Excludable types incite internalized ableism and make structures of ableism in academia harder to perceive. It is not just that every disabled individual within academia understands and operates within crip spacetime it is that crip spacetime is hard to perceive but  is continuously coming into existence and constituted through agents, objects, spaces and how disabled academics are and others in academia are interacting with them.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Since being placed as a excludable type shifts the focus to the disabled person experiencing inaccess as the point of inaccess it can lead to individuals questioning whether they are deserving of access to a space, if they are using their accommodations enough, if they are doing enough to 'be less of a burden' - this is a form of internalized ableismm

Excludable Types and Internalized Ableism 

Price points out that the verbs "to welcome" and "to include" are meant to have an object, someone or something has to be welcomed to be included. Yet, often these words are used as adjectives, e.g. a welcoming school or an inclusive workplace. This change in speech puts the focus on the space and leaves ambiguity about who is being welcomed, who they are being welcomed by, and why they are being welcomed.

Verb Usage around Welcoming and Inclusion

Price situates crip spacetime as precarious. Crip spacetime is in part precarious because of the constant negotiation required between those operating within crip spacetime and those around you. Price points to the idea that one could answer the questions "are you sure you really need that?" or "but why don't you just ask for help?" one hundred times a day without closing the gap of understanding between individuals inhabiting crip spacetime and those who are not around accommodations and how to best create access.

Precarity and Crip Spacetime

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

Crip Spacetime

Internalized ableism is when disabled individuals internalize the idea that people's bodies and minds are assigned value based on being perceived as being non-disabled, or "normal." Often these valuations are based on individuals appearance, their ability to produce work at the volume and capacity that is expected by others, their ability to excel in societally valued settings and their ability to behave in ways that are societally accepted.  

Internalized Ableism

Crip Spacetime and Excludable Types

Price offers that the acronym DEI is poorly defined in American academia - what does it mean for an office to be an office of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Often the existence of these offices on collegiate campuses are positioned as the solution to the problem of rampant racism, ableism, misogyny, and queerphobia. Yet, in actuality, these offices often aren't given many tangible tools or actual avenues to address discrimination students are facing. This creates precarity because students, faculty and staff who are already vulnerable because of systemic oppression may be pointed towards an office of DEI by non-marginalized individuals as a resource when these offices have not been given sufficient tangible tools to address discrimination.

Learn Before

Related