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Chapter 6 - Queer Disability Studies

from Part II - Confluences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2020

By
Alison Kafer
Edited by
Siobhan B. Somerville
Siobhan B. Somerville
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
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Summary

This chapter uses Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s 2009 performance piece “The River” to provide an overview of queer disability studies in the United States. As with many cultural workers writing about disability from queer perspectives, Piepzna-Samarasinha complicates concepts of pride and identity; explores the effects of diagnostic categories; and yearns for queer crip futures. Sexuality plays a significant role in her piece, but Piepzna-Samarasinha avoids a straightforward narrative of liberation; pain, precarity, and debility co-exist here with pleasure. In order to situate Piepzna-Samarasinha’s work within a larger context of disability justice and queer disability studies, the chapter supplements her narratives with those of other contemporary theorists, artists, and activists. With an emphasis on the questions that queer disability studies poses for the study of literature and other cultural forms, the chapter attends to both the resonances and the friction between queer studies and disability studies.

Keywords

Queercripdisabilitychronic painenvironmental justiceLeah Lakshmi Piepzna-SamarasinhaSins Invaliddisability justice
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Queer Studies , pp. 93 - 107
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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References

Further Reading

Anzaldúa, Gloria. “Disability and Identity: An E-mail Exchange and a Few Additional Thoughts.” In The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader, edited by Keating, AnaLouise, 298–302. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brownworth, Victoria A., and Raffo, Susan, eds. Restricted Access: Lesbians on Disability. Seattle, WA: Seal Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Erickson, Loree. “Revealing Femmegimp: A Sex-Positive Reflection on Sites of Shame as Sites of Resistance for People with Disabilities.” Atlantis 31, no. 2 (2007): 42–52.Google Scholar
Galloway, Terry. Mean Little deaf Queer: A Memoir. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Guter, Bob, and Killacky, John R., eds. Queer Crips: Disabled Gay Men and Their Stories. New York: Harrington Park Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Hall, Kim Q., ed. “New Conversations in Feminist Disability Studies.” Special issue, Hypatia 30, no. 1 (Winter 2015): iii–iv, 1–317.Google Scholar
Kim, Eunjung. “Unbecoming Human: An Ethics of Objects.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 21, nos. 2–3 (2015): 295–320.Google Scholar
Lorde, Audre. The Cancer Journals: Special Edition. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute, 1997.Google Scholar
Luczak, Raymond, ed. Eyes of Desire 2: A Deaf GLBT Reader. Minneapolis, MN: Handtype Press, 2007.Google Scholar
McRuer, Robert, and Wilkerson, Abby L., eds. “Desiring Disability: Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies.” Special issue, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 9, nos. 1–2 (2003).Google Scholar
McRuer, Robert, and Mollow, Anna, eds. Sex and Disability. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Patsavas, Alyson. “Recovering a Cripistemology of Pain: Leaky Bodies, Connective Tissue, and Feeling Discourse.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 8, no. 2 (2014): 203–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuels, Ellen. “My Body, My Closet: Invisible Disability and the Limits of Coming-Out Discourse.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 9, nos. 1–2 (2003): 233–55.Google Scholar
Tremain, Shelley, ed. Pushing the Limits: Disabled Dykes Produce Culture. Toronto: Women’s Press, 1996.Google Scholar

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