Emancipatory Disability Research

This chapter argues for a critical revisitation of Emancipatory Disability Research (EDR) (Oliver, 1992) through a crip queer lens. To achieve this, there will be a shift away from the Social Model of Disability (UPIAS, 1976; Oliver, 1990) often associated with EDR, to a Political-Relational Model (coined by Kafer, 2014) of disability so that EDR might be true to its political and activist aspirations. The authors believe that if crip and queer theory is not situated at the core of EDR, then such a research method is in danger of undermining its very intentions, in which "participants are involved in a process designed specifically to heighten political awareness and to lead to radical social change" (Walmsley and Johnson 2003 p.28). To take a "critically queer" position is to work within the idea of always failing to conform to a fixed identity, indeed to the very notion of a 'norm' itself (Butler (1993), Halberstam (2011). Both crip and queer theory actively work against the existing oppressive systems that adhere to the constructed norm, pushing towards a political and activist reimagining of society instead. Cripping insists that the system of compulsory able-bodiedness is not and should not be the norm and, crucially, it imagines bodies and desires that fit beyond that system (McRuer 2006 p.32). In this way, crip may be thought of as inherently queer in a way that queer theory is not, perhaps, inherently crip though it should be 1. In what follows, the authors will offer the reader practice-based insight into the cripping and queering of EDR through their critique of the processes and outcomes of a devised performance research project, Not F..ckin' Sorry 2. The performance reappropriated the Freak Show as a means of both exposing the enduring discriminatory and voyeuristic experiences of learning disabled 3 (LD) and neurodivergent people 4 , and rejecting the objectified positioning inherent to a medical model of disability (WHO, 2001). The performance research project enabled the participants/co researchers to 'come out' as crip through a series of devising tasks which functioned, here, as research methods. These included a crip queer revisitation of 'stimming' (a socially taboo behaviour of selfstimulation often associated with neurodivergent people); the use of masks as an improvisation task to challenge the 'stigma management' 5 often performed daily by LD people and, crucially, the cripping and queering of the autobiographical stories reflecting

In the mental health community around the world 'recovery' is increasingly recognized as an important development in conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The phenomenon of 'recovery' has significant implications for both clinical intervention and policy formulation. However, in the mental health community in India, 'recovery' is cautiously recognized. My research is an attempt to investigate such claims on the "impossibility of

‘Mad’ as an form  of resistance is not easily distinguishable from ‘mad’ as label in the Global South, there being a proliferation of words that represent ‘madness’ in a prejudicial sense. To resist psychiatry’s increasing footprint and claims to ‘treatment’ by simply importing tools of resistance from the Global North, without responding to local realities will not prove to be helpful in societies where knowledge, access, rights and freedoms are routinely denied- not just to those seen ‘mad’. The idea of taking pride in what appears to be an essentialist claim  does not resonate with everyone unequivocally: there is a need to look at other ways without taking pride in a stigmatizing identity. This chapter calls to move beyond identity politics embedded in linguistic categories, recognize resource differences inherent in the world, who gets to speak for whom and acknowledge class privilege among those who are audible. The author urges to build an emancipatory resistance by conceding to differences between the Global North and South,  building culturally responsive tools, instead of simply transposing ideas developed elsewhere on societies lacking an ability to critique authority, rhetoric and discrimination.

Keywords: identity politics, emancipatory resistance, stigma, essentialism, cultural relevance