{"id":188,"date":"2021-11-19T14:45:57","date_gmt":"2021-11-19T19:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.ryerson.ca\/digitaldisabilitystudies\/?post_type=chapter&p=188"},"modified":"2022-02-28T16:32:46","modified_gmt":"2022-02-28T21:32:46","slug":"cripping-the-future","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/digitaldisabilitystudies\/chapter\/cripping-the-future\/","title":{"raw":"3.3 Cripping the Future","rendered":"3.3 Cripping the Future"},"content":{"raw":"\"\"\r\n

Cripping<\/h1>\r\n
What do we mean by \u201ccripping\u201d the future? What does it mean to \u201ccrip\u201d something?<\/div>\r\nCrip theory, like disability studies, calls on us to critically examine normative ideas about disability. It does this, however, from a particular position: crip theory refuses to view normativity as, itself, a desirable thing that disabled people should assimilate into. In this module, we will be looking at depictions of the future where discrimination is eliminated through the elimination of difference. Crip theory protects us, ideologically, from this imagined future. It does so by inviting us to view reality in different ways\u2014specifically, in ways that are aligned with embodied experiences of disability. So, instead of relieving the future of discrimination by removing disability from the future, Crip theory crips the future itself, to make it a place\u2014firstly in thought, and then in practise\u2014where disability can flourish (Kafer, 2013, pp. 26-27).\r\n\r\nCrip theory, as demonstrated by its name, involves a re-appropriation of the term \u201cCrip\u201d. Robert McRuer (2019) writes on the use of Crip as both noun and verb:\r\n
\u201cAs a noun or adjective, \u2018crip\u2019 is of course a flamboyant reclamation, one that disabled activists, artists, and theorists have long used to signify solidarity and resistance\u2026As a verb: \u2018To crip\u2019, like \u2018to queer\u2019, gets at processes that unsettle, or processes that make strange or twisted.\u201d\r\n(p. 134)<\/blockquote>\r\nAnything can be [pb_glossary id=\"198\"]cripped[\/pb_glossary]. Later on in this module, we will ask you to crip science fiction. To prepare for this cripping-to-come, we will look at some other ways that the future has been cripped by scholars in the field.\r\n

Cripping Time<\/h1>\r\nTime has been thought about in many different ways by many different scholars working in disability studies and crip theory. In the following video (IRTG Diversity, 2021), starting at 4:30 and ending at 6:15,<\/strong> Robert McRuer describes how Crip time is thought of in disability communities and by different scholars:\r\n\r\n[embed]https:\/\/youtu.be\/S23ddSMxkc8?t=270&end=375[\/embed]\r\n\r\nDrawing on the work of prior disability studies scholars, Alison Kafer (2013) asks us to consider what it would mean to re-examine the future and the progression of time from the perspective of disability. Kafer brings up one of the common usages of \u2018crip time\u2019, especially in disabled communities: \u201cRecognizing some people\u2019s need for \u201cmore\u201d time is probably the manifestation of crip time most familiar to those of us in the academy\u201d. \u201cBut,\u201d Kafer continues, \u201c\u2018crip time\u2019 means more than this kind of blanket extension; it is, rather, a reorientation to time\u201d (pp. 26 - 27). What\u2019s involved in this reorientation?\r\n\r\nTime has a very close relationship to how disability has been, and is, thought about. The medical model of disability frequently generates timelines that identify when a disability was acquired and how long it will take to be treated or cured. This particular relation of time to disability, Kafer (2013) writes, is embedded in a series of questions commonly posed to disabled people,\r\n
\u201cWere you born that way? How much longer do you have to live this way? How long before they invent a cure? How long will a cure take? How soon before you recover?\u201d\r\n(p. 28)<\/blockquote>\r\nAlison Kafer assigns the term \u201ccurative time\u201d to these hypothetical or real \u2018dates\u2019 \u2014 the date when one\u2019s ability was lost, the date when one can expect to recover \u2014 that are embedded in these questions and the \u2018medical\u2019 perspective more generally. Kafer\u2019s careful construction of \u2018curative time\u2019 chooses the term \u2018curative\u2019 rather than \u2018cure\u2019 so as to not stigmatize the desire for cure:\r\n
\u201cI use \u201ccurative\u201d rather than \u201ccure\u201d to make clear that I am concerned here with compulsory able-bodiedness\/able-mindedness, not with individual sick and disabled people\u2019s relationships to particular medical interventions; a desire for a cure is not necessarily an anti-crip or anti-disability position. I am speaking here about a curative imaginary, an understanding of disability that not only expects and assumes intervention but also cannot imagine or comprehend anything other than intervention.\u201d\r\n(p. 27)<\/blockquote>\r\nKafer\u2019s notion of \u2018curative time\u2019 is, itself, a cripping of time, in that it draws our attention to the timelines embedded in normative approaches to disability in a way that makes these timelines visible in a new light. \u2018Curative time\u2019 simultaneously generates a new concept and identifies something that was previously invisible: this generative process of making taken-for-granted things unfamiliar is fundamental to cripping.\r\n\r\nKafer provides us with many other ways of thinking about \u2018cripping time\u2019 or \u2018crip time\u2019. It is worth repeating that Kafer is not the inventor of the term \u2018crip time\u2019 or the first to explore the relationship between time, the future, and disability. Cripping time, importantly, is not a singular way of thinking about time, but something that is done to normative ideas about time, to prevent disabled people and crip theory from having to conform or concede those (normative) ideas:\r\n
\u201cCrip time is\u2026 time not just expanded but exploded; it requires reimagining our notions of what can and should happen in time, or recognizing how expectations of \u201chow long things take\u201d are based on very particular minds and bodies. We can then understand the flexibility of crip time as being not only an accommodation to those who need \u201cmore\u201d time but also, and perhaps especially, a challenge to normative and normalizing expectations of pace and scheduling. Rather than bend disabled bodies and minds to meet the clock, crip time bends the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds.\u201d (Kafer, 2013, pp. 27)<\/blockquote>\r\n

Cripping Technoscience<\/h1>\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"400\"]\"A<\/a> 3D-printed toggle for Xbox\/Playstation controller button by Caleb Kraft. Image Source: Prusaprinters, licensed under CC-BY-NC 4.0<\/a>[\/caption]\r\n\r\nIn the \"Crip Technoscience Manifesto\", Aimie Hamraie and Kelly Fritsch (2019) outline four commitments to the cripping of science, technology, and political life (p. 2). The theoretical area where these three subjects (science, technology, political life) interact with and influence one another is referred to by the authors as \u2018technoscience\u2019 (hence the title of their manifesto).\r\n\r\nThe relationship between disabled people and technology has historically been characterized as one rooted in \u2018need\u2019 and passive recipience. According to this \u201cmainstream\u201d view, Hamraie and Fritsch (2019) write, technoscience is a \u201cfield of traditional expert relations and practises concerned with designing for disabled people rather than with<\/em> or by<\/em> disabled people\u201d (pp. 3-4, emphasis in original).\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"382\"]\"3-D<\/a> Can Holder by Nestor9dwis. Image source: Thingiverse, licensed under CC-BY-NC 4.0<\/a>[\/caption]\r\n\r\nCripping technoscience means altering how we perceive the relationship between disability, science, and technology. It also means uncovering concealed aspects of the relationship that already exists between these three areas. The manifesto foregrounds the active and creative relationship that disabled people have to the technology they utilize, and frequently reminds us of the significant ways that technology has been used by disabled people in political protest, in order to illustrate a central principle of crip technoscience:\r\n
\u201cCrips are not merely formed or acted on by the world \u2014 we are engaged agents of remaking.\u201d\r\n(Hamraie & Fritsch, 2019, p. 7)<\/blockquote>\r\nBelow are the four commitments of crip technoscience as described by Hamraie and Fritsch (2019). Click each concept to expand the accordion.\r\n\r\n[h5p id=\"47\"]<\/span>","rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Cripping<\/h1>\n
What do we mean by \u201ccripping\u201d the future? What does it mean to \u201ccrip\u201d something?<\/div>\n

Crip theory, like disability studies, calls on us to critically examine normative ideas about disability. It does this, however, from a particular position: crip theory refuses to view normativity as, itself, a desirable thing that disabled people should assimilate into. In this module, we will be looking at depictions of the future where discrimination is eliminated through the elimination of difference. Crip theory protects us, ideologically, from this imagined future. It does so by inviting us to view reality in different ways\u2014specifically, in ways that are aligned with embodied experiences of disability. So, instead of relieving the future of discrimination by removing disability from the future, Crip theory crips the future itself, to make it a place\u2014firstly in thought, and then in practise\u2014where disability can flourish (Kafer, 2013, pp. 26-27).<\/p>\n

Crip theory, as demonstrated by its name, involves a re-appropriation of the term \u201cCrip\u201d. Robert McRuer (2019) writes on the use of Crip as both noun and verb:<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a noun or adjective, \u2018crip\u2019 is of course a flamboyant reclamation, one that disabled activists, artists, and theorists have long used to signify solidarity and resistance\u2026As a verb: \u2018To crip\u2019, like \u2018to queer\u2019, gets at processes that unsettle, or processes that make strange or twisted.\u201d
\n(p. 134)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anything can be