#cripple magic

   I will never be fixed, cured;      I am not broken.      You lower the curtain,      But I refuse to dis/appear.

Show magic and illusionism makes visible the conflation between disability and the necessity of cure (Dearborn, 2008). Sawing a person in half, filling their body with knives, draws upon human anxieties of be(com)ing disabled. Restoring this body, making it once again “whole,” alleviates these anxieties. We are given reassurance that disability can be easily reversed, cured, fixed. At the same time, disability and disablement are presented as a tragedy, a process that makes us “less than,” and a state to seek recovery from.

Drawing upon the work of Kafer (2013), Morrigan (2017) refers to the concept of curative time – the obligatory orienting of disability toward a cure. Disabled people exist within curative time because of the pervasiveness of the medical model of disability, which understands disability as a form of bio/medical defect, from which people can be cured through medical intervention.

People are drawn to cure for many reasons; treatments can help us minimize symptoms, pain, and the impact of dis/ableism and (in)accessibility in our lives. In fact, the very idea of cure can provide hope for the future (personal communication, 2019). Clare (2014) describes how the idea of restoration can be a powerful idea when dealing with loss.

However, the issue of curative time is how it conceptualizes dis/ability. Disability is understood as a temporary state, which exists only until the right “cure” can be purchased, found, or developed. In other words, disability is only understood in relation to a cure. This forces us to live in anticipation of the future, placing our lives on hold. By viewing disability as a state of deficiency, the potential strengths of our lived experiences and corporeal realities are made invisible; like the magician’s assistant, they are made to disappear.

Magic helps us grapple with the ontological (ways of being) and epistemological (ways of knowing) questions of living (Bailey, 2006), allowing for meaning-making and providing possibility for creating change. In my opinion, magic does not seek to change ourselves but rather the world around us. Magic does not allow for cure, but rather survival.

What if the sawing through, or stabbing of flesh is not metaphor for disability, but rather disablement? According to the social model of disability, we are not disabled by internal and innate difference, but rather through environments that are not built with people like us in mind. What if the cure we are looking for is the cure for discrimination, disablement, dis/ableism, (in)accessibility, and oppression? Which spells can we use to reverse the process of disablement – the flight of stairs, the glaring fluorescent lights, the people who look/move away when we stim, shout, or talk to people they can't see? What would it take to make dis/ableism visible – and then make it disappear?

References

Bailey, M. D. (2006). The disenchantment of magic: Spells, charms, and superstition in early European witchcraft literature. The American Historical Review, 111(2), 383-404.

Clare, E. (2014). Meditations on natural worlds, disabled bodies, and a politics of cure. Material ecocriticism, 204-218.

Dearborn, K. (2008). Intersecting Illusions: Performing Magic, Disability, and Gender. In Performing Magic on the Western Stage (pp. 177-196). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

Kafer, A. (2013). Feminist, queer, crip. Indiana University Press.

~Kokiri’s Potion for Rheumatism~

ingredients:

3 pieces of fresh ginger

1 tsp of tumeric

a pinch of mugwort

a sprig of catnip

a squirt of lemon

honey(optional)

a tea bag

That’s...a big question.I suppose, personally, that I would like people to realise that we’re not to be pitied, nor regarded as ‘brave’. There are as many kinds of disabled people as there are able-bodied. We are the planet’s largest minority, because of this - there are disabled folk of every race, sexuality, gender, creed or political affiliation, and there always have been.

Yet we’re also one of the most affected by structural and societal inequality which places us at the crossroads of statistically poorest and worst quality of life - and some of that is not political or social but practical.Some of us are able to work, to participate in the rhythms of industrial-capitalist society. Many are not, so the traditional narratives of ‘success’ and ‘health’ and ‘happiness’ do not always apply, stranding a chunk of us in a battle for survival against depression and self-loathing because the metrics we are taught to measure ourselves by do not and cannot apply in our daily lives.ourselves.Our embodiments are rarely regarded as ‘normal’, because it is that very Difference which snags people’s attention first. This often means that people are put off speaking to us directly, often preferring to speak with those who accompany us, or infantilising us because we disrupt their social patterning.

 Human habitations are designed for the majority, obviously, which means things which are easily bypassed for the able-bodied are not for the disabled. That uneven pavement, that narrow doorway can become a dealbreaker. Simple little things like wet floors can become literally lethal.

Because we are such a large minority, there is no one-size fits all solution to the problems we face. Therefore, in order to work on them, we have to communicate. Too many people assume we are not intelligent enough to know our needs, when in fact the reverse is true - we live every day with our limitations and have often had many years experience of what we can and cannot do, and what we need.

 We have thoughts, dreams and desires like everyone else - and if you make an honest effort to listen to us, we will tell you them. Just like anyone else would. By default, the structure of the world is not set up to maximise our agency, so some of us are very fucking angry. Others not. That’s the key thing.We are People, but we’ve had several thousand years of not being recognised as such, so please, take the time to listen to us and not assume anything, and when we tell you that something is so, believe us 

I wish I could wave a magic wand and erase the simple fact that some people are afraid, disgusted, ignorant or just plain hateful towards the disabled. I can’t, because honestly the roots of these reactions are down to human pattern recognition systems. But those reactions can be overcome, if people want to, once they start seeing the disabled as People.And like any group one is not part of, one can still fuck up. I’ve had friends I’ve known for over a decade make unthinking comments which were not only ableist, but revealed they hadn’t thought through the implications of my disability. They love me dearly, and I them, but they assumed certain things and got twitchy when I called them on it, which circles back to the believe us comment.Understand then, that in order to function, as you see us, we may have to do things in spectacularly different manners, we may, in a sense live in a different world to you - what you might see as a flat floor, someone in a wheelchair or using crutches or other mobility aids may not see as such. To get out of bed of a morning, we may have to take half an hour to do what would take you five minutes.

Stella Young, Comedian and Disability Activist, who died at 32 recently, Her letter to her 80 year old self.