contribute to understanding children's realities, we seek to apply crip theory (McRuer, 2006(McRuer, , 2018 as well as other key conceptual tools from disabled childhood studies (Runswick-Cole et al., 2018) and disability studies in education (Cousik & Maconochie, 2017) to crip and disrupt the story of overcoming as it manifests itself in the discourses and practices of self-regulation in early learning classrooms. We consider the hegemonic role of educational and developmental psychology in shaping the kinds of policies and practices that reinforce selfregulation as an overcoming narrative. ...
... Crip theory (McRuer, 2006) and cripistemologies (Johnson & McRuer, 2014) both provoke and invite those of us who are situated within the hegemonic policies and practices of self-regulation in ECEC and K-12 schooling to question the logics of overcoming as a strategy to make it back to as close to normal as possible. One of the aims of crip theory and other critical engagements within the fields of disability studies (Titchkosky & DeWelles, 2020) and disabled children's childhood studies (Curran & Runswick-Cole, 2014) is to refuse and disrupt the single story (Adichie, 2009) of supposed efficient progress toward being a productive subject within this current iteration of neoliberal capitalist western colonialism. ...
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This paper applies crip theory (McRuer, 2006, 2018) as well as other key conceptual tools from disabled childhood studies (Runswick-Cole et al., 2018) and disability studies in education (Cousik & Maconochie, 2017) as a tactic intended to question and resist the story of overcoming as it manifests itself within the discourses and practices of self-regulation in early learning classrooms. This paper offers a brief overview of the range of self-regulation strategies enacted within educational settings in Ontario, Canada, that purport to support young children in overcoming themselves on their way to normalcy. This paper also engages in crip theory as a strategy to both question and disrupt the taken for granted assumption that self-regulation entails a return towards or a sustaining of the efficient and productive neoliberal individual in school systems. Finally, this paper considers how we might not only invite but embrace the disruptions that occur when embodied differences refuse to be overcome by demands to self-regulate. Ultimately, a key aim of this paper is to resist how discourses and practices of self-regulation in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) establish the overcoming narrative as a means to cure, fix or exclude embodied differences while contemplating the vibrant possibilities embedded within learning with and from disabled childhoods.
... Stattdessen thematisieren sie schulisch-unterrichtliche Fähigkeitserwartungen, die als Arbeitsverhalten, soziale Konventionen, Umgang mit fremden und eigenen Gefühlen, Flexibilität, Kommunikation/Interaktion und Selbstständigkeit codiert wurden. Aufgerufene Fähigkeitserwartungen an das Arbeitstempo der Schüler*innen, an kooperatives Arbeiten oder soziale Konventionen sind körperlich konnotiert und weisen Orientierungen an einer "compulsory able-bodiedness" (McRuer, 2006;Kafer, 2003) 2 bzw. einer impliziten (Schein-)Normalität auf, indem das körperlich (und geistig) leistungsfähige Subjekt zur unhinterfragten Norm erklärt wird, wie McRuer (2006) für Bildungskontexte ausführt: "[…] corporate processes seem to privilege, imagine, and produce only one kind of body on either side of the desk: on one side, the flexible body of the contingent, replaceable instructor; on the other, the flexible body of the student dutifully mastering marketable skills" (S. 148). ...
... Aufgerufene Fähigkeitserwartungen an das Arbeitstempo der Schüler*innen, an kooperatives Arbeiten oder soziale Konventionen sind körperlich konnotiert und weisen Orientierungen an einer "compulsory able-bodiedness" (McRuer, 2006;Kafer, 2003) 2 bzw. einer impliziten (Schein-)Normalität auf, indem das körperlich (und geistig) leistungsfähige Subjekt zur unhinterfragten Norm erklärt wird, wie McRuer (2006) für Bildungskontexte ausführt: "[…] corporate processes seem to privilege, imagine, and produce only one kind of body on either side of the desk: on one side, the flexible body of the contingent, replaceable instructor; on the other, the flexible body of the student dutifully mastering marketable skills" (S. 148). Neben Erwartungen der Lehrkräfte an die Flexibilität von Schüler*innen, beispielsweise bezüglich Planänderungen oder Aufgabenstellungen, kristallisieren sich Erwartungen an eine ‚Compliance' heraus. ...
... Die Erwartung an Schüler*innen, sich "kollisionsfrei" durch den Klassenraum bewegen zu können, wird hier offensichtlich enttäuscht. Darin zeigt sich die implizite Orientierung der Lehrkraft an einer "able-bodiedness" (McRuer, 2006), zu denen Schüler*innen im Kontext Schule implizit verpflichtet werden. Spezifisch für alle aufgeführten Sequenzen ist die eingelagerte Erwartung, dass Schüler*innen ihre Körperbewegungen laut Situationsdefinition der Lehrkraft kontrollieren können -ob das ein Unterdrücken des Bewegungsimpulses (nicht hüpfen, aufstehen oder schreien) oder ein gezieltes Steuern desselben ist ("normal" gehen, sich koordiniert durch den Raum bewegen). ...
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Im Artikel erkunden wir auf Grundlage empirischen Materials, wie sich durch Fähigkeits-, Lern- und Verhaltenserwartungen von Lehrpersonen Körperentwürfe des ‚Autistischen‘ relational formen. Zur Diskussion der Ergebnisse werden Theorieangebote der Critical (und Queer) Disability Studies und Critical Autism Studies herangezogen und unter Rekurs auf ‚Neue Materialismen‘ die Frage nach einer veränderten Lesart nicht-normativer Körper aufgeworfen. Based on empirical research, the article examines how teacher expectations of abilities and (learning) behavior relationally form bodily images of ‘autism’. The empirical findings are discussed from the perspectives of Critical (and Queer) Disability Studies and Critical Autism Studies. Drawing on theories of New Materialism, we unfold a different understanding of non-normative bodily constitutions.
... Furthermore, by foregrounding our VR pedagogy with queer epistemologies, we seek to teach students the dual risk of appropriating and/or essentializing political identities. As Alison Kafer and Robert McRuer note, the social model of disabilityespecially when it is characterized as an opposing model to the medical and more individualized model of disability -risks relativizing what it means to be disabled to such a degree that it could solicit some non-disabled people to appropriate the hardwon political identities of disabled people (McRuer, 2006;Kafer, 2013). Similarly, Ueno reports early criticisms she received concerning the danger of tōjisha inflationa situation where everybody claims to be a person with equally pressing firsthand accounts -which could gloss over the existing inequity that disproportionally affects disabled communities (Ueno, 2011). ...
... Drawing from a queer studies scholar Shane Phelan's work on the process of "(be)coming out" (Phelan, 1993), Ueno further explains tōjisha in the context of disability justice. According to Ueno, tōjisha is not about who a person is but about whom they become as they reject what McRuer calls "compulsory ablebodiedness", reclaim disability status, and assert their rights to self-determination (McRuer, 2006;Ueno, 2011;Nakanishi, 2014). Unfortunately, Ueno's English translation of tōjisha shuken ("individual autonomy") has long suppressed -however inadvertently -its explicitly queer origin. ...
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Japan currently enjoys a “VR boom”, a proliferation of commercial virtual reality (VR) programs. As it pertains to disability studies, however, we observe troubling ableist and assimilatory tendencies such as a VR tool for implicit bias training for medical practitioners that promises “simulated experiences” of disabled people, or a VR vocational coaching tool designed to teach disabled people social scripts in professional settings. This article cautions against such stifling and one-dimensional approaches to disability and instead offers more expansive and transformative VR usage based on the creative and pedagogical practices the authors engage with: 1) a VR co-creation approach which revolves around disabled content creators and developers who forge disability-centered community spaces, and 2) a VR intersectional education approach which invites students – regardless of their disability status – to identify their interrelated struggles in an ableist, cisheteronormative, and patriarchal society, realizing their political responsibility for nurturing inclusivity with disabled community members.
... Constituyendo un grupo heterogéneo de abordajes y posicionamientos, partiendo del marco común de las Ciencias Sociales y Humanas, estos estudios sociales, críticos y poscoloniales/decoloniales de América Latina, cuestionan miradas individualistas, asimilacionistas y patologizantes sobre eso que ha sido llamado discapacidad (Rojas, Schewe y Yarza de los Ríos, 2020). En este conjunto heterogéneo conviven posturas muy diversas en las que se recuperan críticamente los aportes del modelo social, los abordajes interseccionales, situados y socio-históricos, los feminismos, la teoría crip (McRuer, 2006) o el pensamiento latinoamericano (Ferrante, 2021). Es decir, que se teje un enjambre teórico que -si bien no está exento de contradicciones y tensiones-habilita un espacio de enunciación desde el constructo geopolítico denominado como lo 'latinoamericano' desde el cual compartir una serie de premisas y que apuesta por construir alianzas con esas zonas que han sido desplazadas hacia zonas periféricas y vulnerables (Tiseyra, 2020). ...
... Dos trabajos establecen diálogos con la teoría crip (McRuer, 2006), surgida en el mundo anglosajón a principios del siglo XXI y que ha adquirido gran repercusión en América Latina en los últimos años. Desde la misma se promueve un modelo cultural que se aleja tanto del modelo médico patologizante como también del social, pues lo comprende como reformista. ...
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El objetivo de este artículo es realizar un estado del arte latinoamericano sobre el tema maternidad y discapacidad. Para ello, efectuamos un rastreo de la literatura latinoamericana en español y en portugués en las bases Google Académico, Redalyc y Scielo. A partir del análisis de contenido de una muestra compuesta por 27 artículos de revistas, tras realizar una caracterización general del campo por país y año de producción, sistematizamos tres tópicos: ¿por qué la maternidad de las mujeres con discapacidad es planteada como un problema social y de investigación desde el prisma latinoamericano?; ¿qué perspectivas de la discapacidad y de la maternidad se sostienen?; ¿qué aportes y hallazgos ofrecen al campo? Finalmente, realizamos un balance de estas contribuciones, poniéndolas en diálogo con producciones de otros espacios sociales y los desafíos epistemológicos y políticos que refractan. Palabras clave: maternidad; mujeres con discapacidad; derechos sexuales y reproductivos; América Latina; estudios sociales en discapacidad; estudios críticos en discapacidad latinoamericanos.
... Different disciplines often conceptualize experiences of marginalization differently. For instance, the concept of misfits is often used in critical disability studies (Garland-Thompson, 2011), whereas the outsider within is often used to capture experiences of race (Wilder et al., 2013), queering the rules in the context of LGBTQ+ experiences (McRuer, 2006;Watson, 2020), and cultural outsiders in the context of those from working-class or impoverished backgrounds (Waterfield et al., 2019). The concept of misfitting highlights the incongruity between certain groups and environments and social spaces that were not built to support their needs (Garland-Thompson, 2011). ...
... "Crip" is a reclaimed term in critical disability studies, attributed to RobertMcRuer (2006), suggesting a position against the compulsory able-bodiedness of normative life. ...
Article
Academics have historically been members of socially dominant groups—white, cisgender, heterosexual men, from middle- to upper-classes, who identify as able-bodied and able-minded. Members of other groups are often disadvantaged. In two larger studies, semi-structured interviews were conducted with professionals from marginalized groups. Here we explore the narratives of 16 participants who explicitly discussed their experiences in faculty positions within the health and social service professions. The expected academic roles of teacher, researcher, and colleague/administrator did not neatly fit for participants, clashing with the expectations they faced by virtue of their marginalized identities. Within the health and social service professions, the norms and expectations of the academy required marginalized faculty to make sacrifices of their time and sense of self to meet job demands. The effects of these role conflicts are pervasive, affecting many areas of academic work and beyond.
... This dual heritage equips crip studies with a unique vantage point from which to scrutinize and challenge established norms, particularly those propagated by ableism and heteronormativity. Scholars such as Robert (10), in his seminal work Crip Theory, have played a pivotal role in shaping this interdisciplinary field. McRuer's exploration of the intersections between disability and queer theory has catalyzed an intellectual movement that invites scholars and activists alike to navigate the complex terrain of embodied experiences and identities. ...
... Within this brief but penetrating article, I brought (11) short story, "Harrison Bergeron," into such a conversation alongside crip studies in order to grapple with two primary invocations regarding assistive technologies (13,14,10). First, I wanted to demonstrate and illustrate that assistive technologies not only operate on a functional level of accommodation but also define the limits and boundaries of the human/nonhuman, thereby instituting and conditioning processes and rationales of/for normativization on behalf of the medical and the institutional. ...
Article
This article delves into Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" to examine the profound implications of assistive technologies within the context of normativity. While Vonnegut's narrative unfolds in a dystopian future where "desistive devices" are used to enforce equality, Vonnegut's insights subtly underscore the intricate facets of othered-being that challenge the normativity of assistive technologies. Drawing from the insights of crip studies, this examination argues that assistive technologies often perpetuate and idealize normative bodymind ideals, presenting a consistent framing of the normative human. Through a discourse analysis, this study demonstrates how assistive technologies, despite their variability in individual experiences, embody a normative rationality of human, mindbody existence. These technologies, rather than accommodating diversity, tend to impose a particular standard of "normalcy." In conclusion, the analysis proposes a departure from this normative trajectory. It advocates for a future direction in assistive technologies that fosters and embraces "aberrant-being." By challenging established norms and persistently questioning the constructs of normativity, assistive technologies can evolve to engage with aberrant-being and enliven cripped-embodiment. This exploration paves the way for a more inclusive and diverse future in assistive technology, where human differences are cherished rather than subdued.
... To account for this deficiency, I suggest art educators challenge the normative assumption that users are students without disabilities, and strive to understand identities, experiences, and access needs of students with disabilities in online learning spaces through the concept of cripping and crip technoscience. As the shortened form of the pejorative term cripple, "crip" is a reclaimed term referring to people with disabilities, used to resist "compulsory able-bodiedness" of contemporary society (McRuer, 2006, p. 1). 9 Critical disability studies scholar Robert McRuer (2006) uses this term in building crip theory, which highlights the value of disabled people's ways of knowing and embodied experiences as social knowledge (Kafai, 2021;McRuer & Johnson, 2014). By transforming "crip" from crip theory into an active verb, I propose that cripping online space designs challenges ableist assumptions within accessible designs, which perceive disability merely as an "imposition" or "interference" to the "accepted norm and standards of the built environment" (Williamson, 2019, p. 190). ...
... Furthermore, I suggest connecting the act of cripping to the concept of crip technoscience, a term coined by Amie Hamraie and Kelly Fritsch 9 "Compulsory able-bodiedness" refers to the social and cultural belief that everyone should be able-bodied, as well as the idea that disability is a personal tragedy or defect rather than a socially-constructed category. McRuer (2006) argues that compulsory able-bodiedness includes an assumed hierarchical relationship between able-bodied and disabled people, justifying the exclusion and marginalization of people with disabilities. ...
Article
Despite the growth of remote learning, many online art education space designs still overlook the learning experiences of students with disabilities, merely offering baseline assistive technologies. Drawing upon crip technoscience from critical access studies, this article defines current online learning spaces as virtually-built environments embedded with compliance-centered logics and ableist assumptions about access. I suggest that art educators challenge such preconceptions by engaging students in cripping, which entails (1) disrupting ableist designs and (2) crafting alternative designs for online learning spaces. Introducing projects by artists Elisa Giardina Papa, Shannon Finnegan, and Bojana Coklyat as exemplary practices of such disruption and reconstruction, I emphasize collaborative cripping as an anti-ableist practice informed by crip technoscience. This practice empowers students to counter the pervasive assimilation of people with disabilities into ableist online learning environments. In its conclusion, this article advocates for constructing collective access in online learning spaces toward disability justice.
... In equating human worth and "normality" with productivity and market contribution, capitalism -and the extractivist logic that underpins it -has established asymmetric dependencies (Oliver & Barnes, 2012), reducing life "into objects for the use of others" (Klein, 2015, 169) and marking out signs of difference that may "impede" productivity (McRuer, 2006). Within disability studies, the original social model of disability was explicitly anti-capitalist in its conception and development (Oliver, 1996). ...
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Health. Disability. Vulnerability. These words are often used when discussing the risks of climate disruption. These discussions warn of the potential for climate impacts to “undermine 50 years of gains in public health” (as stated by the Lancet Countdown on Climate Change). Increasingly, such discussions also acknowledge climate injustice, examining who will benefit or lose out from climate change, how and why. The embodied vulnerability of disabled people is often assumed within such discussions, with less consideration of the social, economic or political conditions that create this vulnerability. By bringing disability justice and disability studies into correspondence with care, environmental and climate justice scholarship, this reflective paper challenges the master narratives that blur differentiated experiences of disability and climate impacts into a single story of inevitable vulnerability. Recognising disabled people as knowers, makers and agents of change, it calls for transformative climate action, underpinned by values of solidarity, mutuality and care.
... CDS recognises the risk that de-pathologisation could result in an unwanted reduction of health care and rights. It was forged by scholars working from queer (McRuer, 2006), trans (Krieg, 2013), and Black feminist perspectives, that is, groups who have systematically been denied healthcare. Meekosha (2011, p. 670) and others working in CDS critique the disability research that 'ignores the lived experience of disabled people in much of the global South'. ...
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Phonetic data are used in several ways outside of the core field of phonetics. This paper offers the perspective of one such field, sociophonetics, towards another, the study of acoustic cues to clinical depression. While sociophonetics is interested in how, when, and why phonetic variables cue information about the world, the study of acoustic cues to depression is focused on how phonetic variables can be used by medical professionals as tools to diagnosis. The latter is only interested in identifying phonetic cues to depression, while the former is interested in how phonetic variation cues anything at all. While the two fields fundamentally differ with respect to ontology, epistemology, and methodology, I argue that there are, nonetheless, possible avenues for future engagement, collaboration, and investigation. Ultimately, both fields need to engage with Crip Linguistics for any successful intervention on the relationship between speech and depression.
... And similarly, we can consider the ableist theory. We can speak, for example, of a theory that understands disability primarily as a disadvantage, a deficit, a limitation, and fails to grasp it as enriching, enabling, inspiring (McRuer, 2006;Kafer, 2013). Ableist language, ableist discourse, ableist analogies or ableist metaphors reduce complexity, stifle nuance, and prevent understanding of the phenomenon (May & Ferri, 2005). ...
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The paper intervenes in current discussions within post-phenomenological geography. It analyzes the movement of people with visual impairments in order to develop an approach to post-phenomenology that emphasizes the in-betweenness of bodies in motion. Our perspective differs from phenomenological (and humanistic) geographies and from post-phenomenological geographies that are rooted in object-oriented ontology. They both rely on the differentiation between space and place, accept pointillism, treat places as points in space, time as exclusively chronological, and bodies as beings, not becomings. We analyze data from interviews with people with visual impairments. We first consider their movement through the perspective of humanistic (particularly phenomenological) geography. After acknowledging the limits of this approach, we turn to our actualized conception of post-phenomenological geography, which draws on Deleuze’s concepts of movement, path, refrain, and involuntary memory. With this conceptual repertoire, we go beyond the space-place dichotomy and highlight the in-betweenness and virtuality of movement. We explore difference-producing repetitions, which are constituted through refraining into paths. Our approach conceptualizing movement as “refraining into paths” is instrumental to studying the movement of people with visual impairment: It helps to dispute ableism, and it enriches the current discussion about post-phenomenological geography in its insistence on relations and becoming.
... Here, I am inspired by the work done in disability studies under the labels of the "social model of disability"-for which disability doesn't lie within the individual's own impairments but within the environment itself, or rather the interface between the organism and its social and material environment (Oliver, 1990)-, and "queercrip" theorising-which focuses on the centrality of failure to satisfy compulsory able-bodiedness (Halberstam, 2011;Kafer, 2013;McRuer, 2006). Again, this is not to say that disharmonic Umwelten, disability, and trauma should be presented as a normative aim, but to reclaim a space of thinkability, if not also of liveability and desirability, for these experiences and their centrality in animal ontology, along with disability studies perspectives. ...
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This paper explores the relationship between the problem of dis/harmony in Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory and the inclusion of experiences of disability, disease, or trauma, in said theory. It starts with discussions of dis/harmony and dis/ability in Uexküllian studies, from Uexüll’s very own work on Umwelt theory to the contemporary commentaries and studies of said theory. It first articulates how Uexküll’s focus on harmony provided poor conditions to account for dis/ability, while commenting on points where Uexküll offered direct engagement with or openness to situations of dis/harmony and dis/ability. It then forays into post-Uexküllian research on dis/ease and pathology and suggests that the work of Weizsäcker, Kurt Goldstein and Georges Canguilhem might constitute a useful step aside to allow Umwelt theory better to account for these situations. From then on, the article shows how contemporary investigations into the mutability of Umwelten in the context of the ecological crisis allows for the development of a phenomenology of Umwelt crises and trauma. Finally, the ethological dimension of Umwelt theory is taken up as a way to formulate a philosophy of intra-specific ethological diversity and ethological divergence, and the example of autism is read into the theoretical framework of Umwelt thinking.
... Derived from the interstices of critical disability studies, feminist analysis, and queer theory, crip theory rejects curative and deficit conceptualizations of disability (Kafer, 2013). Instead, it presents disability as a whole, political-cultural identity always in flux and contextualized by economic, political, and cultural ideologies (McRuer, 2006). Following Fortunati and Edwards's call (2021) for work that disrupts disabled/nondisabled binaries (p. ...
Article
The authors review theoretical trends in HMC research, as well as recent critical interventions in the HMC journal that usefully reshape and expand our research terrain. Conventional research such as positivist and quantified approaches are identified as restraining research questions and delimiting understandings of concepts including subjects, agency and interactivity. Feminist cybernetic, critical race, postcolonial and crip theoretical approaches are offered, examining how they fill research gaps in HMC, expanding content areas explored, and addressing diverse intersectional pressures, situated, and time/space dynamics that impact human machine interaction. The authors suggest these shifts are essential to expanding HMC research to address diverse populations, regional realities around the globe, and engage in vibrant scholarly debates occurring outside HMC. They contend these shifts will outfit HMC to weigh in on important issues of justice, equity, and access that arise with emerging technologies, climate change, and globalization dynamics.
... Det cripistemologiska perspektivet är en del av ett skifte som pågått sedan mitten av 2000talet inom den internationella funktionshinderforskningen. Forskningen har gått från ett fokus på den funktionshindrade kroppen till att även studera hur den normala och funktionsfullkomliga kroppen konstrueras och upprätthålls (Campbell, 2009;McRuer, 2006). 3 Ableismen är central i denna konstruktion. ...
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Samtidigt som antidemokratiska krafter växer i Europa har frågan om breddad rekrytering och mångfald återigen aktualiserats. I sin utvärdering av lärosätenas arbete med breddad rekrytering från 2022 konstaterar Universitetskanslersämbetet att den sociala snedrekryteringen består. Snedrekryteringen har negativa effekter på såväl demokratisk samhällsutveckling som social rättvisa. Dryga 20 år efter att uppdraget att främja breddad rekrytering skrevs in i högskolelagen finns det alltså skäl att fundera över varför så lite har hänt. Essän argumenterar för att blicken bör vändas från underrepresenterade grupper mot exkluderande normer och sociala strukturer inom universiteten. Syftet är att diskutera hur universitetslärare kan motverka de mekanismer som gör att vissa studenter känner sig hemma i föreläsningssalar och seminarierum medan andra inte gör det. Essän har ett intersektionellt perspektiv, men fokus läggs särskilt på de normer och strukturer som tar utgångspunkt i föreställningen om den normala kroppen, vad som benämns ableism. Essän diskuterar metoder för att synliggöra lärarnas och studenternas situering, pedagogiska verktyg för att låta olika erfarenheter komma till tals, betydelsen av val av perspektiv och kurslitteratur liksom tillgänglig undervisning. När skillnader synliggörs utan att ordnas hierarkiskt blir de skilda erfarenheterna en resurs för ett ömsesidigt lärande om varandra och det kritiska tänkandet främjas. ENGLISH ABSTRACT Cripping higher education. Difference and experience in university classrooms At the same time as anti-democratic forces are growing in Europe, the issues of broader recruitment and diversity in higher education have once again come to the fore. In its 2022 evaluation of universities’ work towards broader recruitment, the Swedish Higher Education Authority notes that social inequality in recruitment persists. Imbalanced recruitment has negative effects on both democratic societal development and social justice. More than 20 years after the task of promoting broader recruitment was written into the Higher Education Act, there is reason to consider why so little has happened. This essay argues that the gaze should be turned away from underrepresented groups and fixed towards exclusionary norms and social structures within universities. The aim of the text is to discuss how university teachers can counteract mechanisms that make some students feel at home within the university while excluding others. The essay has an intersectional perspective but focuses on exclusionary norms and structures based on the notion of the normal body – namely, ableism. The essay discusses methods for visualizing teachers’ and students’ situatedness, pedagogical tools for giving voice to different experiences, the implications of choice of perspectives and course literature, and accessible teaching. Making differences visible without organizing them hierarchically does not only turn different experiences into a resource for mutual learning, but also promotes critical thinking.
... On accessibility as a societal arrangement, see, e.g., Williamson (2020). studies scholars on the ideologies of able-bodiedness/able-mindedness (Araneda & Infante, 2022;Barounis, 2009;Kafer, 2013;McRuer, 2006) implicitly interrogates ability as a strong theory about life. In the same sense, we could focus on capacity by interrogating the ideas related to it and thereby challenging its cultural power. ...
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This article puts forward two ways of understanding capacity: strong and weak theories. The strong theory of capacity self-evidently connects capacity with ideal humanity or pedestalizes it as an analytic concept, while the weak theory of capacity allows space for interpretations about life unfolding without murmurings about capacity. By considering capacity in a way that distinguishes these two theories, the article contributes to contemporary thinking in which capacity has emerged as a key concept. My perspective draws on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s ideas about strong and weak theories and is further influenced by methodological issues raised by disability studies scholars. I first recall Sedgwick’s ideas about strong theories, after which I focus on how capacity assumptions operate in Silvan Tomkins’ work, which has had an important impact on Sedgwick. I then identify two recent contributions in disability studies in the area of capacity-themed theorizing. I interrogate the ways in which these contributions share the habits of the strong theory and how they escape its problematic tendencies. Toward the end of the article, I outline how the weak theory of capacity could contribute new perspectives to the contemporary discussion.
... In his search for how we might subvert this system of compulsory normativity, Robert McRuer (2006) turns to the work of Judith Butler. "There is no guarantee that exposing the naturalized status of [the normal] will lead to its subversion," warns Butler (quoted in McRuer, 2006, p. 30). ...
... Ableism is never experienced in isolation from other forms of systemic unearned advantaging and disadvantaging (Blaser et al., 2019;Clare, 2009;Kafer, 2013;McIntosh, 2012;McRuer, 2006;Reynolds, 2022); rather, individual experiences are uniquely configured and compounded. Mingus (2011) elaborates: "Ableism plays out very differently for wheelchair users, deaf people or people who have mental, psychiatric and cognitive disabilities . . . ...
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In this article we discuss workplace contexts for post-secondary STEM faculty and staff with disabilities and provide pragmatic and immediate steps we can all take to advance equitable disability-informed policies and practices. Findings: Faculty with apparent and/or unseen disabilities experience myriad barriers in their academic workplaces, barriers that always intersect with gendered and racialized (etcetera) identities that may either amplify or diminish the experience of disability discrimination. To respond to these inequities, we blend priorities created by disability scholars and activists—combined with participant input collected during national conversations hosted over the past two years through AccessADVANCE, a project designed to increase the engagement of individuals with disabilities in academic STEM careers—to yield suggestions for individual, collaborative, and institutional approaches to furthering disability equity. Conclusions: When all colleagues work together, developing a durable and responsive praxis of disability equity in post-secondary and STEM workplaces is possible.
... When considering the intersection of disability, gender, and sexuality, individuals with disabilities are often "de-gendered and de-sexualized" (Egner, 2019, p. 125). When individuals with disabilities depart from heterosexual norms, their identities may become more contentious, which enhances their vulnerability (McRuer, 2006). Further, scholarship has shown that autistic individuals identify as a wider range of sexual orientations than their neurotypical peers (Weir et al., 2021) and that transgender This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. ...
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Objective: Researchers have demonstrated a link between autism and victimization, but less research has explored rates of sexual victimization among autistic college students. Informed by lifestyle-routine activity theory, certain features of autism may enhance vulnerability to sexual victimization and may lead autistic individuals to be targeted by potential perpetrators. Method: Using data from the American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment III, a national study of college students, the relationship between autism and rape/attempted rape, nonconsensual sexual assault, and having challenges or problems with sexual harassment was examined at the bivariate level and in three logistic regression models, accounting for potential covariates informed by lifestyle-routine activity theory. Results: Findings revealed that autism is related to an increase in the odds of experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact and sexual harassment, but it is not significantly related to rape/attempted rape. Conclusions: Autistic college students are more vulnerable to experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact and having challenges or problems with sexual harassment. Accessibility offices on college campuses could be used to screen for sexual victimization. Providing autistic students with holistic support may serve to prevent sexual victimization and alleviate its negative effects.
... People living with disabilities are constructed along the margins of the 'other' by the ubiquitous compulsory able-bodied discourse and narrative. Societies have for centuries been entertained by the idea of a body centred on compulsory able-bodiedness (McRuer, 2006), which involves the essentialist assumption that an able body is the one that is 'normal' , and what Thomson (1997) refers to as the 'normative body' . Inahara (2009, p. 47) unpacks this further and states that '[i]t implies that all human beings are represented by only one body which is able' . ...
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This chapter argues that considering able-bodiedness as ‘normal’ is a problematic social construct that has made it impossible to advance a transformative vision of disability leadership from the Global South. The African philosophy of ubuntu offers an indigenous epistemology that challenges dominant discourses of disability. John Mbiti’s (1969, p. 215) phrase, ‘I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am’ is used to summarise the African traditional philosophy of ubuntu and what it is to be human. An implication of such an ideology is that personhood and humanity are interconnected. Using two case studies of transformative disability leadership, this chapter offers a new approach to bringing about social justice for those living with disabilities in the Global South.
... In the same vein, Yoon (2022) offered "justice-inthe-doing" for disrupting white normativity. In her epilogue to a special issue on whiteness-atwork in higher education, she borrowed from crip theory (McRuer, 2006) a celebration of "the unachieved status and on-going processes" as "the something bigger we seek" (p. 447). ...
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Community and campus partners benefit from place-based community engagement to enact a commitment to racial equity and community-driven decision making. Racial equity is paramount in place-based community engagement. However, very little attention has been given to the ways whiteness in the ideological foundations of higher education shapes the work lives of professionals, faculty, and the collaborations they form to address community issues. Thus, the commitment to racial equity will be no more than words without the necessary work toward the #relationshipgoal of disrupting hegemonic whiteness as a shaping force in community-university interactions. The purpose of this case study is to foreground the paradoxes of whiteness-at-work in an informal place-based community engagement collaboration between the Center for Public Life at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa and members of the historic Greenwood community in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The case study design reflected participatory action research; data sources included semi- and unstructured interviews, field notes from participant observation, artifacts and documents, researcher journals and participant reflections. Reading this case with an eye to whiteness-at-work underscores the necessity of acknowledging the power of the university to determine the culture of the partnership and taking necessary steps to disrupt the practices which serve to devalue local communities and their ways of being, knowing, and doing to address the issues they prioritize. Doing the internal, interpersonal, and institutional work to disrupt hegemonic whiteness is the justice-in-the-doing in place-based community engagement that may garner the racial equity to which we aspire.
... 829). For example, the Gay Left in Britain have successfully fought for a less marginal position than previously experienced (Robinson, 2007), and crip theory has produced social movements which have challenged normative stereotypes about disabled men and women which have been influential in society (McRuer, 2006). This is argued in Connell & Messerschmidt's reformulation to account for a more complex gender hierarchy, showing that subordinated groups (such as gay men and women) have more agency than was previously acknowledged. ...
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Bisexual men stand at a distinct intersection of stigmatisation, and binegativity is a unique social problem distinct from homophobia. This thesis scopes the breadth of binegativity and its various forms, developing a typology and exploring plural understandings of bisexuality. Drawing on 17 semi-structured interviews with bi+ men and their partners (25 participants overall), experiences of binegativity are explored, with romantic relationships analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Despite no explicit questions about prejudice, all participants reported experiencing binegativity, often unakin to homophobia, both implicitly and explicitly, the latter as threats or acts of violence from strangers. In contrast, implicit binegativity denies bisexuality’s existence, and was displayed by close family, whose understanding of bisexuality was overshadowed by stereotypes, and participants were burdened undoing misunderstanding through education. Romantic relationships were sites of safety, positivity and growth, with identities being explored and developed, mutual understandings reached and experimentation outside of monogamous, heteronormative and patriarchal relationship structures negotiated. Some participants relayed that their partner choice was in some way shaped by heteronormative family expectations. Identities were often expressed plurally, with participants often expressing at least two sexual identity labels simultaneously, some of them contextually used over others. I conclude that bisexual+ people suffer epistemic injustices which exclude them from articulations of LGBTQ equality and same-sex marriage debates which emphasise monosexuality, sameness to heterosexuality and fixity. I suggest that education is a possible avenue away from binegativity, along with everyday articulations of bisexuality that challenge a status quo characterised by binary thinking about gender and sexuality.
... However, seeking social mobility also has negative effects on the individual and the group, especially because it emphasizes the desire to appear or actually be as nondisabled as possible (Imrie, 1997;McRuer, 2006;Watson, 2002) and places disability as a label on the out-group. ...
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Students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) represent roughly five percent of U.S. public school students aged 3-21. Current federal policy outlines guidelines for identification of SLDs, while ultimately leaving specific procedures to the determination of state and local education agencies. Research into how the method used in identification is related to the timing of diagnosis and student outcomes is inconsistent and inconclusive. This dissertation utilized data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011 to provide further understanding of these identification decisions and how they impact students with SLDs. Study 1 (“Is the use of particular methods in the identification of specific learning disabilities related to school demographics?”) examined exploratory data to establish if the use of SLD identification methods (e.g., IQ-Achievement Discrepancy [IQAD] and Response to Intervention [RTI]) was consistent across schools with varied demographics. Results of multinominal logistic regressions found that there were associations between the method used for identification and schools’ demographics, including race and ethnicity, English learner status, and socioeconomic status (SES). Similarly, results of over-time analysis including Poisson and negative binomial regressions identified relationships between prolonged RTI use and school demographics. Study 2 (“The association between the method used for disability identification decisions and the timing of diagnosis for students with specific learning disabilities”) tested associations between SLD identification methods (RTI, IQAD, Both RTI and IQAD, and Neither RTI nor IQAD) and the timing of SLD diagnosis. Results of Poisson regression analyses showed no statistically significant relationship between the method used for SLD identification and the timing of SLD diagnosis when compared to students in schools in which neither method is used. The analyses did identify trends in identification decisions that may impact timing of diagnosis, including student- (race, ethnicity, sex, SES, kindergarten achievement), and school-level (race, ethnicity, and SES percentages) factors. Study 3 (“The relationship between response to intervention use in disability identification and fifth grade academic and behavioral outcomes for students with specific learning disabilities”) employed linear regression to understand how students diagnosed with SLDs before or during elementary school perform academically and behaviorally at the end of fifth grade. Results indicated no significant association between the implementation of RTI for SLD identification and fifth-grade student outcomes for students diagnosed with SLDs. Despite this, covariates included in the analyses did highlight the need to further attend to the relationships between student demographics, student kindergarten achievement, and later academic and behavioral outcomes to better support students with disabilities in U.S. elementary schools. Overall, this dissertation highlighted the associations between school demographics and SLD identification methods. It provided answers to prior questions about the impact of SLD identification methods on students diagnosed with SLDs. Though findings for the associations between identification method and timing of diagnosis and student outcomes were not significant, significant relationships with certain student- and school-level covariates and the outcome variables (e.g., timing of identification, fifth-grade student achievement and behavior) emerged. Finally, this work raised further inquiries about how schools implement such identification methods with fidelity, and whether such processes support students with SLDs or potentially inhibit student success. Implications for research, policy, and practice are discussed throughout each study and overall implications are presented in the conclusion chapter.
... zusammentreffen, eine genuine Ästhetik, die als ästhetischer Wert angesehen werden kann. Somit wird die eigenzeitliche Betrachtungsweise der Ästhetik für das Theaterspielen erweitert und erhält eine neue Dimension in der Wahrnehmung asynchroner Zeitstrukturen.Theoretisch diskutiert wird das Agieren in differenten Zeitlichkeiten im Rahmen der Crip-Theorie 54(McRuer 2006;Kolářová & Wiedlack 2016;Puar 2017). In diesem Verständnis wird Zeit in unserer Gesellschaft mit einem neuen Ansatz betrachtet, der auch für Menschen mit Demenz von Bedeutung sein kann. ...
... In addition to a leading UD lens, this study also considers notions of crip time (Samuels, 2017). Crip, short for "cripple," is used as an identity marker for some disabled people and represents the reclamation of historically derogatory slang for people with physical disabilities (including chronic illnesses that manifest physically; McRuer, 2006McRuer, , 2018. Crip theories (including crip time) offer ways to understand how disability is situated within cultural contexts, as well as how and why some bodies are pathologized in society while others are not (Campbell, 2009). ...
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This study investigated factors that chronically ill students perceived as influencing their experiences in higher education. Twenty undergraduate students who were currently enrolled in a 4-year, private institution participated in semistructured interviews to discuss their experiences. Findings from a reflexive thematic analysis revealed three key themes: (1) some participants described numerous illness-related financial barriers to higher education; (2) multiple participants recalled challenges when accessing illness- or disability-specific resources on campus (e.g., student health and disability services); and (3) many participants recalled feelings of pressure to meet performance standards in instances where chronic illnesses made meeting those expectations difficult. Recommendations for policy, practice, and future research are discussed.
... Compulsory able-bodied/mindedness marks able-bodied/mindness as the compulsory default identity to which all must conform and all others as deviant (Campbell, 2009;Kafer, 2013;McRuer, 2006 ...
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Background. Knowledge about how disability professionals understand ableism may provide insight into the production of inequalities. The aim of this study was to examine how disability professionals understand ableism. Methods. We asked 347 disability professionals, all of whom worked with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, among other populations, to define ableism and then analyzed those definitions using content analysis. Results. The themes about how participants understood ableism were: discrimination; differential treatment; individualization; norms and othering; ableist language; microaggressions; and systems and environments. It was also not uncommon for participants to say ableist things, and express misconceptions in their definitions. This included these themes: avoiding disability; using ableist language; framing disability as in/ability; centering people without disabilities; ignoring invisible disabilities; believing only people without disabilities have bias; and believing ableism does not exist. Conclusions. Knowing disability professionals’ understandings of ableism is necessary to intervene biased attitudes and reduce ableism.
... A dialogue between queer and crip theories has been under way for 20 years (Cohen, 2015;Kim, 2017;Martino & Schormans, 2020;McRuer, 2006) with Orr (2022) bringing intersex studies into the discussion. Orr draws on Kim's (2017) argument about "curative violence" perpetrated against disabled people to explain how medical interventions (including gonadectomy) on people with variations in sex characteristics seek to 'cure' the 'problem' of variations in sex characteristics. ...
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INTRODUCTION: This article draws on understandings from reproductive justice, crip and queer theories to discuss gonadectomy for children and young people with gonadal variations. Gonadectomy is sometimes performed on people with gonadal variations without their free and informed consent. Some parents report experiencing pressure to consent to such surgery when their children are young. We understand this to be an issue of reproductive justice. METHOD: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with parents of affected children and young people (n = 13). Thematic coding was used to identify data relating to gonads, ovaries, testes and gonadectomy. The data were analysed using discursive questions drawn from a reproductive justice framework. ANALYSIS: Parents’ talk about gonads suggests a process of sense-making that can be emotionally challenging. Our analysis situates their talk within broader societal discourses of ablebodiedness and the sex binary. Parents explained their choices and decisions by centring various understandings. Some explained how gonadectomy made sense for maintaining binary sex and following medical advice. Others emphasised the child’s consent and bodily autonomy. Our analysis draws out how parents’ decisions navigate reproductive justice and injustice. CONCLUSIONS: Dominant beliefs about ablebodiedness and the sex binary appear to influence and frame decision-making about the gonads of children and young people with variations in sex characteristics. A crip, queer, and reproductive justice lens allows us to expand understandings of reproductive justice for all and potentially helps to destabilise and disrupt the sex binary. Keywords: Intersex; reproductive justice; crip studies; queer studies; intersex, gonads; gonadectomy; qualitative; variations in sex characteristics; differences in sex development; healthcare
... People from diverse backgrounds, Black, Indigenous, and People, notably Women of Color, have brought attention to whose identity and lived experience is included or excluded in political struggles and in academic knowledge production alike (hooks, 1981;Hill Collins, 1990;Combahee River Collective, 2001;Green, 2007). Furthermore, the lack of recognizing other social categories, such as class (Acker, 2006) or disability (McRuer, 2006;Jenks, 2019), in relation to gender has been brought forward by various thinkers as well as the critique on the binary, heteronormative concept of gender itself (Stryker & Blackston, 2022;Muñoz, 1999 This complicated history, the ambivalent legacy of the Enlightenment for liberation movements, is important to keep in mind when we speak about Digital Humanism today. In the following, the tension between humanism and feminism is made productive; we will explore how feminist theory and gender research can enrich debates on digital humanism. ...
Chapter
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In recent years, digital technology has been discussed both in its potential to promote or to demote gender equity. This field of tension, between empowerment and threat of amplifying inequalities, is explored in this contribution. Moreover, this chapter views digital humanism through the lens of intersectional gender research. After discussing the historic relation between gender and humanism, concepts and terminology of gender research and feminist theory are explained in more detail. Following this, the interaction of gender and technology is illustrated through examples. Finally, the lessons learned part contains suggestions and calls for action important for a more inclusive and equitable digital transformation.
... We intentionally take up identity-first language as an alternative to person-first language following disability justice scholarsactivists who encourage identity-first articulations (i.e. disabled person) as an expression of pride in disability identity (Kafer, 2013) and of resistance to normativity (McRuer, 2006). We honour the rich activism that has worked to reclaim language (e.g. ...
... Navigating the emotional toll of ableism can require a lot of emotional effort, which Wechuli (2022) calls "feeling strategies." She explores two known strategies within disability studies: cripping (McRuer and Bérubé, 2006) and reclaiming (Watermeyer, 2009). Cripping has its roots in disability pride (Corbett, 1994), which offers a powerful alternative to the narrative of disability as tragedy, helping to dispel feelings of guilt and shame. ...
Chapter
Disabled youth are often overlooked in our society. It is important to acknowledge the existence of this group, both as part of general research on adolescence and as a marginalized group that can be theorized in itself. In this article, we describe ableism and its effects on young disabled people. Our research in the field of critical disability studies shows that ableism is a controlling factor in the daily lives of disabled youth. Disability labor carried out by these youth is substantial when dealing with ableism and must be acknowledged as such. If researchers in the field of adolescence familiarize themselves with ableism and its influence on the life of disabled youth, there is more hope of challenging ableism, promoting a more inclusive community and social justice.
... However, a specific characteristic of ableist orders is their fluid and permeable hierarchy, which creates certain compulsions and affects. Indeed, ableist orders create what has been termed as compulsory able-bodiedness (McRuer, 2006): the imperative to become recognizable as "able" in order to prevent positioning as disabled, and the interwoven practices of exclusion and de-privileging that come with it. Thus, ableist orders create fantasies of the "able" subject, a signifier filled with mandatory or rather "existential abilities" (Wolbring, 2008). ...
... However, a specific characteristic of ableist orders is their fluid and permeable hierarchy, which creates certain compulsions and affects. Indeed, ableist orders create what has been termed as compulsory able-bodiedness (McRuer, 2006): the imperative to become recognizable as "able" in order to prevent positioning as disabled, and the interwoven practices of exclusion and de-privileging that come with it. Thus, ableist orders create fantasies of the "able" subject, a signifier filled with mandatory or rather "existential abilities" (Wolbring, 2008). ...
Chapter
This chapter is located at the intersection of disability studies in education and policy analysis. In the following, we combine space theory with an ableism-critical perspective. In doing so, we aim to contribute to the goals of the edited volume at hand, exploring the benefits of such a theoretical framework for analyzing educational processes of inclusion and exclusion. Hence, we employ this perspective for what has been termed a “small-scale policy analysis” (Thomson et al., 2010). In this endeavor, we present an ethnographic case study analyzing the ability space regime of a so-called “integration class” at a new middle school in Vienna, asking if and how the identified spatial practices relate to the mentioned educational aims of the NMS policy. As we will show, the ostensibly “inclusive” teaching, taking place under the “surface” of a new middle school, is permeated by spatialized, ability-based hierarchies, illuminating an untouched, persistent ableist grammar of schooling. In the following, we begin by outlining our theoretical perspective, which draws on concepts of sociological spatial research and dis/ability studies. We then present our empirical findings, before discussing main results in the last section of the chapter.
... 183) due to shallow frameworks that serve to silence dissent or limit inclusion to those who do not question dominating structures of power. Our work brings together this scholarship with perspectives aligned with crip theory (McRuer, 2006;Schalk, 2018) and disability justice (Mingus, 2011;Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018;Sins Invalid, 2015). This scholarly and activist thinking draws our attention to the limited gains that can come from simply including those who have previously been excluded into oppressive systems, without working for fundamental changes to those systems. ...
... We utilise crip time theory, in contrast to the normative, linear, and quantifiable time often upheld by the university (refer to Dollinger on the projectification of the university, 2020). Crip is deployed by McRuer (2006) to describe non-normative understandings of disabled identities, practices and positions, including orientation towards time. Although historically a term used derogatorily as a slur, crip is used by the authors as a term of disability pride, reclaimed by disabled communities (Kotzer, 2021). ...
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As interest in disability employment increases across the world following the COVID-19 pandemic, understanding the employability of disabled graduates becomes an imperative for governments, universities and employers alike. This article investigates employability through the lens of the lived experience of disabled graduates, with one author (Alexandra) serving as a case study. Alexandra’s experience in higher education has been defined by living in crip time, a unique disabled experience of time as non-linear. Alexandra’s story describes how surviving within institutions which operate on normative understandings of time as linear, chronological, and inextricably tied to productivity has caused harm to disabled students. Disabled students are made to feel as though they are ‘falling behind time,’ ‘wasting time,’ and ‘losing time,’ resulting in a struggle to ‘catch up time,’ which impacts upon their wellbeing, confidence, and their sense of self. This struggle disadvantages disabled students from spending time building their ‘employability skills’ throughout their degree. As disabled students complete their studies and seek graduate employment, they come into further contact with industry who further compound harm through placement experiences and the graduate hiring process by not accommodating for crip time. This case study poses conventional mentoring programmes as a site in which disabled students such as Alexandra face barriers to engagement. We argue for a co-designed model of accessible, non-hierarchical peer mentoring, where crip time is accommodated and supported. Such accessible mentoring may serve as an effective intervention and an opportunity for disabled students to develop essential employability skills.
... The intersection of disability and sexualities is similarly an important focus for critical scholars of sexualities (see Hunt et al. 2021;McRuer 2006;Shuttleworth 2007;Shuttleworth and Mona 2021). The dominance of the medical model of disability has meant that "the diverse sexual and reproductive health needs of disabled people" have often been ignored within mainstream public health research and practice. ...
... However, a specific characteristic of ableist orders is their fluid and permeable hierarchy, which creates certain compulsions and affects. Indeed, ableist orders create what has been termed as compulsory able-bodiedness (McRuer, 2006): the imperative to become recognizable as "able" in order to prevent positioning as disabled, and the interwoven practices of exclusion and de-privileging that come with it. Thus, ableist orders create fantasies of the "able" subject, a signifier filled with mandatory or rather "existential abilities" (Wolbring, 2008). ...
Chapter
Efforts to provide education for learners with disabilities have mostly focused on moving learners from the special school into the mainstream school. African countries have been pursuing the goal of including children with disabilities in the mainstream school for a significant time now, but inclusive education remains elusive. This chapter merges perspectives of space theory and postcolonial theory to dissect the rhetoric that obfuscates the pursuit of inclusive education in Africa. Drawing on literature and our insights as Disability Studies scholars in Africa, we muddle the binary of inclusion and exclusion in education by critically examining the complex nature of inclusive education as Third Space. We explore inclusive education as Third Space transgressing the borders of the western context and the African world, and as Third Space transgressing the borders of the special school and the mainstream school. This space creates new possibilities and realities, that are not always positive. Appreciating Third Space as the zone of creativity, exploration and contestation, we call for adopting a critical stance when considering inclusive education, in order not to replicate some of the marginalisations that have happened before and to foreground the contributions of indigenous knowledge systems that can support the education of children with disabilities. The goal is to reshape inclusive education to embrace dynamism that is accountable to the lived realities of Africa.
... In one, I engage in disability masquerade, performing pain and fatigue into visibility to be medically or socially believed. In the other, I erase my flesh and take pride in my fatigue to align with compulsory ablebodymindedness (Siebers, 2004;McRuer, 2006;Kafer, 2013). ...
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This project theorizes relationships among discourses around the ailing body, biomedical technologies intended to render visible chronic pain, and the compulsory able-bodymindedness of academic culture and its writing conventions. Through analysis of discursive artifacts, such as imaging reports, pharmaceutical rhetoric, self-monitoring technologies, and academic interchange, I show how techniques and institutions converge to bring the scholar-in-pain under the biomedical and academic gaze. From pain questionnaires to requirements within the academy, institutions and standards seek to quantify pain in ways that minimize chronicity, contingency, and idiosyncrasy to craft acceptable, visible experiences of pain and its embodiment; chronically pained subjects must conform to these understandings in order to be believed. In this project, I analyze and examine my analysis of my pain as both a patient and a scholar to de-individuate the singular experience of chronic pain and recover what is desirable and resistive about the ontology of fibromyalgia. I consider how meanings are made around a queer Eelam Tamil fibromyalgic woman scholar’s bodymind in biomedical and academic settings in order to excavate broader cultural relationships among chronic pain, ocularcentrism, Euro-Western and Tamil sensory hierarchies, and decolonial ways of knowing.
Chapter
The purpose of this chapter is to advance a deconstruction of the psychological in the logic of understanding that there is an installation of mental functioning, not generalizable to all cultures and human beings but promoted by modern eurocentric society. Thus, mental structures based on reason, planning, the superego, knowledge production mechanisms, etc. are observed that make up an entire way of thinking. This leads to constructing reality, as if it were the only possible truth, stimulating social relations that border on racism and discrimination against social sectors evaluated as less intellectually capable. In contrast, other cultures, such as the Latin American indigenous world in general, structure the mind with various parameters, forming an alternative subjectivity, where one of its central elements is intersubjectivity, which leads to valuing diversity, coexistence and presence, not just one reality but of a multi-reality.
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This book intersects marginality, politics, and policies by focusing on the narratives of selective marginalised groups within India. Encouraging inclusive government policies that consider the diverse identities of individuals and groups within India, this book is a systematic documentation of the lived experiences of various marginalised collectives, such as the Naths of Bengal, the De‑notified Tribes of Maharashtra, the Kukis of Manipur, and the beggars. The chapters use historiography as a method to understand narratives of marginality in India, illuminating how power imbalances in Indian society lead to the marginalisation of specific groups, depriving them of fundamental rights and opportunities, while others enjoy privileges. The political analysis of this edited volume introspects the political dynamics that perpetuate marginalisation. It details the aspirations of various marginal groups in evolving and changing socio‑political circumstances. This book offers a deeper understanding of the intricate issues faced by marginalised groups. It will be of interest to students, academicians, and researchers in South Asian Studies, Subaltern Studies, Political Science, Sociology, Social History, and Migration/Refugee Studies.
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This chapter aims to delve into the complex and ubiquitous phenomenon of marginality in India. Marginality in India is a systemic problem caused by socio-cultural exclusion that hinders groups’ access to basic primary goods. This volume is a compilation of essays that chronicle the lives of different minorities in India, who are somewhat underresearched and hence not adequately discussed in the mainstream literature on marginality. Socio-political and economic marginality continues to remain entrenched despite the policy efforts and financial commitments of developing and developed countries. This chapter posits that marginality is intertwined with the question of power within Indian society and results in an undesired situation that excludes certain groups from the ability to access essential resources and services. This book will likely provide insight into the relationship between the difficulties undergone by the subjects of prejudice and discrimination through critical consideration of historiographical concepts concerning the issues at hand and a comprehensive presentation of the victims’ narratives. This approach is therefore different from traditional historical writing, which has primarily been a record of the elites’ history and focuses on the lives of those who are outside the power structure.
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This chapter illustrates how an adapted version of Interpretive Interactionism, a qualitative methodology for insider researchers, can facilitate a neurodiversity-affirming interview study with multiply neurodivergent research participants. Influences from Access Intimacy, Crip Theory, and participatory autism research are synthetised to create a ‘cripped interactionism’. The chapter outlines, with concrete examples, how this methodology transformed research access from an act of logistics to a relational act, how it mitigated power dynamics and resisted epistemic injustice, and how it led to an ongoing dialogue with participants. Anticipating access needs as much as possible and being proactive in offering adaptations is central, rather than waiting for participants to request accommodations. Interviews are ‘cripped’ to become dialogues, reflecting a deep and genuine reciprocity rather than a mechanical extraction of community knowledge. ‘Found poetry’ alongside the lay summary is used to make the research findings accessible to readers with a range of communication preferences and engage the heart and as well as the mind.
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Η ψηφιακή τεχνολογία άλλαξε τη σύγχρονη αθλητική κουλτούρα και οδήγησε σε νέες μορφές σπορ, όπως είναι τα ηλεκτρονικά σπορ. Τα ηλεκτρονικά σπορ αποτελούν μία οργανωμένη ανταγωνιστική ανθρώπινη δραστηριότητα με βιντεοπαιχνίδια, μέσω διαδικτύου ή τοπικού δικτύου (LAN). Διαθέτουν τη δική τους ιστορική διαδρομή που αναδεικνύει και εξηγεί τα σημερινά τους χαρακτηριστικά: κοινωνική αλληλεπίδραση, ανταγωνισμός, οικονομικο-πολιτισμικά στοιχεία, ψυχαγωγία, δημοφιλία, και επαγγελματισμός. Πολλοί υποστηρίζουν ότι τα ηλεκτρονικά σπορ, συγκροτώντας ένα παρόμοιο οικοσύστημα με αυτό των συμβατικών σπορ, και διαθέτοντας όλα εκείνα τα εξωγενή και εγγενή χαρακτηριστικά, αλλά και λειτουργίες των συμβατικών σπορ, μπορούν να θεωρηθούν, και αυτά, έστω και υπό περιορισμούς, σπορ. Η θέση που υποστηρίζεται στην παρούσα μελέτη είναι ότι τα ηλεκτρονικά σπορ δεν μπορούν να ταυτιστούν με τα συμβατικά σπορ επειδή η ανθρωπινότητα, ως θεμελιώδες στοιχείο των σπορ, βιώνεται σε αυτά, από τους παίκτες τους, με διαφορετικό τρόπο και επειδή εμπεριέχουν ένα εγγενές πρόταγμα υπερανθρωπισμού. Πρόκειται για μία φιλοσοφική μελέτη που ισορροπεί μεταξύ οντολογίας και ηθικής, αξιοποιώντας στοιχεία της αναλυτικής μεθόδου, καθώς και της ερμηνευτικής μεθόδου της φιλοσοφίας. Η σημασία της μελέτης έγκειται στην ανάπτυξη μιας διαφορετικής φιλοσοφικής προσέγγισης για τις νέες τεχνολογίες και τον αθλητισμό, καλύπτοντας ένα ερευνητικό κενό στο πεδίο της Φιλοσοφίας του Αθλητισμού. Επιπλέον, συμβάλλει στην πλουραλιστική πληροφόρηση για τα ηλεκτρονικά σπορ, αλλά και στην ανάδειξη της ανθρωπιστικής αξίας του αθλητισμού και της ανάγκης διατήρησης της ανθρωπινότητας στη σύγχρονη ψηφιακή κοινωνία και στον αθλητισμό, εν μέσω της τεχνολογικής καταιγίδας της εποχής. Τα ηλεκτρονικά σπορ διαφοροποιούνται από τα συμβατικά σπορ, στο ότι λαμβάνουν χώρα σε έναν υβριδικό κόσμο. Οι παίκτες τους ενεργώντας, ταυτόχρονα, στον πραγματικό κόσμο και στον εικονικό κόσμο των βιντεοπαιχνιδιών, αποκτούν υβριδική υπόσταση και υβριδικές ικανότητες, υιοθετώντας χαρακτηριστικά ριζοσπαστικού κυβερνο-οργανισμού. Αυτά τα χαρακτηριστικά επηρεάζουν τον τρόπο με τον οποίο βιώνεται η ανθρωπινότητα των παικτών των ηλεκτρονικών σπορ. Αγωνίζονται στους εικονικούς κόσμους με έναν άλλον εαυτό μιας ασώματης τεχνικής ετερότητας, τροποποιείται η ηθική τους αυτοκατανόηση, περιορίζεται η ελευθερία του πράττειν, σε σχέση με αυτήν των συμβατικών σπορ, και υποβαθμίζονται τα φυσικά τους χαρίσματα. Προκειμένου να διαφυλαχθεί ο ανθρωπιστικός χαρακτήρας του αθλητισμού, η οποιαδήποτε πολιτική ανάπτυξης και διάδοσης των ηλεκτρονικών σπορ θα πρέπει να βασιστεί στην αρχή της πρόληψης των όποιων κινδύνων, και προς την κατεύθυνση της προφύλαξης του στοιχείου της ανθρωπινότητας. Ο σύγχρονος αθλητισμός, αλλά και η σύγχρονη κοινωνία, που βιώνουν την επέλαση μιας πληθώρας εφαρμογών τεχνητής νοημοσύνης, έχουν την ανάγκη ενός ψηφιακού ανθρωπισμού, έτσι ώστε να επιβιώσουν στο μέλλον με τον ανθρωπιστικό τους χαρακτήρα.
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This thesis explores autistic people’s experiences of sexuality, intimacy, and authenticity. The cultural and scientific contexts in which autistic people and autism researchers are embedded tend to assume deficit, limitation or damage when considering social, sexual, or intimate autistic possibilities. These assumptions are omnipresent and stated as fact in much mainstream autism research, casting a pall over discussions of sexuality, intimacy, authenticity, and indeed any inter- or intra-personal endeavour undertaken by an autistic person. Working within a framework of critical autism studies, and using a qualitative and participative methodology, the main thrust of this research involved a total of 24 in-depth interviews with 16 participants, leaning on Grounded Theory for data collection and analysis. An online survey with 567 respondents was also carried out, and a research website set up. A Research Advisory Group of nine autistic people provided input regarding appropriate research methods and instruments and piloted interviews, many communicating with me and each other through the research website’s private forum. Findings show that the challenges experienced by participants as they set out on their intimate journeys had less to do with intrinsic difficulties linked to ‘being autistic’ than with the point of encounter with a hostile and alienating environment. This environment is one in which difference of any kind is policed and punished, and sexual and gender identities and behaviours other than cis-gendered heterosexuality are rendered invisible or undesirable. For many participants, an intimate future was initially unimaginable. The ways in which they move to resolve these unpromising beginnings, however, reveal themselves to be interwoven with participants’ autistic subjectivity, involving, inter alia, intense interests, accessing and creatively navigating diagnosis, and meeting and loving other autistic people. Running through and expressed within all these themes is the whisper of authenticity. When authenticity is threatened, so are intimate possibilities; when it is recognised and nurtured, it is revealed to be a highly valued quality, a central part of what it means to participants to ‘be autistic’, and an important step on the path to accessing and maintaining satisfying, safe, and meaningful intimate relationships.
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Devires entre performance negra e dança inclusiva para poéticas transatlânticas ResumoEste ensaio apresenta um recorte da Tese de doutorado intitulada “Poéticas transatlânticas: devires entre a performance negra e a dança inclusiva”, ainda em construção, deste modo abordaremos os conceitos norteadores da pesquisa e daremos ênfase à metodologia de criação em dança, que estamos chamando de Poéticas Transatlânticas, que pretende experimentar possibilidades criativas a partir de provocações dramatúrgicas da poesia de Beatriz Nascimento, por meio da improvisação em dança voltada a experimentações e processos criativos, motivadas por fragmentos de sua poesia e da Capoeira Angola, sobretudo os movimentos e canções que possuem relação com o mar. Almejamos questionar como a dança pode ser pensada e criada em uma perspectiva decolonial, em uma zona de interseccionalidade. A busca por essa dança, perpassa pela experiência vivida e dançada e pelo ato de olhar e perceber a existência de mulheres negras com deficiência na dança.Palavras-chave: Performance Negra. Dança Inclusiva. Poéticas Transatlânticas. Interseccionalidade. Becomings between black performance and inclusive dance for transatlantic poetics AbstractThis essay presents an excerpt from the doctoral thesis entitled Transatlantic Poetics: Becomings between black performance and inclusive dance, still under construction, in this way we will address the guiding concepts of the research and will emphasize the methodology of creation in dance, which we are calling Transatlantic Poetic, which aims to experiment with creative possibilities based on dramaturgical provocations from the poetry of Beatriz Nascimento, through dance improvisation aimed at experiments and creative processes, motivated by fragments of her poetry and Capoeira Angola, especially the movements and songs that are related with the sea. We aim to question how dance can be thought of and created from a decolonial perspective, in a zone of intersectionality. The search for this dance permeates the lived and danced experience and the act of looking and perceiving the existence of black women with disabilities in dance.Keywords: Black Performance. Inclusive Dance. Transatlantic Poetic. Intersectionality. Devires entre la performance negra y la danza inclusiva para poéticas transatlánticas ResumenEste ensayo presenta un extracto de la tesis doctoral titulada Poéticas transatlánticas: Devires entre la performance negra y la danza inclusiva, aún en construcción, de esta manera abordaremos los conceptos rectores de la investigación y enfatizaremos la metodología de creación en danza, que estamos llamando Poéticas Transatlánticas, que tiene como objetivo experimentar posibilidades creativas a partir de provocaciones dramatúrgicas a partir de la poesía de Beatriz Nascimento, a través de la improvisación en danza orientada a experimentos y procesos creativos, motivados por fragmentos de su poesía y la Capoeira Angola, especialmente los movimientos y canciones que se relacionan con el mar. Nuestro objetivo es cuestionar cómo se puede pensar y crear la danza desde una perspectiva decolonial, en una zona de interseccionalidad. La búsqueda de esta danza permea la experiencia vivida y bailada y el acto de mirar y percibir la existencia de mujeres negras con discapacidad en la danza.Palabras clave: Performance Negra. Danza Inclusiva. Poéticas Transatlânticas. Interseccionalidad.
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This chapter examines the complex relationship between psychology and disability through the lenses of power and gender. The first part of the chapter takes up the issue of power as control, examining how power is exercised over disability communities through the forces of ableism, sexism, and other intersecting oppressions. We also take up ways in which the discipline of psychology is part of a powerful system that constructs, enforces, and maintains ableism. The second part of the chapter is focused on power as resistance and vision and explores how power is exercised by disability communities for social transformation to end ableism, sexism, and other intersecting forms of oppression as well as some ways that psychological research has advanced disability rights activist principles and helped us understand disability identity and activism. We conclude with a call to more meaningfully learn about and reflect principles of disability activisms and politics (from rights to justice) in the discipline and practice of psychology in order to transform it. Content warnings for this chapter: mentions of psychological and psychiatric ableism; eugenics; intersecting social oppressions including ableism, sexism, racism, and settler colonialism; and intimate partner violence.
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An overview on the efforts done to narrow the gap between composition and cultural studies was presented. Much of the tension in composition studies involve the counts as knowledge within the discipline. The wholesale importing of theoretical work from other disciplines generated audible discontent among some in the field.
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The students of the present generation are the first in a long time who will not take their cultural identities from books. Statistics reveal that film, museum, concert, and sports attendances are up but that fewer and fewer people are reading books. Those strange moments in nineteenth-century novels when young heroes strike poses, dress, coif, and woo by the book are gone, perhaps forever. Our students are more likely to take their models from television, films, glossy magazines, video games, or the Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. My colleagues in the profession report that, thanks to the expansion of visual culture, students now possess an enviable talent for decoding images, often to the detriment of reading ability. To be frank, I am not so convinced: in my experience, the most literate students continue to be the best readers of images. But I agree that we are in the midst of an unprecedented explosion of visuality. A new era has dawned, and we are not prepared for it. We need to change our teaching and scholarship to keep up with our students.
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Gang related violence in Los Angeles County has increased, with homicides increasing from 205 in 1982 to 803 in 1992. This study examines the medical and financial consequences of such violence on a level I trauma center. Of 856 gunshot injuries over a 29-month period, 272 were gang related. There were 55 pediatric and 217 adult patients. Eighty-nine percent were male and 11% were female. Trauma Score averaged 14.7 +/- 3.1, Glasgow Coma Scale average score was 13.7 +/- 3.4, and the mean Injury Severity Score was 10.8 +/- 14. Twenty-two percent of the gunshots were to the head and neck, 20% to the chest, 20% to the abdomen, 6% had a peripheral vascular injury, and 33% sustained an extremity musculoskeletal injury. Emergency surgery was performed on 43%, including laparotomy 58 (49%), craniotomy 16 (13%), laparoscopy 14 (12%), vascular procedures 10 (8%), orthopedic procedures 6 (5%), head and neck endoscopies 4 (3%), thoracotomies 2 (2%), and 10 (8%) unspecified. There were 25 deaths (9%), primarily caused by head injuries and exsanguanating hemorrhage. Eighty-six percent entered the hospital during the hours of minimal staffing that pre-empted the use of facilities for other emergent patients. Charges totaled $4,828,828 (emergency room, surgical procedures, intensive care, and surgical ward stay) which equated to $5,550 per patient per day. Fifty-eight percent had no third party reimbursement, 22% had Medi-Cal, and 20% had medical insurance. Because of dismal reimbursement rates, the costs of gang violence are passed on to the tax payer. The cost of gang related violence cannot be derived from hospital charges only, because death, disability, and pain are not entered into the calculation. Education, increased social programs, and strict criminal justice laws and enforcement may decrease gang related violence and the drain it has on financial and medical resources.
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Journal of Women's History 15.3 (2003) 63-76 Like many people, I first read Adrienne Rich's article, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," in college. I cannot remember if it was assigned or if I stumbled across it during one of my many trips to the library to find something, anything on lesbians that was not a psychological tract on the dysfunctions of homosexuality. As it turned out Rich's essay was much more to me than a positive article about lesbianism, but rather a manifesto of lesbian existence that declared us pervasive and distinct. Still, I had no idea how profoundly Rich's words had influenced my consciousness until I was asked to write this essay. 1980 and 2003 are extremely different political and cultural moments. I say this obvious statement because this fact was ever so evident to me while re-reading "Compulsory Heterosexuality." As I read, I found myself listing all of the points where Rich relied on a myriad of assumptions that she could not today, including a lack of distinction between various genders and sexualities, claims of a uniform global lesbian sisterhood, the presence of ubiquitous and monolithic male oppressors, and the assertion of a universal lesbian experience. Her theory of a lesbian continuum reduces all intimacies between all people identified as women by the dominant culture as lesbian, thereby erasing bisexual and transgender experiences, not to mention a host of other identities, bodies, and histories. Nevertheless, I still find Rich's essay to be profoundly constructive. It was through her words that I started to question how structurally embedded heterosexism is. Rich challenged the notion that heterosexism is only an act by an individual bigot and demonstrated how it is part of a deeper, pervasive structural flaw that renders relationships between women invalid and invisible in every level of scholarship, including feminist scholarship. Her assessment of heterosexuality as an institution, like class and race, offered me a way to understand the compulsory component as creating lies and distortions maintained by every profession, cultural product, reference work, curriculum, and scholarship. This revelation made me a different kind of reader and thinker. The fact that she implicates feminist scholarship in the "closing of the archives" to lesbians made me more attentive to the misrepresentations that pervaded my most favorite and affirming works. It made me think about African American history. I read African American history as I would any other theoretical text—closely. African American history is a rich source for understanding how Black subjectivity has been theorized in the United States. The tradition of representing Black people as decent and moral historical agents has meant the erasure of the broad array of Black sexuality and gendered being in favor of a static heterosexual narrative. Far from being totally invisible, the "queer" is present in Black history as a threat to Black respectability. Black women's sexuality has been discussed as the "unspeakable thing unspoken" of Black life. However, in this essay, I show that variant sexualities and genders are the things always present in Black history by virtue of their constant disavowal. I want to get way from the notion of silence and discuss instead the ways in which Black people have written histories that exalted their manhood and heralded their femininity to protect themselves from defamation, and have proven their heterosexuality, thereby establishing themselves as decent, moral, and above all, "normal human beings." Sexual deviance is more than homosexuality. Many different sexual unions and behaviors come under this rubric, including male-female sexual intercourse before marriage and sex across racial lines. Any divergences from the social norms of marriage, domesticity, and the nuclear family have brought serious accusations of savagery, pathology, and deviance upon Black people. It is my job as an emerging scholar of African American literature and history not only to recover submerged voices but also to lay bare the conditions that create and subjugate black, female, woman-loving sexualities and transgressions of gender norms. In this way, I attempt not only to call attention to an absence but also to theorize a methodology. The process of distorting the complexities of Black women's sexuality has its roots in the...
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Journal of Women's History 15.3 (2003) 9-10 Almost since she came to work for the Journal, managing editor Stephanie Gilmore has been lobbying for a retrospective on Adrienne Rich's classic article, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence." I knew from my partner, Verta Taylor, who has for many years co-edited the women's studies anthology Feminist Frontiers, that Rich had stopped giving permission to reprint her classic article. Not knowing exactly why, we bravely invited Rich to comment on the responses we were gathering, and to our delight, she not only graciously agreed to write a piece (forthcoming in the spring issue), but she also explained that she was refusing permission to reprint the original version of the article, published in Signs, because she preferred the version published in 1982 in Blood, Bread, and Poetry, since it includes a preface and postscript dealing with some of the most controversial aspects of this profoundly influential and provocative piece. Rich gave us permission to reprint that version and we are honored to do so. "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" has shaped our understanding of lesbian history and the history of sexuality in the most momentous ways, which is why we offer this retrospective. We decided to invite scholars working in different fields, from different generations, to comment on what the article has meant to them and to our understandings of sexuality. We are delighted with the results, and we think you will be, too. Joan Nestle, a feminist contemporary of Rich whose passionate scholarship and activism has transformed the field of the history of sexuality, offers a moving reflection on sex, war, the sex wars, and recent history. Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, who as an undergraduate first encountered Rich in person, in the classroom, reflects on the significance of the concepts of compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence for Asian American women's history. Mattie Richardson, who also encountered Rich as an undergraduate, although through the printed page, asks provocative questions, based on Rich's concepts, about African American women's history, suggesting that sexual and gender deviance and lesbian sexuality have been painted over in order to present a canvas of respectability. Finally, Alison Kafer, only ten years old when the article first appeared, extends Rich's concepts to the field of disability studies, raising thought-provoking challenges to scholars to think about able-bodiedness and its relationship to sexuality. These elegant essays urge us to consider not only what has changed since 1980, when Rich first shook the world of scholarship with her essay, but also the directions in which we are headed in what, from a historical perspective, is still the beginning of a new millennium.
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Journal of Women's History 15.3 (2003) 77-89 In preparing to write this essay, I stumbled across a 1992 special issue of Feminism and Psychology devoted to the topic of "heterosexuality." The editors had collected seventeen short reflections from heterosexual feminists addressing the question "How does your heterosexuality contribute to your feminist politics (and/or your feminist psychology)?" As the editors acknowledge in their introduction, their project was inspired in part by Adrienne Rich's groundbreaking essay, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence." Indeed, the collection serves as an example of what Rich requested from feminist theorists and scholars; as she writes in the 1982 foreword to her article, her intent was "to encourage heterosexual feminists to examine heterosexuality as a political institution." I must confess, however, that I was not thinking about the political institution of heterosexuality while reading this special issue. As a queer feminist with disabilities, engaged in the field of disability studies, I found myself thinking about the political institution of able-bodiedness. Or, more to the point, I found myself imagining a special issue of Feminism and Psychology (or Feminist Studies, or Signs, or even the Journal of Women's History) asking nondisabled feminists to discuss how their able-bodied status contributes to their feminist politics. It is hard to imagine such a publication, and not simply because of the complexities of discerning who does and does not have a disability, or the difficulties of defining "disability," points to which I return below. It is hard to imagine because even with the dynamic growth of disability studies within U.S. universities and the persistence of the American disability rights movement, a political analysis of disability remains below the radar screen of many theorists and cultural critics. To quote and adapt Rich, it is still all too easy for "feminists to read, write, or teach from a perspective of unexamined [able-bodied]-centricity." As a result, it is difficult to find feminist theorists outside of the field of disability studies who address disability in their work, let alone theorists willing or interested in identifying themselves as nondisabled and interrogating the effects of such an identification on their work. Who, therefore, could I find to write for my special issue interrogating able-bodiedness ? Of course, I should note that the editors of the heterosexuality issue write in their introduction that they ran into similar problems in collecting submissions for their project. Their decision to send a call for papers to feminist scholars who had never identified themselves as lesbian, or written or publicly spoken as non-heterosexuals, met with several defensive and even hostile responses. Two of their recipients were, unbeknownst to the editors, out as lesbians; others were offended by the editors' presumption of heterosexuality, questioning how they could "know" them to be straight; and still others expressed discomfort with the label, explaining that the term was too narrow for their sexual identities, or was not an important enough aspect of their self-images to feel like a comfortable label. One respondent discussed the difference between choosing to call oneself something and being labeled by another as something, describing the latter as troubling and disempowering. Some of this discomfort arises in part, I think, because of the naturalization of heterosexuality. As Rich asserts in her essay, heterosexuality goes unquestioned because its alleged naturalness and normalcy place it beyond the realm of political analysis. Some of it, however, stems from the troubling aspects of identities in general, and identity politics in particular. Disability identities are no exception. Similar to the label "woman," the term "disabled" cannot easily be accepted as a self-evident phrase referring to a discrete group of particular people with certain similar essential qualities. "We" is a particularly unstable term when speaking of disability; it is very difficult to decide definitively whom the term does and does not include. Should it encompass all kinds of impairments—cognitive, psychiatric, sensory, and physical? Do people with chronic illnesses fit under the rubric of disability? Is an asymptomatic HIV+ person disabled? What about people with some forms of multiple sclerosis (MS) who experience different temporary impairments—from vision loss to mobility...
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This essay analyzes the Kennedy Center's June 2003 solo autobiographical performance piece, Weights, by Lynn Manning, a blind African American performer and playwright. In Weights, Manning tells the story of his sudden transformation from life as a "black man" to life as a "blind man" after surviving a gunshot wound to the head. The essay argues for the continued relevance and efficacy of identity-based politics and representational practices by examining through the lens of "postpositivist realism" Manning's performance text and the audience, which included at least one hundred fifty people with disabilities.
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In his contribution, Critical Investments: AIDS, Christopher Reeve, and Queer/Disability Studies, Robert McRuer calls for the recognition of the points of convergence between AIDS theory, queer theory, and disability theory. McRuer points out ways in which minority identity groups such as people with AIDS, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, and those with so-called disabilities, whose status has been described by others as impaired, have resisted this judgment by calling its ideological underpinnings into question. He contends that a critical alliance between AIDS theory, queer theory, and disability theory will ultimately help us to realize the full range of different kinds of bodies and corporeal experiences, while also combating the application of normativizing judgments.