Engaged Allies: Academia, Activism & Crip Feminist Power

Screening AccSex: Disabled Women Activism & Sexuality event, University of Leeds, 2015

The above photograph represents the end of a brilliant day-long event which I helped co-organise along with some lovely folk from the Centre for Disability Studies at Leeds University and the disabled women’s cooperative, Sisters of Frida (of which I’m a proud member). The day was action-packed: a talk from Sarah Woodin (Leeds University) on disabled women and forms of violence; a presentation on youth, feminism and the cripping of the political/personal dichotomy by Icelandic activists Freyja Haraldsdóttir and Embla Ágústsdóttir and their organisation, Tabu; a UK premiere of Accsex (2014), a film which uncovers the pleasures (and precarities) of the connections between disability, sex/uality, gender, and race; and a Q&A with its creator, film-maker Schweta Ghosh. You can watch the trailer for Accsex (2014) here.

Within stifling dichotomies of normal and abnormal, lie millions of women, negotiating their identities. Accsex explores notions of beauty, the ‘ideal body’ and sexuality through four storytellers; four women who happen to be persons with disability. Through the lives of Natasha, Sonali, Kanti and Abha, this film brings to fore questions of acceptance, confidence and resistance to the normative. As it turns out, these questions are not too removed from everyday realities of several others, deemed ‘imperfect’ and ‘monstrous’ for not fitting in. Accsex traces the journey of the storytellers as they reclaim agency and the right to unapologetic confidence, sexual expression and happiness.

 – Ghosh (2014)

A powerful line up makes for a powerful event, in more ways than one. To look again at the photograph, it’s far more than just a shot in time. It represents more than students, lecturers, activists, community members, allies, or otherwise interested people seeking alternative understandings of disability and gender coming together to connect (as if that isn’t exceptional enough). To me, the photograph is emblematic of the exciting possibilities that can emerge when the best parts of academia and activism come together. In this short post, I’d like to very briefly sketch out some points as to what this means to me as a disabled woman and scholar:

Safe(r) Spaces: Firstly, academic/activist events like this show that we can create (and demand) safe(r) spaces to speak about our lives as activists, campaigners, scholars and women.  Events like this offer rare occasions for disabled women and their allies to come together, think together, politicise and rage together, and take solace in sharing intimate knowledges of our lives (that are seldom acknowledged or celebrated anywhere) together.

Resistance and intellectual freedom: In the context of the Academy, the fusion of academia and activism can offer refreshing spaces of resistance, creativity and (intellectual) freedom. Never has this been more important to counter the significant corporatisation and marketisation of higher education in the neoliberal University, and what some have called the privatisation of knowledge. Another recent event I helped organise, Theorising Dis/Ability, worked in similar ways. You can access the talks from the Theorising Dis/Ability seminar here. I’m currently co-organising another event with my friend Jenny Slater (Sheffield Hallam) around the intersections of queer and disability/crip activism, Interrogating queer, crip and the body: an international symposium, for which you can access free tickets here.

Making space for activist scholarship: For me personally/politically/professionally, academic/activist collaborations enable me to continue the work I love to do. It is a reminder of the importance of activist scholarship, which needs such spaces to not just survive, but thrive. I’m lucky that these loves are nurtured by many, many brilliant colleagues. For example, see the “dishuman” manifesto that I’m working on with exceptional folk like Katherine Runswick-Cole (MMU), Dan Goodley (University of Sheffield) and Rebecca Lawthom (MMU). This work is as theoretically rich as it is grounded in disabled people’s lives and meaningful social and political change.

The politics of visibility and disruption: Most importantly, academic/activist presences like those within the event above solicit/invite/welcome a multitude of bodies, minds, selves, knowledges and politics into the Academy. These are often bodies and selves that are at best tolerated, and at worst violated, in neoliberal educational spaces. To be present in the Academy in such ways – to proudly take up space, make noise, and be disruptive within the the very walls that so often exclude us – affirms Crip feminist power. Crucially, it does so in an academic landscape where we are largely absent as students, let alone as educators, speakers, creators, and leaders.

Note: This post is dedicated to the memory of Judith Snow who passed away on 31st May 2015. A proud disabled woman, visionary and advocate, she truly changed the world.

Debating Vulnerability…

Exchange of ideas

On Valentine’s Day, I took part in a debate entitled, Are we all vulnerable now? which featured as part of our Doctorate in Education Residential here in the School of Education, University of Sheffield. My fellow panel members were Ken McLaughlin, Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and Mark Taylor, Deputy Headteacher at Addey and Stanhope Comprehensive School, New Cross, London. In this blog post, I want to share the debate preamble and my opening remarks. The debate was an interesting experience – I’m not a natural “debater” – but then, who is? I knew that my stance, which is drawn from feminist critical disability studies, posthuman studies, and my own lived experience as a disabled woman, would be tricky to communicate in the context of a debate. But, what I hoped I could do was offer some new (potentially transformative) ideas into the mix.

Immediately below is the preamble to the debate, written by its Chair, Professor Kathryn Ecclestone, School of Education, University of Sheffield:

Are we all vulnerable now? The implications of ‘vulnerability’ for educational policy and practice

In official terms, ‘the vulnerable’ used to refer to people in extreme circumstances, like the homeless, or those unable to look after themselves mentally or physically. Officially and informally vulnerability now describes many more people, including those receiving counselling or palliative care.

It now describes anyone and everyone who need our sympathy. The unemployed are vulnerable to depression; women are vulnerable to ‘everyday sexism’; immigrants are vulnerable to trafficking or even slavery, teenage girls are vulnerable to body-image issues; and teenage boys are vulnerable to being warped by pornography.  Labour leader Ed Miliband and MPs have accused payday loans providers and bookmakers of targeting vulnerable people in deprived areas. Former culture secretary Maria Miller pledged to save ‘children and the vulnerable’ from gambling adverts. A coroner recently called on the Ministry of Defence to review its care for vulnerable soldiers at risk of suicide and bullying.

Campaigners increasingly regard ‘vulnerability’ as a collective condition. Solutions invariably involve calls for more support and protection and interventions to ‘build resilience’ and develop ‘survival strategies’.  Many schools, colleges and universities now offer resilience training and mindfulness, and trades unions call for resilience workshops for those threatened by redundancy.

Is recognition of vulnerability not just realistic but also positive, making us recognize that we are all, to a greater or lesser extent vulnerable and therefore need to show more empathy? Or does preoccupation with vulnerability sap our resilience and make us dependent on external support? Does defining ourselves and others as vulnerable empower us to change the conditions that undermine material, physical and mental well-being? Or does it create a sense of victimhood and powerlessness?  And with so many labeled vulnerable, how do education and welfare professionals assess competing claims and allocate scarce resources?

In response to this preamble, here are my opening remarks: 

Dishuman.com

What I want to do in my opening remarks is both ask and attempt to answer 6 questions in as many minutes! As much as I have tried, I don’t present a coherent stance but flit between different positions. I’m painfully aware that this makes me very vulnerable in the context of a debate!

Question 1: Why am I here today and why is that important?

I’m here because the privileges that are afforded to me – almost routinely – as a White, middle class, educated Westerner make it possible for me to even be in this room of very clever people. Intersecting with these identity categories, is my disability identity: I am a very proud disabled woman. This is important because this simple statement at once makes me more vulnerable in this room, and beyond, in myriad ways, and yet, for me, serves also as a form of resistance. It’s this paradox of vulnerability and resistance which marks my “flittiness” (for want of a better word!)

Question 2: How is vulnerability defined in Western neoliberal societies, and what impact does this have?

We associate the state of being vulnerable with those whom we position as Other: ‘the feminine, the disabled, the aged, the marginalized, the weak’ (Rice et al. f.c.). Whom we come to define as Other is rooted in dominant ideas of the archetypal human and neoliberal adult citizen as self-contained (see Slater and Liddiard, f.c.), autonomous, independent, strong and ultimately self-governing. Because Western culture uses vulnerability to condone marginalisation and oppression – where vulnerability is a precursor to violation – it is difficult for us to be or claim vulnerability; so we actively disassociate with becoming a vulnerable subject (see Rice et al, f.c.).

Question 3: But what if I said that we are all vulnerable?

Not just those “Others” who live in precarity – very real material, economic, political conditions which cause harm – but all of us? There are many aspects of advanced capitalism that make us vulnerable. Things like: the increasing psychologisation of life and self, the intensification and extensification of work/labour, increasing militarism, global terrorism, and global economic instability. And let’s not forget the unequal systems of power that these produce: racism, neocolonialism, sexism, misogyny and heterosexism, ableism and disablism, ageism and transphobia. If we think more locally, we now have the Coalition Government, which has made many of us far more vulnerable: children, women, older people, students, disabled people, teachers… We could argue, then, that these are some very vulnerable times.

Question 4: So if we accept that we are all vulnerable – in what some have called the Vulnerability zeitgeist (Brown, 2014) – what then?

Rather than “mass vulnerability” and its responses causing the production of more distressed, depressed and dejected people, who are then further exploited by growing state and professional power, I want to question the ways in which collectively claiming vulnerability might be different. What happens to culture, community and humanity when we understand vulnerability as a ‘universal, inevitable, enduring aspect of the human condition’ (Fineman 2008: 8)? One which is ‘necessary for human being and human understanding, fundamental to relationships and to social life’ (Rice et al., f.c)? Rather than vulnerability equating only to victimhood, to sapped resilience, and dependence on external support (which, I may add, is not a terrible thing; we all lead interdependent lives, none of us in this room are independent, despite what we think) – what if our shared vulnerable selves could be our starting point to build a more equal and just society; where ‘vulnerability is the ground for human exchange, empowerment, and growth’ (Rice et al. f.c.); a springboard for resistance, justice and change (Ecclestone and Goodley 2014)?

Question 5: More relatedly, can vulnerability can have positive implications for educational policy, practice, and research?

As Rice et al. (f.c.) discuss in their forthcoming paper, anthropologist Ruth Behar coined the term the “vulnerable observer” as a way of talking about the value of vulnerability to research. Here, researchers and practitioners make themselves vulnerable in the sense of sharing aspects of themselves in their work to shed additional light on the subject in discussion. Being a vulnerable researcher or practitioner means being present and honest with ourselves throughout our work. At the same time, it requires a willingness to be present with others’ emotions and embodied experiences, to approach respectfully, and tread carefully. (You can read about vulnerability in my own research here; and see Me and You (2012), *a film I made about (amongst other things) impairment, embodiment and vulnerability, as part of Project Revision).

Finally, Question 6: What’s my point?!

I’m less concerned with vulnerability as a state of being, than I am with the problematic ways in which it is measured, ascribed and, for many, becomes a site of oppressive intervention.

I’m concerned, as a disabled person, with our denigration of vulnerability and the vulnerable subject as an undesirable way of being. If anything, vulnerable subjects draw out the very problematic ingredients of what it means to be a valued and valuable human – why do we have to be rational, sane, autonomous, independent and self-governing to be valued, or to be included in the category of the human? Click here to read more about what it means to be human, or Dishuman.

I guess I want to ask, can we harness vulnerability for our own sakes? What might this look like? Reject the inevitable precarity that comes with being labelled vulnerable, and demand and imagine a different kind of response to the state of being vulnerable. Maybe, we can politicise our vulnerability rather than psychologise, criminalise and pathologise it? Maybe we celebrate our vulnerability in ways reminiscent of the radical crip/disabled people’s communities I’m part of, where people are proudly vulnerable, different, and Other? Maybe we embrace vulnerability as something that can make us better teachers, researchers and lecturers?

Ultimately, I think we should collectively demand more inclusive, empathetic and compassionate responses to vulnerability, because in the context of humanity, vulnerability isn’t about being Other, it’s about being us.

Me and You (2012)

* Please note that captions/subtitles on the current Youtube version of Me and You (2012) are in process.

References

Brown, K. (2014) ‘Questioning the Vulnerability Zeitgeist: Care and control practices with ‘vulnerable’ young people’, Social Policy and Society. Available online.

Ecclestone, K. and Goodley, D. 2014 ‘Political and educational springboard or straitjacket?: Theorising post/humanist subjects in an age of vulnerability’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. DOI:10.1080/01596306.2014.927112

Fineman, M. (2008). The vulnerable subject and the responsive state. Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 20 (1), 1-22.

Rice, C., Chandler, E., Harrison, E. Liddiard, K. & Ferrari, M. (f.c.) ‘Project Re•Vision: Disability at the Edges of Representation’, Disability and Society.

Slater, J. and Liddiard, K. (f.c.) “Like, pissing yourself is not a particularly attractive quality, let’s be honest”: Learning to Contain through Youth, Adulthood, Disability and Sexuality’, Sexualities (Special Issue: Pleasure and Desire).