Empire's Other other - Invited Lecture by Nirmala Erevelles

The GWSS 2016-2017 Colloquium Series and the Critical Disability Studies Collaborative proudly present: 

Empire’s Other other:
Thinking Intersectionally in Transnational Contexts

An Invited Lecture by Nirmala Erevelles
Friday, April 14th, 2017 ~ 2:00pm-3:30pm ~ Ford 400.

In this presentation I argue that critical disability studies/crip theory, notwithstanding its intentions to the contrary, continues to privilege THE white bourgeois dis/abled subject. As a result, critical disability studies/crip theory fails to account for its own problematic geopolitical location in the context of Empire and its oppressive relationships with its Other others - both disabled and non-disabled indigenous peoples dis-located from their land and people of color sequestered in “urban ghettoes” in the Global North as well as those who continue to experience imperialism, occupation, neocolonialism, and even death in the Global South. To make this argument, I draw on examples from both local and global contexts: police murders of black citizens in the US, the US State’s response to the Ebola epidemic, the use of drones in Afghanistan/Pakistan, the fire in Bangladesh textile factory, and the Syrian refugee “crisis.” I suggest that disrupting this NORMALIZATION of violence necessitates the simultaneous disruption of ableism AND white heteronormative supremacy.

I begin this paper by engaging Jasbir Puar’s (2009, 2011) intervention in disability studies scholarship by introducing the construct of debility as a departure from the identity- politics morass that consumes the disability rights movements and disability studies. Next I offer a critical re-reading of the political implications of affect, debility, and capacity when applied to narratives of trauma that have the potential to proliferate crip subjectivities in transnational space. Finally, I conclude the paper by offering a modified formulation of Alison Kafer’s (2013) articulation of queer/crip futurity committed to transforming the social relations that separate and connect diverse bodies across decomposing borders in transnational space.

Nirmala Erevelles is a Professor of Social and Cultural Studies in Education at the University of Alabama. Her teaching and research interests lie in the areas of disability studies, critical race theory, transnational feminism, sociology of education and postcolonial studies. She is the author of numerous journal articles and the 2011 monograph Disability and Difference in Global Contexts: Enabling a Transformative Body Politic.

Our endeavors this academic year are supported through the Provost’s Imagine Fund Special Events Grant.
For accommodation or access information, please contact Nick-Brie at guarr003@umn.edu