SLOW: Crip Theory, Dyslexia and the Borderlands of Disability and Ablebodiedness

Abstract

What is ablebodiedness? When do “invisible” disabilities become visible? How can performance complicate notions of ability and disability? Although theories of disability are starting to destabalize a false dichotomy between able bodied and disabled bodied, I find myself, as a person with dyslexia, in the borderlands of disability and ablebodiedness. For me this borderland is a place of contradiction and ambiguity, plagued with a cognitive impairment and blessed with kinesthetic intelligence. Questions of intersectional identities, identity politics, disability activism and disciplined scholarship are all complicated by the hybridity of the borderlands. The fluidity inherent in crip (theory) and its attention to the cultural production and the performativity of ablebodiedness, can provide a framework for analysis that embraces the isolating spaces of the borderlands. This project, which consists of the performance piece “SLOW” and written analysis, theorizes a crip performance methodology that moves beyond disability visibly marked on the body and argues

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