PUAR, Jasbir. 2017. The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability. Durham: Duke University Press. 296 pp.

Crip Theory and the Subject of Abledness

“…Second, I consider the benefits of crip theory, which include: cripping as a political/methodological tool; coming out crip; crip futurities; developing a theoretical language that resists abledness, ableism, and normativity; troubling the distinction between abledness and disabledness; the power of reclaiming injurious words; and finally, crip's intersectional political agenda. Each of these benefits convey the utility and efficacy of crip worlds and futures, which as I argue throughout, promote different socialities unencumbered by investments with pathology, independence, self-mastery, ableism, invulnerability, productivity, and neoliberal formations (Introna 2023;McRuer 2006;Puar 2017).…”

“…Just as crip theory is co-implicated with dismantling heteronormativity via its resonances with queer theory, crip theorists likewise note ableism's entanglements with whiteness, settler colonialism, racism, capitalism, classism, sanism, and patriarchy (Smilges 2023). Crip thought continues to be transgressive and radical and draws upon a range of abolitionist (Ben-Moshe 2020), environmental and non-human (Ray and Sibara 2017), posthuman (Goodley, Lawthom & Runswick-Cole 2014), and postcolonial (Puar 2017) perspectives that seek to upend the violent status quo. The intersectional legacies of disability studies and queer theory continue to chart crip theory's intersectional trajectory.…”

“…Notwithstanding the focus on dis/ability politics, part of this political project must also involve waging conflict against broader oppressive structures-neoliberalism, for instance-that create and perpetuate the violent status quo and its deleterious impacts on disabled and other marginalised bodyminds Puar 2017). Neoliberalism, for example, consolidates certain (problematic) onto-epistemologies of dis/ability .…”

“…Difficult questions-such as the meaning of disability and who disability studies includes-remain intractable (Söder 2009;Kristiansen, Vehmas & Shakespeare 2009). Disability (and its politics) is heterogenous rather than homogenous (Katsui & Swartz 2021;Puar 2017), and what is progressive or regressive is contextual as multiple readings and interpretations are always available. Democratising crip theory does not involve imposing an epistemological framework but instead imagining possibility and inviting reflection, conversation, and critique.…”