Brain Fog

Abstract

The article inquires to what degree what is dismissively or apologetically called brain fog, or other cognitive states of difference, must be excluded from the presumed activity of cripistemology, given its active suppression particularly within academic spaces, including disability studies. In turning to cripping partiality, it attends to the concomitant importance of addressing questions of racialization and decolonization.Introduction: Do People Still Say Toke?As the special issues of the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies on cripistemologies went into production, was invited to give a keynote at New York University at the cripistemologies conference organized by Lisa Duggan and Mara Mills in anticipation of this publishing event. was grateful to be able to attend, as for some time had doubted that could. What first thought to describe as extenuating circumstances in a prefatory disclaimer, realized would have to be treated quite differently. Just two days earlier, had gotten stoned-for the first time in than ten years. think the word is toke. took a toke, or toked. Dictionary.com says could say, I toked some grass. So it is. It was a great pleasure. My toke did not choke, as they sometimes do, by inducing fear and paranoia; instead, had a lovely giggle about nothing at all, or at least nothing that can remember, and eased my way into and then out of sleep with nary a worry about how was going to arrive at a good keynote that coming Friday. just kept repeating the phrase my friends and had come up with the first time ever got stoned at age 23, whose mysteries am still trying to unpack twenty years later. The phrase is more ice cream than you can remember.Yes, live in California where flora-including the grass-are various and plentiful and are so weird they resemble fauna. And yes, the west coast of the United States has a long tradition of experimentation, of knowing how to go cosmic, with not a small dose of orientalism. That is all true; am a product of my environment. But the most remarkable thing about getting stoned was the next day, Monday. After a miserable six weeks of ongoing migraines and nausea, accompanied by wiggy visual and auditory distortions, suddenly felt better, suggesting that getting stoned had been exactly the right treatment. For the respite, thank my friend Angie, who spirited me a leftover joint from a prescription used to complement her chemotherapy the previous year. So, in fact, not only did feel fortunate to be invited to give the Cripistemologies keynote, was also fortunate to have such a support network that could travel to the conference, and even fortunate to have come up with a few things to say.The migraines announced themselves with a visual signature: if looked just to the left of someone, could make that person simply disappear, amid shifting zipper lines within my field of vision. Soon after this aura came the extraordinary pain, and then came the sequence of rolling migraines. My visits to doctors and acupuncturists, my ingestion of meds, and my otherwise widespread attempts did little to stem the tide of migraines. In that six-week period there was exactly one two-day stretch in which was free of major head pain. had to email excuses in advance, when was able to read a screen and not throw up at the same time, or retrospectively apologize if had not been able. Even harder was that it seemed extremely difficult to both before and after the migraine itself. Feeling stupid is a phrase do not use, for its palpable anti-disability sentiment, its violent rejection of a particular cognitive range of being. Yet what better phrase is there, sometimes, for my force of disappointment and self-repudiation in comparison to what expected of myself-particularly in this type of academic employ?Feeling and reporting that I can't think, in fact, is something have undergone since was young. …