Glimpsing the Future Through Crip Joy

Some terms that come into French from English resist translation. Like the word “queer,” now adopted into French, “crip” (derived from “cripple”) often appears in French writing. Appropriated from its pejorative meaning, “crip” is now an identity, an area of theoretical research, and an art practice.1 1  - It is important to remember that the words “crip” or “handi” should be used only with the consent of the people involved or in the context of theories on the subject. Although there is a new tendency to use the word “handi,” particularly in France, the two terms are sufficiently distinct in French to employ one or the other depending on the context or the self-determination of the people concerned. Even though both are diminutives of stigmatizing words, there is certainly nothing reductive about the meaning they now have. On the contrary, they carry a political and activist charge that provides a powerful means of empowerment for those who lay claim to them.

The reappropriation of language contributes to dismantling the stereotypes and codes imposed by the medical model of disability within an ableist society. Starting in the 1970s, significant work in this regard has been carried out in disability studies and then in crip theory, which offers a broader intersectional framework that takes into account race, gender, and sexual identity along with ableist diversity. Both fields of study share a wish to resist the normalization of bodies and the stigmatization of people— crip, disabled, or queer— by drawing attention to the systemic discrimination still prevalent today. Alison Kafer, a scholar specializing in feminist, queer, and disability theory, emphasizes that, historically, disability has been considered from the point of view of nature rather than culture and has been depoliticized as a result. She proposes a “political/relational model” in which “the problem of disability is solved not through medical intervention or surgical normalization but through social change and political transformation.”² 2 - Alison Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 6. We understand that this claim is not intended to criticize medical or technological alternatives offered to people with disabilities but to point out the need to first change our ableist concept of the world. In this issue, we are interested precisely in the work of social, political, and cultural transformation, and we focus on the ways in which crip authors and artists address the different challenges they face.

We will see how crip theory and aesthetics offer artists with disabilities non-normative ways of expressing the unique temporalities of their experience, designated here as “crip time,”³ 3 - Kafer offers an insightful definition of crip time: “We can understand the flexibility of crip time as being not only an accommodation to those who need ‘more’ time but also, and perhaps especially, a challenge to normative and normalizing expectations of pace and scheduling.” Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip, 27. by helping them to carve out a path in the ableist art world. Not surprisingly, their works also critique the oculocentric and ableist approaches of cultural institutions and museums. Despite making some effort at inclusion, these entities are still shaped by neoliberal standards of productivity and hypervisibility, imposing a pace that artists struggle to maintain. In response to such obstacles, which also include tokenism and extractive capitalism related to the need to produce art objects, some artists take up activist forms, especially agitprop, to develop practices committed to disability justice. Curators and artists are also trying to slow down the museum experience by introducing the sense of touch or proposing works that challenge biases of an audist or oralist society.

The question of access is, of course, implied in most of the contributions to this issue — access to physical spaces, certainly, but also to knowledge; social, legal, or artistic recognition; healthcare; or financial support. We will see, for example, how the theorizing of crip identity can present barriers to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, “contributing to their marginal position within the broader scope of disability politics,” according to Jessie Myfanwy Stainton. Even the structure of Esse’s platform (a magazine that is not adapted to people with visual or cognitive challenges) immediately reproduces these access constraints. Pointing out the situation does not absolve us of the responsibility to seek out solutions,⁴ 4 - It is therefore possible to access descriptions of the images in the online version of this issue at esse.ca. though we hope to contribute to reflections on this subject with this issue.

Although crip and disability art practices often (but not necessarily) have a political scope, they also have their specific aesthetic existences. Now more than ever, it is vital to listen to what these artists have to tell us about their works, yet without restricting them to their narrative identities. The practices presented here demonstrate a diversity of aesthetic and conceptual approaches. Some artists directly contribute to valorizing crip identities by transforming the representation of disabled or suffering bodies into a strategy of resistance, whereas others, working in more personal ways, stake a claim for “the beauty of curling into oneself.” Still others explore the themes of desire, pleasure, and eroticism, often considered to be absent in the lives of people with disabilities. In all cases, as Chiara Rauli suggests, “the body is no longer the surface of a symptom but becomes a site where vulnerability and desire function as instruments of self-determination.”

Ultimately, what seems to connect all the texts and works in this issue is the hope for a future that is more just for crip and disabled people. This hope, which is often described as activist, sometimes resilient, but never victimizing, is also an expression of “crip joy,” defined by Stainton as “an assertion of futures marked by happiness, rejecting narratives of disability marked solely by lack or suffering.”

Translated by Oana Avasilichioaei