| Title | : | Crip Times: Disability, Globalization, and Resistance (Crip, 1) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1479826316 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781479826315 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 320 |
| Publication | : | First published January 16, 2018 |
Broadly attentive to the political and economic shifts of the last several decades, Robert McRuer asks how disability activists, artists and social movements generate change and resist the dominant forms of globalization in an age of austerity, or "crip times."
Throughout Crip Times, McRuer considers how transnational queer disability theory and culture--activism, blogs, art, photography, literature, and performance--provide important and generative sites for both contesting austerity politics and imagining alternatives. The book engages various cultural flashpoints, including the spectacle surrounding the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games; the murder trial of South African Paralympian Oscar Pistorius; the photography of Brazilian artist Livia Radwanski which documents the gentrification of Colonia Roma in Mexico City; the defiance of Chilean students demanding a free and accessible education for all; the sculpture and performance of UK artist Liz Crow; and the problematic rhetoric of "aspiration" dependent upon both able-bodied and disabled figurations that emerged in Thatcher's England.
Crip Times asserts that disabled people themselves are demanding that disability be central to our understanding of political economy and uneven development and suggests that, in some locations, their demand for disability justice is starting to register. Ultimately, McRuer argues that a politics of austerity will always generate the compulsion to fortify borders and to separate a narrowly defined "us" in need of protection from "them."
Crip Times: Disability, Globalization, and Resistance (Crip, 1) Reviews
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This book was RADICAL. As a previous reviewer mentioned, a lot of the examples given seem to be from the UK (and Europe in general), but that doesn't mean that it isn't relevant. McRuer blends together the ways disability and neoliberalism + capitalism + austerity politics interact with each other in this modern world while exploring the ways that crip resistance manifests.
McRuer explains how crip extends beyond perceived notions of disability--it's about bodies rejected by the state, bodies that reject "inspirational porn" and other tactics used by austerity politics to make an argument for austerity politics, bodies that desire disability as a way of expressing indignance and resistance to the ways that the state gentrifies them. McRuer pulls from disability and queer literature, though I am still trying to parse through how he defines queer and its relationship to crip: the two seems to act on and give to each other. Thinking beyond social and culture imagery of disability and crip, disability also extends well into class, race, and sexuality, as well as immigration and displacement. I think for me this is the hardest to grasp, to overcome my mental image of disability and its relation to the medical models. Crip helped me extend my definition of disability.
Most importantly, this book made me reflect deeply about the use of disabled bodies within capitalist markets (which I am inevitably participating in). How does the work that I do displace or dispossess bodies? What does it mean to be someone with a disability within a larger social and economic context of austerity? What does resistance mean in these contexts? Deep thoughts to go to bed to... -
Much like the title implies, this book looks at disability across the world (although it focuses especially on the UK), including resistance movements that have worked to gain more recognition and rights for individuals with disabilities. It’s also a book that’s clearly aimed at academics, for it’s a rather dense read at times. In general, though, it attempts to offer a global (but mainly UK-based) view of disability that concentrates on this past decade.
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306.766 M1749 2018
