criptheories-blog

[criptheories-blog]

Theory far from being abstract can help each of us make sense of our lived experiences and provide the tools for considering what is ‘going on’, to help us ask the critical and vital questions of contemporary life. Interrogating ableism means thinking about what being abled means to us today in Britain, the US, Australia, South Africa or Sri Lanka. A focus on ableism can also unpack what is produced phenomenologically by the disability experience.

Fiona Kumari Campbell. “Stalking Ableism: Using Disability to Expose 'Abled' Narcissism.” In the book “Disability and Social Theory: New Developments and Directions.” Chapter 13. Palgrave McMillan

[criptheories-blog]

The pity complex shapes the way in which we read and hear the Gospel narratives about healing. In turn, those healing stories undergird structural violence and problematic power dynamics, especially when they are told and retold in religious spaces that are already well schooled in self-protected helping dynamics and all too inclined to feel sorry for the marginalized. Within an ableist context, stories of miraculous healing are not neutral narratives. They are designed to evoke the power of the healer and showcase the glory of God.19 They are built around rhetorical disparities between before and after. They help crystallize and communicate the tacit assumption that real life begins when disability ends

Juilia Watts Belser and Melanie S. Morrison

“What No Longer Serves Us: Resisting Ableism and Anti-Judaism In New Testament Healing Narratives” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 27.

[criptheories-blog]

Pride is my power and my resilience. It lets me go inside myself and summon forth a solid fist of stone. In this climate, disabled people come under scrutiny on account of our very existence. Something about us provokes revulsion and anxiety.16 In an ableist system that privileges human bodies that perform like perfect, impervious machines, we look like discarded, broken toys. We expose our vulnerability. If you keep your frailties locked up inside for fear of tumbling from the lonely summit of power, I guess you have to police your weakness rigorously, lest word slip out that you could tumble from the bastions of misplaced privilege. Maybe this explains the surfeit of pity. Among disability activists, a staggering amount of energy goes into resisting pity and uprooting the paternalism that undergirds it. Pity is a political issue.17 Expressions of pity require—and reinforce—an unequal power relationship between the person who pities and the object of their pity. Pity represents a powerful threat to the disability rights movement precisely because it masquerades as kindness.

Juilia Watts Belser and Melanie S. Morrison

“What No Longer Serves Us: Resisting Ableism and Anti-Judaism In New Testament Healing Narratives” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 27.