Critical Thought

This section of literature is looking at critical thought and scholarly text. Authors of these writings are professors, graduate students, and professionals who look at the intersections of queer disability critically in order to spawn new ideas, practices, understandings while also critiquing systems of oppression, limited resources, and who occupies space. 

The critical thought surrounding disability is political, cultural, and social - thus when studied in an academic capacity it is interdisciplinary, meaning it crosses over and interacts with other fields of study.

This includes: Crip Theory, Black Disability Studies, Feminist Disability Studies, Mad Studies, Post Colonial Disability Studies, Urban Justice/Studies, Women’s Studies, Social Justice.

Crip theory and studies talk of current, past, and future experiences at the intersection of queer disability. In Alison Kafer’s book, Feminist, Queer, Crip (2002) introduces her thoughts through the vein of imagine futures by saying, “those who have been most vocal in imagining my future as ripe with opportunities have been other disabled people, who are themselves resisting negative interpretations of their futures. They tell stories of lives lived fully, and my future, according to them, involves not isolation and pathos but community and possibility: I could write books, teach, love, and be loved: I might raise children or become a community organizer or make art; I could engage in activist struggles for the rights of disabled people or get involved in other movements for social justice.”

• Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (2006) written by Robert McRuer is an essential read to understanding crip theory as McRuer is the first to analyze the overlap fields of queer theory and disability studies. McRuer argues that both these fields of study are centrally concerned with bodies, pleasures, and identities and investigates how dominant and marginal bodily and sexual identities are composed.  
• The Right to Maim - Debility, Capacity, Disability (2017) written by Jasbir K. Puar examines the liberal state, sexuality, and biopolitics of how we understand disability. Puar focuses on how bodily injury and social exclusion brought on by political and economic factors is a major disruptor into our understanding of disability and its categories. Her analysis interrogates Israel’s policies towards Palestine - as such to conclude that Israel uses frameworks to designate Palestinians as available for injury and debilitate the population en mass. The investigation and understanding Puar creates is a thorough investigation of the impacts of imperialism and racialized capitalism onto the disabled body and all the intersections that come with it.
• Queering Urban Justice: Queer of Colour Formations in Toronto (2018) is a collection of texts edited by Jin Haritaworn, Ghaida Moussa, Syrus Marcus Ware, and Rio Rodriguez focusing on queering urban justice, focusing specifically on queers of colours. For the purposes of exploring queer disability, I defer to chapter six: “Calling a Shrimp a Shrimp: A Black Queer Intervention in Disability studies” by Nwadiogo Ejiogu and Syrus Marcus Ware. This chapter is a critique of institutional disability studies and the exclusion of intersectionality and holistic care, as well as its propagation of poor treatment towards disabled individuals. 
• Not a New Problem: Violence in the Lives of Disabled Women (2018) edited by Michelle Owen, Diane Hiebert-Murphy and Janice Ristock foreword by Emily Ternette examines the experiences of disabled Canadian women and lack of access to services. The contributors to this collection of writings look at the intersection of gender, sexuality, Indigeneity, race, ethnicity and class. 
• The New Lesbian Studies: Into the Twenty-First Century (1996) edited by Bonnie Zimmerman and Toni A. H. McNaron, with a foreword by Margaret Cruikshank, challenges the limits of lesbian studies while also praising what current academia existed at the time. This is a collection of forty essays divided into six parts with emphasis on theory, practice, and activism. Among these forty essays, the essay by Barbara Hillyer “Teaching Feminist Lesbian Disability Studies” is the only one narrowed in on disability. Hillyer’s essay reflects on her experience in teaching a focused course on women and disability and within that finding a queer intersection inherent in the content.

Something these five texts hold in common is their root in academia. While these texts are fantastic for critical thought, interventions of academic texts, explorations of experience and theory - they are limited in their accessibility to the general public both in terms of physical availability and delivery. 

Academic texts often have an expectation that the reader has a base understanding of what is being written about and many terms go without explanation and without full context. This can make the text inaccessible and then limit its reader base. Access to these texts is also a discussion within itself, as these texts can be expensive or behind a paywall only accessible through University or College institutions. Thus, the importance of these being in an archive preserves them outside the university context - allowing for a wider reader base and preservation of the critical theories that aim to explain, treat, and critique the disabled queer experience.