Feminist, Queer, Crip , livre ebook

FEMINIST, QUEER, CRIP
Alison Kafer
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
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© 2013 by Alison Kafer
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A shorter version of chapter 3 was published as “Debating Feminist Futures: Slippery Slopes, Cultural Anxiety, and the Case of the Deaf Lesbians,” in Feminist Disability Studies , ed. Kim Q. Hall (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 218–41, and is reprinted with permission. Portions of chapter 6 appeared in much earlier form as “Hiking Boots and Wheelchairs: Ecofeminism, the Body, and Physical Disability,” in Feminist Interventions in Ethics and Politics , ed. Barbara Andrew, Jean Keller, and Lisa H. Schwartzman (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 131–50, and are also reprinted with permission.
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ISBN: 978-0-253-00922-7 (cloth) ISBN: 978-0-253-00934-0 (paper) ISBN: 978-0-253-00941-8 (ebook)
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For Dana
Contents
Acknowledgments
Textual Description of the Cover Art
Introduction: Imagined Futures
1    Time for Disability Studies and a Future for Crips
2    At the Same Time, Out of Time: Ashley X
3    Debating Feminist Futures: Slippery Slopes, Cultural Anxiety, and the Case of the Deaf Lesbians
4    A Future for Whom? Passing on Billboard Liberation
5    The Cyborg and the Crip: Critical Encounters
6    Bodies of Nature: The Environmental Politics of Disability
7    Accessible Futures, Future Coalitions
Appendices
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
I CANNOT BEGIN TO thank Katherine Sherwood enough for letting me use her magnificent painting, Vesalius’s Pump , for the cover of this book. (A description of the painting immediately follows these acknowledgments.) I first saw this painting during a 2007 show of Sherwood’s work at the University of California, Berkeley, and I began at that moment to hope that it might one day grace the cover of this book. I am deeply grateful that Katherine gave me permission to use it; her work has been and continues to be an inspiration to me, in all the best senses of that word.
This book began as a dissertation at Claremont Graduate University, and I hope my early mentors can still see their influences on it and on me; I continue to feel the benefits of their guidance. Thanks to Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Ranu Samantrai, Karen Jo Torjesen, and Peggy Waller for pushing me to think more critically and more carefully; I am equally grateful for their willingness to help me imagine an academic career for myself. May all graduate students be so lucky. I was lucky as well in having a solid group of graduate school writing buddies: Dana Newlove, Sara Patterson, and Zandra Wagoner. That stage of this project would have been much more difficult, and much less enjoyable, without them.
It is no exaggeration to say that I could not have written this book without the generous support of the women’s studies department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. By bringing me to UCSB for a dissertation fellowship, they provided me with the time and space to think through the early stages of this project. More importantly, they introduced me to a staggeringly smart and insightful group of graduate students who embodied exactly the kind of engaged scholarship I describe in these pages. For helping me to see, think, and feel differently, thanks to Karl Bryant, Ted Burnes, Simone Chess, Sharon Doetsch, Dana Collins, Beth Currans, Laura Hill-Bonnet, Jessi Quizar, Matt Richardson, Jeanne Scheper, Molly Talcott, and Tiffany Willoughby-Herard. For building the kind of academic programs and spaces in which such students could thrive, thanks to Jacqueline Bobo, Sharon Hoshida, Eileen Boris, Lou Anne Lockwood, Laury Oaks, and Leila Rupp.
My postdoctoral year at UC Berkeley was equally transformative; I cannot heap enough praise on the people and ideas behind the Ed Roberts Postdoctoral Fellowship in Disability Studies. Being able to think and talk through this project with the extended Ed Roberts group (Fred Collignon, Anne Finger, Lakshmi Fjord, Laura Hershey, Devva Kasnitz, Corbett O'Toole, Sue Schweik, and Russell Shuttleworth) was a dream come true, as was having the fellowship at the same time as Ellen Samuels and Robin Stephens. I am equally grateful to the fellowship for providing me the opportunity to expand my circle of disability comrades. Getting to work, think, and play with Patty Berne, Mel Chen, Michele Friedner, Sujatha Jesudason, Cathy Kudlick, Jessica Lehman, Anna Mollow, Leroy Moore, Alice Sheppard, Katherine Sherwood, Bethany Stevens, Jean Stewart, and Sunaura Taylor has made my world a more beautiful place; each of these fine folks has helped make this book better. Thanks to Zona Roberts for opening her house to me and for doing it with such easy generosity.
I am immensely grateful to be teaching feminist studies to undergraduates at a small liberal arts college, and that gratitude only multiplies when I think of my fiercely smart students and colleagues. I owe many thanks to all of my colleagues in feminist studies at Southwestern, most especially those who have served on the feminist studies committee over the years; for supporting me in and through the program, thanks to Elaine Craddock, Lysane Fauvel, Elizabeth Green-Musselman, Julia Johnson, Kathleen Juhl, Helene Meyers, and Sandi Nenga. Double thanks to Helene, Julia, and Sandi for talking through parts of this project with me, and to Elaine for reading so much of it. Thanks are due as well to Melissa Johnson, Maria Lowe, Brenda Sendejo, and all the other folks on the hall who fill my days with raucous laughter. I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to teach—and to learn from—all of the students I have had at Southwestern; being in and out of the classroom with them is a gift. Special thanks to those students who have said just the right thing at just the right time, making this project richer than it would have been otherwise: Chelsey Clammer, Siobhan Cooke, Marie Draz, Jordan Johnson, Alex Lannon, and Danielle Roberts; thanks as well to Michelle Redden for research assistance. I also want to thank Lynne Brody, Dana Hendrix, and all of the librarians at the Smith Library Center; thanks, too, to Lisa Anderson for her quick help with interlibrary loans. Although she is no longer at Southwestern, I also want to thank Suzy Pukys for our many conversations about community engagement.
Austin has felt like home from the moment we arrived, in no small part because of the warm embrace of friends we found here. Writing this book was made easier by this sense of grounding. Thanks to Jo and John Dwyer, Kris Hogan and Milly Gleckler, Maria Lowe and Emily Niemeyer, Allison Orr and Blake Trabulsi, Shannon Winnubst and Jenny Suchland, and all of their children, dogs, cats, and chickens. When I needed more than all of these animals could give, the cold waters of Barton Springs kept me going.
My other home, intellectual and otherwise, is more virtual but no less sustaining: A hearty thank you to all of my colleagues in the Society for Disability Studies and the community of disability studies scholars and activists more broadly. For being great friends, colleagues, and dance partners, thanks to Liat Ben-Moshe, Nirmala Erevelles, Anne Finger, Michele Friedner, Lezlie Frye, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Elaine Gerber, Michelle Jarman, Kate Kaul, Petra Kuppers, Simi and David Linton, Riva Lehrer, Samuel Lurie, Robert McRuer, Anna Mollow, Joan Ostrove, Corbett O'Toole, Katherine Ott, Margaret Price, Carrie Sandahl, Sami Schalk, Alice Sheppard, Sue Schweik, Cindy Wu, and many, many more. Lots of these folks read drafts or partial drafts of chapters, offered feedback on conference papers, talked through ideas, and generously shared their critical responses to this work; I thank each and every one of them for their full and rich collegiality. Thanks are due as well to Jackie Cuevas, Judith Plaskow, and Judy Rohrer for knowing what I needed to hear, and to Eunjung Kim, Sunaura Taylor, and Shannon Winnubst for cheering me on. Susan Burch, Mel Chen, Eli Clare, Cathy Kudlick, and Ellen Samuels generously read versions of the manuscript over the years, and I am still learning from their insights. Stacy Alaimo, Licia Carlson, and Kim Q. Hall read the entire manuscript, and both I and the book benefited immensely from their readings; I want to thank them for their careful, sharp, and incisive feedback. I am fortunate to be in such an intellectually generous community of scholars.
Thanks to all the PISSAR Patrol members, who work tirelessly to improve the restrooms of the world, especially Simone Chess, Jessi Quizar, and Matt Richardson; thanks, too, to all those who created and attended the 2002 Queer Disability Conference, in particular Eli Clare, Laura Hershey, Samuel Lurie, Corbett O'Toole, Ellen Samuels, Robin Stephens, and Jen Williams. My understandings of the promise of queer, crip space owes much to all of them. I am thankful that I got to witness the founding and development of Generations Ahead, where I learned a great deal abou