Zoe, a disabled queer and Chicanx untenured faculty member, realized in their first year as a professor that one individual in their department made really sexist and ableist remarks about the medieval women they were both studying. Zoe reported these comments to the department chair who, alongside other faculty members, started suggesting Zoe may be the problem or that Zoe may be paranoid. This constant danger of blowing things out of proportion induced a constant process of self-checking to make sure they hadn’t blown things out of proportion. In the case of Zoe the ambient uncertainty of being seen as blowing things out of proportion induced this harmful behavior of self checking.

Example: Zoe and Ambient Harm

Price contends that based on the discussion of harm, and the need to explicitly include harm in our discussions of space that we must also include harm in our discussions of ambient uncertainty, because sigificant harm can occur through ambient uncertainty.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Foregrounding this harm that is erased threatens not just non-disabled but also settler-colonial and white-supremacist framing of time and space. This is because settler-colonialism, white-supremacy, and ableism are built into the terrain and spaces we exist within and by centreing that violence currently existing, we can't fully unpack that violence without paying attention to the histories of violence and harm that have made our institutions and the role reconciliation and repair need to play in those practices.

Foregrounding Harm, White Supremacy, and Settler-colonialism

Some participants noted that there was a sense of risk or vulnerability around disability that came from a sense of general opinion of people within the institution coming from features of the space around them, rather than any single instance of something being said or done to them.

Ambient Uncertainty

Price, M. (2024). Crip Spacetime. Duke University Press.

Crip Spacetime

Settler colonialism is presented as, in contrast to colonialism, a more durable colonial formation since colonialism was often seen by European powers as ultimately temporary until colonized people would be steeped enough in colonial traditions to run their affairs independently. Settler colonialism then differentiates colonial projects that work to both supplant the societal formation that came before them and change the space they are within to their needs. Additionally, unlike colonial projects, settler colonial projects are generally seen as able to create new colonial and settler colonial projects on their own. 

Settler colonialism

For the Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians), palena - or place boundaries - consist of ahupua'a, land subdivisions that traditionally extended from the top of a mountain range to the sea and traditionally include the variety of resources therein. For Kanaka Maoli who observe ahupua'a systems, individuals note which ahupua'a they are from, distances can be measured in the number of ahupua'a you would pass through, and ahupua'a would be used to denote claims to resources. The impositions of miles and mile markers, or towns and citites, were used in the colonization of Hawai'i, thus to truly imagine a decolonized Hawai'i, we cannot just address the harm of indigenous land dispossesion but also note the systems of measurement and colonial understandings of townships that made that possible.

Example - Ahupua'a and Kanaka Understandings of Space

White supremacist and settler colonial approaches to space are inevitably and inherently violent because of their grounding in ownership and control. In settler colonial systems, ownership of land is often centered, so that the ownership of land is the basis on which all over relationships are formed. 

Land Ownership and Control

Eve Tuck and Wayne K. Yang trouble how far this unpacking of the university as a colonial space within projects for access at the university can truly go, because of the concept they coin as incommensurability. Incommensurability highlights that there are portions of anti-oppressive struggles that simply cannot be aligned or allied despite overarching solidarities, and serves as an acknowledgement that decolonization will require a change in the social fabric and order of how we currently operate.

Incommensurability

Ambient Uncertainty and Harm

Price talks to Irene, an assistant professor, who noted that in a college-sponsored survey more than half of professors at the college she taught at noted they thought that it was an unfair advantage for students to receive accommodations. This lead Irene to decide she was not going to talk about or disclose her own disability to her colleagues. Similar uncertainty lead to other faculty who did disclose their disability to either not disclose via email so that there wouldn't be a paper trail or live in fear that their disability disclosure could impact their ability to get tenure.

Example of Ambient Uncertainty (Irene)

For faculty and graduate students who are immigrants, there is not just anxiety about how disability disclosure would impact their job but, also whether it could impact their ability to get a visa, or even get accommodations and disability services back in their home country, depending on whether they are diagnosed. Additionally, ambient uncertainty is compounded for scholars who are Black, Indigenous, or otherwise a person of colour, and scholars of marginalized genders as ambient uncertainty compounds with other microaggressions and previous harms of the academic system. 

Ambient Uncertainty within Intersecting Systems of Oppression

Price notes that consequences do not have to occur for ambient uncertainty to exist as long as the risk of consequences happening is always there. 

Ambient Uncertainty and Consequences

Ambient uncertainty can also occur across time; for instance, previous marginalizing experiences can lead to the perception of a consistent risk of that marginalization occuring again. Alternatively, previous marginalization (for instance, not being accommodated at work) can lead to more marginalization (for instance, experiencing poverty).

Ambient Uncertainty and Time

Price notes ambient uncertainty can also come from the precarity of the possibility of current supports (like accommodations or disability related health benefits) suddenly disappearing because of either bureaucratic redetermination of if someone is eligible or caps on the among of a resource an individual is allowed to use.

Learn Before

Related

Learn After