Crip Theory and the Subject of Abledness

Abstract

Building on the productive and transgressive aspects of crip theory, this article seeks to proliferate (and not appropriate) its insights, and particularly, with the abled (or nondisabled) subject in mind. My contribution is based on a contemplation of how crip theory can speak for or include the abled subject, particularly with the aim that abled subjects can embody and/or elaborate crip politics to build a more crip world. Crip worlds reject ableism and compulsory abledness and foreground the importance of interdependencies, accessible futures, and generative understandings of disability, and I am interested in imagining a space in which abled subjects can learn from and embody crip politics. The political ambition of this article is concerned with contemplating what kind of reckoning might unfold through an engagement between abled subjectivity and crip theory, and while this political association comes with risks, it also comes with possibilities that help to re/write the dis/abled body, proliferate anti-ableist politics, and imagine cripper worlds.

Keywords

• crip theory
• queer theory
• abledness
• ableism
• crip identification
• disability studies