By Gin María
“What, then, is crip spacetime? Why crip? […] [C]ripping means “a way of getting things done—moving minds, mountains, or maybe just moving in place (dancing)—by infusing the disruptive potential of disability into normative spaces and interactions” (Price, 2015).
The project I’m embarking on as Junior Researcher is about communicating a design history of crip culture, with the hope wish is for this collection to be played with by disabled people as we continue to imagine and create crip futures. I am curating a selection of objects, places, tools, and ideas. In my preocupation with making the “end product” archive comprehensive and accessible for others I initially got stuck. I was focusing so much on the final form the project would take, that I became quite rigid and strict in my way of working. During some conversations at ETHOS lab, including regular meetings, pitch presentations, and playfairs, I was reminded to allow time for discovery, for more relaxed curiosity, and for play.
Actually Cripping the Methodology
During a very intense morning of reading and collecting my various notes on crip time I had an abrupt stop. Wasn’t it ironic that I was trying to create a project on critical access and crip creativity, yet I kept “pushing through” illness and stressing myself out to meet some strict deadlines and modes of working that I had imposed on myself? I took a break to rest and came back refreshed and determined to find ways in which I could incorporate crip spacetime and crip time into my way of working. If I was designing and executing this project in inaccessible ways to myself, then was I not missing the point?
In the text “On Still Reading like a Depressed Transsexual” Cameron Awkward-Rich defines crip time as “a means of describing the temporal dimensions of ableist oppression and the constriction of disability under capitalism, as well as a set of potentially resistant, creative, nonnormative ways of inhabiting socially patterned time that are often necessitated by embodyminded disability and nurtured by crip community”. referencing Kafer (2013) and Samuels and Freeman (2021). Next, I outline how crip time is showing up beyond my theoretical framework, in pratice. This is explored in two relational spaces, that with myself, and that with others in my community.
In Relation to Myself
Cripping time, as a practice, is contrasted with “curative time” which exists within an imaginarium that exclusively expects and assumes intervention or overcoming of disability (Kafer, 2013). Since my early school years I have been trying to “catch up” with “curative” or “normative” time, as I constantly felt “behind” my peers. Normative understandings of time seem to move at a speed that is hard to keep up with. Like in a race, metaphorical sprinting can create the momentary illusion that I am fine and I actually could always run this fast. If only I just figured out and implemented enough “hacks” and accommodations and learned how to push myself. This has led to a cycle of constant burnout, as intermittent sprinting is not a sustainable strategy long-term.
How can I re-learn to listen and respect the rhythms of my bodymind? This project is becoming an experiment for practicing living otherwise (Awkward-Rich, 2023) and embodying crip values in how I treat and work with myself. In Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice and Art Activism of Sins Invalid, Shayda Kafai explains the principles of Disability Justice as articulated by the art collective Sins Invalid. The sixth principle, Sustainability, urges us to listen and learn from our bodyminds, to “pace ourselves, individually and collectively […] to help us move away from urgency” (Kafai, 2021 and Sins Invalid, 2019). I have been practicing this by taking hand-written notes to allow time and space to process. Giving myself more time than is considered “normal” to absorb material. Allowing myself space to wonder in a freer way so I can make room for play.
This also includes working on accepting that I will often get confused, or that my emails or what I say might not always be easy for others to understand. Taking away the shame of asking for clarification, of knowing that communication processes might require more effort and intention. That advocating for my access needs and ways of being is oftentimes a negotiation with myself, to accept that I do move at a different pace than the academic calendar or curative time demands.
In Relation to Others
In the Disabled Academics Study the researchers found that strong relationships are mandatory for disabled academics (Price, 2024). This non-optional requirement of disabled people often makes academia completely inaccessible for many. I want to discuss about the ways in which crip relationships have taught me about crip time through solidarity and kinship.
Historically, living and working in crip time has been an isolating experience. I have come out of this lonely position through knitting webs of care, being open about my disabilities, and working with disability culture in my work. These relationships are the ones who often reorient me and bring me back to the “time zone” of crip time. Through living alongside other disabled people I witness and learn from them; when they say no to a meeting because they need to rest or go to a medical appointment, when they ask for accommodations, when they ask me for tips for a bureaucratic process I went through, etc. Sharing in school or work contexts has brought me closer to other disabled people in ways that feel vulnerable, but that are deeply meaningful. We inhabit crip spacetime in hard moments, but also in the slow, everyday practices of working alongside each other (a.k.a. body doubling), learning with each other through bookclubs, and sharing resources.
I am also part of other access-oriented relationships through being part the Junior Researcher programme at ETHOS Lab. I have been able to rest in crip time through disability culture practices even before our first meeting, as we were invited by the Lab team to share our access riders. The first part of this project has had rhythms and patterns that allow space for crip time to emerge through flexibility, creativity, and collaboration. Working together with everyone else who is part of this programme has been grounding, slow, and has helped me pace myself within crip spacetime, one experiment and iteration at a time.
Bibliography
Awkward-Rich, C. (2023). On Still Reading Like a Depressed Transsexual. In M. Mills & R. Sanchez (Eds.), Crip Authorship: Disability as Method (pp. 121–130). NYU Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.13944206.15
Kafai, S. (2021). Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice and Art Activism of Sins Invalid (1st ed.). Arsenal Pulp Press.
Kafer, A. (2013). Feminist, Queer, Crip. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Price, Margaret. 2015. “The Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain.” Hypatia 30 (1): 268–84. https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12127.
Price, M. (2024). Accompaniment: Uncanny Entanglements of Bodyminds, Embodied Technologies, and Objects. In Crip Spacetime: Access, Failure, and Accountability in Academic Life (pp. 134–168). Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.14638157.8
Samuels, E. and Freeman, E. (2021) Crip Temporalities Special Issue, South Atlantic Quarterly 120 (2).
Sins Invalid (2019) Skin, Tooth, and Bone—The Basis of Our Movement Is Our People. A Disability Justice Primer.