2013 Eco-ability Conference
1st Annual Conference “Engaging with Eco-ability”University of Binghamton, New York
April 27 and 28, 2013
- Eco-Ability Intersectional Theories– We are looking for intersectional innovative liberatory theories between dis-ability studies, environmental ethics, critical animal studies, queer studies, critical race theory, transnational feminism, and other radical theories that promote activism.
- Activist Stories of exclusion of people with dis-abilities in the animal advocacy movement – What are the problems within the animal advocacy/liberation movement that create tension with dis-abled advocates? How can these problems be resolved? What animal advocacy campaigns, projects, events, protests, language, programs, organizations, theories, and practices are exclusionary and ableist to those with dis-abilities?
- Activist Stories of exclusion of animal advocacy/liberation in the dis-abilities rights movement – How are animal advocates excluded from discussion within dis-ability rights movement? How can these exclusions be resolved? What effective routes of activism can we take to create more effective coalitions between these two struggles? What dis-ability rights campaigns, projects, events, protests, language, programs, organizations, and practices are exclusionary and speciesist to those involved in the animal advocacy movement?
- Stories About Nonhuman Animals with Dis-Abilities – Increasingly nonhuman animals are finding themselves “put down” for having dis-abilities in a similar way as fetuses are being aborted for being abnormal. How is it that living with others with a dis-ability makes life so difficult that it justifies depriving the other of life? How is it that we define life and dis-ability? What does it mean to be a nonhuman animal with dis-abilities?
- Critiques of Service Nonhuman Animals and Animal Testing/Vivisection – Vivisection and service nonhuman animals are often touted as the “cure” for people with dis-abilities. What does it mean to try to “cure” dis-ability? Is what science does, such as testing on nonhuman animals, while searching for “cures” worth the cost? What is our responsibility to nonhuman animals in relation to people with dis-ability and vice versa?
Day Two:We are looking for papers and presentations concerning, but not limited to, the following 5 topics:
- Gender, Sexuality, Race and Eco-Ability Intersectional Theories– We are looking for radical intersectional innovative liberatory theories between dis-ability studies, environmental ethics, critical animal studies, queer studies, critical race theory, and feminism that promote activism, that challenges all domination and oppression.
- Activist stories of being included or excluded from the animal, dis-ability, and environmental movements – What are the problems within the animal, dis-ability, and environmental movements that creates tension between the different movements and advocates? How can these problems be resolved? How are these problems being solved? What animal, Earth, and dis-ability campaigns, projects, events, protests, language, programs, organizations, theories, and practices are exclusionary?
- Queer, feminist, and critical race activist stories of being included or excluded from the animal, dis-ability, and environmental movements – What are the problems within the animal, dis-ability, and environmental movements that creates tension with women and feminists? How can these problems be resolved? How are these problems being solved? What animal, Earth, and dis-ability campaigns, projects, events, protests, language, programs, organizations, theories, and practices are exclusionary to women and feminists?
- Earth, animal and dis-ability activist stories of being included or excluded from the queer and critical race movements – What are the problems within the animal, dis-ability, and environmental movements that creates tension with women and feminists? How can these problems be resolved? How are these problems being solved? What animal, Earth, and dis-ability campaigns, projects, events, protests, language, programs, organizations, theories, and practices are exclusionary to women and feminists?
- Earth, animal and dis-ability activist stories of being included or excluded from the queer theory, women liberation movements, and critical race theory – What are the problems within the animal, dis-ability, and environmental movements that creates tension with women and feminists? How can these problems be resolved? How are these problems being solved? What animal, Earth, and dis-ability campaigns, projects, events, protests, language, programs, organizations, theories, and practices are exclusionary to women and feminists?
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- Sponsors: English Department, University of Binghamton, Institute for Critical Animal Studies, Students for Critical Animal Studies, and more to come.
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Schedule of Events
1st Annual Conference “Engaging with Eco-Ability”
State University of New York at Binghamton
April 27, 28, 2013
ALL EVENTS TAKING PLACE IN SCIENCE LIBRARY 212
Saturday, April 27th
9:30am
Welcoming Address
10:00 – 11:30am
Norm Phelps: The Phenomenon of ‘Sub-Oppressors’: Resolving Conflicts of Interest Between Oppressed Groups Within the Framework of a Liberatory Politics”
Morgan Dunbar: Furry Aspirin: Ethical Considerations of Animal Assisted Therapy
Rob Glass: For Lack of the Other Inside Me: An Exploration of Bacteria, Gut Flora, Bowel Disorders and Disability
11:40 – 1:10pm
Sunaura Taylor: Cripping Animal Ethics
David Regan: “I Hear You”: The Address of the Elephant in Letter on the Blind, For the Use of Those Who See
Dylan O’Brien: Magic, Aliens, Robots, and Eco-Ability: Heisei Era (1989-Present) Japanese Young Adults’ Animation as Eco-ability Pedagogy
1:20 – 2:30pm
Lunch – Provided
2:30 – 3:30pm
Judy Bentley: Human Disabilities, Nonhuman Animals, and Nature: Toxic Constructs and Transformative Technologies
Anthony Nocella II: Defining Eco-Ability: Social Justice and the Intersectionality of Disability, Nonhuman Animals, and Ecology
3:40 – 5:10pm
Amber George: Disney’s Little “Freak” Show of Animals in Nature: A Dis-Ability. Pedagogical Perspective on the Disney Industrial Complex
Vasile Stanescu: Rights Without Reason: Beyond Critical Theory and Animal Studies
Robin Smith: Critical Perspectives on Disability Studies and Social Constructions of Environments: Commoditization and Its Effect on Society and Nature
Sunday, April 28th
9:30 – 11:00am
Zach Richter: (Im)Paired Resistance and (Dis)Abling Oppressive Systems Theory: The clash of historical materialist thought with micro-level forms of resistance
Trevor Reddick: Doing Away With Community: Thinking Queer Ecological Politics and its Radical Potential
Anna Pinchuck
11:10 – 11:30am
Refreshments – Provided
11:30 – 1:30pm
Wolbring Gregor: Eco-Aleism: Enabling and Disabling the Ecosystem
Judy Bentley: Deconstructing Symbolic Identities and Building on Eco-ability: Expanding the Domain of Environmental Justice
Joe Leeson-Schatz: Queering Vegetarian Politics: Beyond a Politics of Purity and Normalcy
1:40 – 2:30pm
Round Table Discussion on Future of Eco-Ability and Beyond
2:30pm
Closing Remarks
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The Phenomenon of ‘Sub-Oppressors’: Resolving Conflicts of Interest Between Oppressed Groups Within the Framework of a Liberatory Politics
By, Norman Phelps
Abstract
If it is to be relevant to the real world, a liberatory politics must include an adequate treatment of a phenomenon that Paolo Freire identified as among the most intractable facing activists: the oppressed often become “sub-oppressors” because they have been taught by society that being an oppressor is the only path to self-respect and a fulfilling life. Freire’s observation is particularly important for persons with disabilities and nonhuman persons, as three examples will illustrate: 1) Workers in industrial chicken farms and slaughterhouses are among the most exploited in the United States. 2) Many advocacy and support groups for persons with specific medical conditions sponsor or advocate research using nonhuman people. 3) Many supporters of the Tea Party and other reactionary movements live in the poorest sections of the country and are themselves in a condition of precarity, and often actual poverty. And yet, they support politicians who advocate the dismantling of Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs designed to better the lives of the poor and the elderly—two groups whose members are more likely than the general population to live with disabilities.
A politics of liberation should approach sub-oppression and the conflicts it engenders in accordance with three principles: 1) It must promote a holistic sense of community, subordinating identity-group loyalty to loyalty to the community of sentient beings—although campaigns against specific forms of oppression and exploitation should still be pursued for strategic reasons. 2) In a conflict of interest between members of two oppressed groups, every effort must be made to protect the interests of both groups. To the extent that this may prove unattainable, priority should first be accorded to the group that is more severely oppressed, and second to the group that has less power. 3) As an overarching principle, moral consideration should flow from the bottom up, which is to say that the liberatory enterprise should begin with the most distressed and most disempowered and work its way up the social and economic ladder.
Bio
Norman Phelps has been an animal rights activist for nearly thirty years. He is the author of The Dominion of Love: Animal Rights According to the Bible, The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights, The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA, and Changing the Game: Why the Battle for Animal Liberation Is So Hard and How We Can Win It (due out in April, 2013), all published by Lantern Books. He has contributed articles to The Journal of Critical Animal Studies, and a chapter to the book Earth, Animal and Disability Liberation. He is a frequent speaker at animal rights conferences, including the annual ICAS conference, the Farm Animal Rights Movement’s annual conferences, and Their Lives, Our Voices.
Morgan Dunbar
Furry Aspirin: Ethical Considerations of Animal Assisted Therapy
By, Morgan Jamie Dunbar
Abstract
This presentation will examine the human-animal bond and “therapeutic” associations between human and non-human animals. Attention will be given to the preoccupation with animal-assisted therapy (AAT) programs’ benefits to human health. Audience members will be challenged to expand their scope of consideration to include the consequences and implications of AAT programs on non-human animals.
The AVMA states that therapeutic programs involving animals are “designed to promote improvement in human physical, social, emotional, or cognitive function.” This description is grossly deficient in its failure to address or even acknowledge the ethical issues surrounding animal usage in therapeutic regime. In addition to the seemingly scarce concern for the actual animals involved, few guidelines regulate AAT programs. Those guidelines that do exist are, in the majority of cases, self-regulated and emphasize the safeguarding of human welfare. Along with a focus on regulatory shortfalls, this presentation will discuss the detrimental effects of AAT programs on the animals involved.
As well as examining the use of domesticated animals (such as therapy dogs and cats), this presentation will also consider the use of undomesticated, wild animal species (including dolphin swim programs and monkey assistance programs).
One question which will be proposed for audience commentary: Ought individuals advocating total liberation concern themselves with the need for and advancement of objective AAT evaluation methods, or is this kind of regulatory work tantamoun to a welfarism?
Bio
Morgan Jamie Dunbar is the founder and director of Animal Allies of Western New York. Dunbar’s participation in invasive “animal research,” as a requirement of her undergraduate studies, led her to recognize systemic animal exploitation, and its dependence upon the desensitization and indoctrination of students within our education system. As a result of this realization, Dunbar now campaigns for social justice and total liberation.
Rob Glass
For Lack of the Other Inside Me: An Exploration of Bacteria, Gut Flora, Bowel Disorders and Disability
By, Rob Glass
Abstract
Inside the human body lives tens of trillions of bacteria and micro-organisms, a number that dwarfs the number of human cells by an order of magnitude. These beings live complex lives in complex and changing surroundings, and play a vital role in many parts of the human biological existence, so vital that when these beings die off, or suffer a radical change, the ‘human’ body suffers dearly as a result. This plays itself out through increases in harmful bacteria and viruses, dietary and bowel distress, and a variety of other disabilities that hamper day-to-day life. This paper explores the notion of disability through this relationship to the non-humans that live inside the human body and argues that disability offers a prism to break down human-centered thought and open up new ethical ways of relating both to the non-human and the disabled body.
By recognizing that human ability, and even human lives, depend on a deep and intimate relationship with non-humans we can come to understand both that differences in ability are not inherent reasons to pre-judge someone, and that human beings are composite creatures who are not simply human alone. This interchange allows for new ways of understanding our relationships with each and other and ourselves by opening new ways to relate, understand, and empathize with any other being.
Bio
Robert Glass is a Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Rochester where he also serves as the Assistant Debate Coach at the University of Rochester. In the past he has worked for Mercy for Animals and has engaged in several direct action campaigns. He obtained his degree from Binghamton University.
Sunaura Taylor
Cripping Animal Ethics
By, Sunaura Taylor
Abstract
This panel will explore intersections between disability studies and animal rights. Cripping Animal Ethics will focus on the many serious complications the disability and animal advocacy communities have faced in building mutual collaborations and alliances, while also showing how much these two fields have in common and how much they could challenge and support each other.
Philosopher Cary Wolfe has written, “Of the various contemporary fields of interdisciplinary cultural studies that have emerged…two of the most philosophically ambitious and ethically challenging…are animal studies and disability studies” (Learning From Temple Grandin, or, Animal Studies, Disability Studies, and Who Comes After the Subject ). This presentation argues that these two fields have an immense amount to offer each other.
Disability oppression and animal oppression are often rooted in similar paradigms –those of dependency, nature and normalcy. I argue that viewing animal oppression through a disability studies lens can add significant strength to the arguments for animal rights. This presentation will also show how nonhuman animals are affected by ableism and will examine the complex relationship between ableism and speciesism.
As an example of what disability studies can do for animals, this talk will narrow in on the debate over “humane meat.” Proponents of this issue use ableist paradigms of nature, normalcy and dependency to argue that animal oppression is justified. By viewing their arguments through a disability studies lens this presentation will show how problematic their conclusions are. I focus on issues of humane meat, not because it is a better example of the connections between disability and animal rights than in the broader animal rights conversation, but because it is one of the most prevalent arguments used to justify animal exploitation.
In closing, this presentation argues that disability studies has a responsibility to consider nonhuman animals within its framework to avoid contradicting many of its most basic concepts. I will conclude by asking what “cripping animal rights” and “cripping veganism” would look like.
Bio
Sunaura Taylor is a disabled artist, writer and activist. Through painting, printmaking, writing and other forms of political and artistic engagement her work intervenes with dominant historical narratives of disability and animal oppression. Taylor’s artworks have been exhibited at venues across the country, including the CUE Art Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution and the Berkeley Art Museum. She is the recipient of a Sacatar Foundation Fellowship, an Eisner Award, two Wynn Newhouse Awards, a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant, and an Animals and Culture Grant. Her written work has been printed in numerous edited collections as well as in publications such as the Monthly Review, Yes! Magazine, and Qui Parle. Taylor worked with philosopher Judith Butler on Astra Taylor’s film Examined Life (Zeitgeist 2008). She’s currently completing a book on animal ethics and disability studies, forthcoming from the Feminist Press, NY. She holds an MFA from the Department of Art Practice at UC Berkeley.
David Regan
“I Hear You”: The Address of the Elephant in Letter on the Blind, For the Use of Those Who See
By, David Regan
Abstract
In my paper I direct my gaze at animal images in telecommunications company Telus’ advertising campaigns, in paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Hans Holbein, and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and in a film by Javier Téllez. I set out seeking membership in a group defined by Jacques Derrida: “those men and women who admit to taking upon themselves the address that an animal addresses them”; I want my reader to see me “seen seen by the animal.” Things do not go as planned, however: I arrive instead at an apprehension of what is problematic in such sight-centric language.
My reading of Javier Téllez’s 2007 Letter on the Blind, For the Use of Those Who See is at the center of my paper. In this film, Téllez sets out to critique the fable of the blind men and the elephant. He, too, stages an encounter between six blind humans and one elephant, Beulah, but in his film, “The Blind” move from figures to particular individuals possessed of subjective experiences of an ableist world. The elephant, on the other hand, remains a figure; Téllez totally misses the intersections between the subjective experiences of Beulah (property of All Creatures Great and Small animal agency) and the humans who encounter her. Nevertheless, the humans in his film begin to articulate both a way of being with other animals that does not depend on intersecting gazes and an anti-ableist, anti-speciesist critical stance.
My paper moves, then, from the fables proffered by Telus to the fable critiqued by Téllez, from the sight-centric encounter with other animals found in “The Animal That Therefore I Am” to a mode of being-with other animals that might be centered on sounds, or scents, or textures, or tastes, on sharing space, on hanging out.
Bio
David Regan is currently on a one-year leave from teaching English at William Lyon Mackenzie Collegiate Institute in Toronto. He is using this year to complete an MA in the Cultural Studies and Critical Theory program at McMaster University, which will culminate in a major research paper tentatively titled “Many Fractures, Heterogeneities: Disability Studies, Animal Studies, and The Work of Sunaura Taylor.” His review of Don LePan’s novel Animals, “Of Mongrels and Men,” helped prompt LePan to revise his work prior to its U.S. publication. David hangs out in Hamilton for the moment, with four cats and one human.
Dylan O’Brien
Magic, Aliens, Robots, and Eco-Ability: Heisei Era (1989-Present) Japanese Young Adults’ Animation as Eco-ability Pedagogy
By, Dylan O’Brien
Abstract
Post-World War IIJ apanese literature has, as a whole, demonstrated a move
towards educating the public on social issues, with authors such as Kenzaburo Oe and Haruki Murakami penning works that deal with the earth, dis-ability, and nonhuman animals. Anime, or Japanese animated film, has emerged as a primary way in which young adults consume literature in Japan, and it contains themes and messages much in line with the new theory of eco-ability. I will explore this trend in my presentation with anime made for young adults from the Heisei era (1989-present) that deals with ecoability. I will end by discussing how anime can serve as a means to discuss eco-ability concepts with a younger generation through an easily digestible meansthat maintains an eco-ability advocacy stance.
I will present a sampling of some of the popular anime targeted at young adults in
Japan since the Heisei era began, and look at the messages of those works. I will use the following as my main texts to demonstrate my thesis: Neon Genesis Evangelionvi (1995), Freedomvii (2006), and From the New Worldviii (2012). All three are eco-ability based texts, and I have chosen them for each having specific emphasis on one of the three distinct parts of dis-ability (Neon Genesis Evangelion), earth (Freedom), and nonhuman animals (From the New World).
Eco-ability is not only an emergent field, the success of which will depend on integration into myriad segments of society including literature; rather, eco-ability is also a concept that cannot be strictly confined to academia if it is to accomplish its goals, and an examination of literary support and extant pedagogy in works can help to advance ecoability as a more widely understood theory and vision of a better world.
Bio
Dylan James Hallingstad O’Brien attends Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota on scholarship for his paper on the Heisei era Japanese anime, Serial Experiments Lain, and its relation to third-wave feminism, feminist theology, and democratic transhumanism. Dylan volunteers with the Institute for Critical Animal Studies, Save the Kids Twin Cities, and is a writer and videographer for the Japanese music website, Visual Kei Heaven.
Judy Bentley – 2
Human Disabilities, Nonhuman Animals, and Nature: Toxic Constructs and Transformative Technologies
By, Judy K. C. Bentley
Abstract
Those in the academic profession can build careers by discussing the work of great thinkers, and presenting paper about others’ great ideas, but this presentation is not for that purpose. Bentley’s chapter for the first book on Eco-Ability owes its underlying structure to the great thinker Michel Foucault, but with the purpose of thinking new thoughts of one’s own, birthing new ideas, actions and relationships. Connecting Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge and technologies of the self to David Pellow’s call for “self advocacy research for environmental justice, Bentley constructs a genealogy of toxicity, with a focus on the intersectionality of racism, ableism, and speciesism—and issues a call for transformation.
Bio
Dr. Judy K. C. Bentley is an Associate Professor at the State University of New York (SUNY)-Cortland, in the Foundations and Social Advocacy Department, where she teaches graduate courses in research methods and inclusive special education. She is a co-editor and contributing author of Earth, Animal, and Dis-ability Liberation: The Rise of the Eco-ability Movement (2012, Peter Lang), and a co-editor of Animals and War (in-press, 2013, Lexington Books). Dr. Bentley is the current Director of the SUNY Cortland Institute for Disability Studies. She also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Access to Independence, Inc., an independent living center in Cortland County, and the founding Editor-in-Chief of Social Advocacy and Systems Change, a peer-reviewed, online journal. Dr. Bentley is currently on sabbatical, conducting a needs assessment of the population age 60+ in Cortland County.
Anthony Nocella II
Defining Eco-Ability: Social Justice and the Intersectionality of Disability, Nonhuman, Animals and Ecology
By, Anthony Nocella II
Bio
Anthony J. Nocella II, Ph.D., award-winning author, community organizer, and educator is a Visiting Professor in the School of Education at Hamline University and Senior Fellow of the Dispute Resolution Institute at the Hamline Law School. Nocella is a scholar-activist grounded in the field of education and peace and conflict studies. He is internationally known for his innovative, transformative, and intersectional collaborations among fields of study, social movements, scholars, communities, and activists. Dr. Nocella has published more than fifty scholarly articles or book chapters, co-founded more than ten active political organizations and serves on four boards. He has founded three book series and co-founded three journals – Green Theory and Praxis, Peace Studies Journal, and Journal of Critical Animal Studies, is on the editorial board of three other journals, and has published more than fifteen books. Dr. Nocella has guest lectured, provided professional development trainings, and facilitated youth workshops to hundreds of school districts, universities, colleges, high schools, middle schools and many prisons and detention facilities around the Americas, such as Onondaga County School District, St. Cloud School District, Hillbrook Youth Detention Facility, Auburn Prison, Environmental Protection Agency, Brock University, UCLA, Hofstra University, New York University Law School, Rutgers University Law School, Boston College, University of Pennsylvania, Haverford College, Swarthmore College, University of Texas, Yale University, and Princeton University.
Amber George
Disney’s Little “Freak” Show of Animals in Nature: A Dis-Ability Pedagogical Perspective on the Disney Industrial Complex
By, Amber George
Abstract
Film is no stranger to reinforcing and creating images of “Otherness.” The Hollywood-Industrial Complex, which prides itself on constructing normalcy through sexist, homophobic, ableist, speciesist, and humanist perspectives, reinforces the binary of ability v. disability, human v. nonhuman, and nature v. civilization. George exposes a critical blind spot—Disney’s role in perpetuating ableism, speciesism, and anthropocentrism—by examining two Disney films: Dumbo and Finding Nemo.
Bio
Amber E. George, Ph.D., is an educator, social justice advocate, and artist currently teaching courses in ethical and social philosophy at SUNY Cortland, Le Moyne College and Misericordia University. She received her Doctorate in Philosophy from Binghamton University in 2007. Her dissertation, “Interpreting Dislocation: Gathering a Sense of Belonging,” employs various visual and poetic metaphors to analyze oppression based on race, gender, and disability. Themes of her work center on challenging the systemic nature of oppression as it materializes in various cultural situations. Her life and work celebrates a kind of belonging for humans, nonhuman beings, and nature with the hopes of achieving social justice.
Vasile Stanescu
Rights Without Reason: Beyond Critical Theory and Animal Studies
By, Vasile Stanesecu
Abstract
Critical theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Donna Haraway, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari question humanism and express concern for the welfare of individual nonhuman animals (for example, Jacques Derrida’s denouncement of the factory farm system). And yet, simultaneously, many critical theorists also critique a commitment to ethical veganism and animal rights. The traditional analytic philosophers Peter Singer and Tom Reagan, on the other hand, possess a normative commitment to animal rights and ethical vegetarianism and veganism. Yet these foundational texts of animal rights, in turn, suffer from humanist and anthropocentric biases because they count nonhuman animals’ lives and suffering only when they fit within a human-centric model.
I argue, we must continue to collectively create a Critical Animal Studies, beyond both critical theory and tradition animal studies, simultaneously committed to ethical veganism and animal liberation and yet still critical of humanism and anthropocentricism. We must work together to formulate a new ontology of ethical commitment to nonhuman animals that is simultaneously anti-humanist and anti- speciecist and critical both of animal studies and“ critical” theory itself. And we must combine these insights with a commitment to self-reflective activism and direction action to not only understand biases of speciesism and anthropocentricism but to end them. For only when we transcend the “ sameness” model of a lingering belief in the supremacy of human reason and suffering can we create the needed ethical space to collectively fight for humans, nonhuman animals, and the “natural” world.
Bio
Vasile Stanescu co-edits the Critical Animal Studies book series published by Rodopi Press. He serves as the Associate Editor for the Journal for Critical Animals Studies (JCAS) featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times. Stanescu has presented his work at conferences at Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, and Yale, and, internationally, in Canada, Australia, The United Kingdom, Romania, Turkey, and the Netherlands. He has reviewed texts for Ethics and the Environment (Indiana University Press), Society and Animals: The Journal of Human-Animal Studies (Brill), Critical Sociology (Sage Journals), and the book series Key Themes in 20th and 21st Century Literature and Culture (Polity Press). And his research has been recognized by the Institute for Critical Animal Studies, Minding Animals International, The Woods Institute for the Environment, The Andrew Mellon Foundation, Institutul Cultural Român, and the Culture and Animals Foundation. This coming June, Stanescu will be one of sixteen international speakers to present at the ZOO3OOO (OCCUPY SPECIES) conference in Hamburg, Germany on the topic of Critical Animal Studies and Direct Action.
Robin Smith
Critical Perspectives on Disability Studies and Social Constructions of Environments: Commoditization and Its Effect on Society and Nature
By, Robin Smith
Abstract
Smith and Manno, scholars in Disability Studies and Environmental Studies respectively, explore themes at the intersection of their disciplines. Manno sees that it is not just the environment that needs to be healed, but also society’s relation to it. Smith sees that it is not just the disabled who need “fixing,” but also the relationship between disability and society. In this presentation of their co-authored chapter, Smith discusses commoditization: the oppression of people with disabilities as part of a larger pattern of privileging the economy of market goods and services over the independent economy of ecosystems and communities.
Bio
Robin M. Smith, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Special Education at the State University of New York at New Paltz in the Department of Educational Studies/Special Education Program. Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of disability studies, inclusion, assuming competence, and social justice, and how meridian therapies support these issues. Dr. Smith is the author of numerous papers on disability studies, behavioral and cultural diversity, and inclusive education. Her current research explores teacher understanding and implementation of strength-based, person-centered positive behavioral support and broader concepts of motivational assessment to include quality of life values. She is a member of The American Education Association, The Association for the Severely Handicapped, and the Council on Exceptional Children as well as being an active member of the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP)’s research committee.
Zach Richter
(Im)Paired Resistance and (Dis)Abling Oppressive Systems Theory: The clash of historical materialist thought with micro-level forms of resistance
By, Zach Richter
Abstract
What might be the differences between embodied praxis and historical materialist systemic analysis? This presentation seeks to assist in drawing a clear distinction between micro-political embodied forms of resistance and analysis which understands agency as a product of a series of material industries and co-dependent oppressive discourses. What occurs when analyses do not leave space for the agency and voice of anomalous embodiments? In such moments, we see the repetition of the expert society that critical disability and animal studies critics recognize as being a key force in devaluing nonhuman and disabled bodies. Instead of engaging in another sweeping institutional analysis, this essay will outline the importance of day-to-day forms of resistance and the counter-productive nature of utopian activist expectations. Furthermore, as part of the goals of disability and animal liberation, one must recognize that few actual people with disabilities have the energy to accomplish some of the bolder goals of anarchist and Marxian rebel groups. Access demands that we conceive of revolutionary methods that can be used by individuals who face great impairment and less energy than able-bodied activists and scholars. How can people with disabilities be included in a wider range of environmentalist, total liberationist and animal rights activist measures? The interrogation of such questions requires more than conceiving of eco and disability work in broad theoretical overtones, but adapting this work to be applicable to a wider range of activist circumstances. As part of such interrogation, this essay will survey a wide range of theoretical work that discusses micro-level politics and how resistance can seep through the cracks of institutions of ontological and epistemic production without requiring impossibly inaccessible forms of energy. As part of this argument, it is assumed that impairment sometimes means lessened capacity to engage in forms of activism that fail to take note of alternative modes of capacity.
Bio
Zach Richter is currently finishing his last year as an undergraduate at Western Connecticut State University and will be graduating with a BA in Literature and a minor in Sociology. Zach has been involved in disability justice activism for nearly half a year, working with groups such Autistic Self Advocacy Network and Squag.com. Zach has also recently founded an activist group called the Autism Spectrum Art Association and runs a website called Autisticulture.org that publishes autistic creative works and critical essays on those works on a monthly basis. Zach currently blogs for Squag about Autistic issues and maintains a personal blog for discussions of Autistic culture and perceptions. Additionally, Zach is captain of the Roger Sherman Debate Society and is a powerful advocate for the use of critical and activist argumentation in debate. Zach resides in Danbury, Connecticut but aims to build an academic career and therefore to journey further.
Trevor Reddick
Doing Away With Community: Thinking Queer Ecological Politics and its Radical Potential
By, Trevor Reddick
Abstract
The competitive and institutionalized nature of academia has encouraged the cordoning off of studies that have much to offer one another. Constantly producing boundaries and defining rigidly the line between their philosophies, academics have forsaken coalitions and broad-based activism in favor of intensely technical and in many instance futile discussions regarding the inviolability of one’s community. The notion of a closed off area of study that is completely distinct from another is patently false, a nostalgic thinking that dreams of a clean and universal ethic or field of knowledge to smooth over critical failures in mobilizing effective responses to oppression in all its formations. The arbitrariness of the human/non-human animal binary and notions of animality used in critical animal studies, the essentializing use of Nature and Women in environmental studies, and the self-defeating dyad between queer and heteronormativity used in queer theory are examples of how institutionalized and unreflexive academic studies reproduce violent exclusion in the quest to solve it. Totalizing narratives in academia have dulled the revolutionary potential of thought, requiring us to invigorate our thinking with new narratives and ways of telling our stories. My paper will attempt a brief foray into a truly queer, intersectional, counter-monumental politics that affirms rather than denies the erotic Other of academic studies. To examine, unveil, and queer the exclusionary portions of critical animal studies, environmental studies, and queer theory itself will be a strange undertaking, but one that is necessary to think differently and think queerly. My paper will use the works of William Haver, James Stanescu, Timothy Morton, Daniel O’Rourke, and Dana Luciano among others to theorize a critical intersectional politics sufficient to create and sustain hegemonic interventions that eschew traditional communities and create change in new and exciting ways.
Bio
Trevor Reddick is a Junior English Major with a Concentration in Rhetoric and Global Culture at Binghamton University. His studies focus mostly on Post-Colonial and Poststructuralist literature which attempt to create new narratives in an age of globalization. He is an avid reader, writer, philosopher, and Captain of Binghamton University’s nationally competitive Speech and Debate Team. He aspires to use his education and critical thinking skills to revolutionize the fields of critical theory and eco-criticism, while actively shaping the world for the better through a career in law.
Gregor Wolbring
Eco-ableism: Enabling and disabling the ecosystem
By, Wolbring Gregor
Abstract
Every individual, household, community, group, sector, region, and country cherishes and promotes different abilities. Some promote the ability to consume or to compete, some the ability of free speech, some the ability to act as an individual or conversely, as a community. Some have the desire to have the ability to live in peace while others thrive on the ability to generate violence. Ableism leads to an ability based and ability justified understanding of oneself, one’s body and one’s relationship with others of one’s species, other species and one’s environment. What abilities one favours and what ableisms one exhibits impacts how one perceives oneself, how one is perceived by others, how one relates to other species, and it also impacts human-nature relationships. Different forms of ableism enable different ism’s such as racism, sexism, cast-ism., ageism., speciesism., anti-environmentalism., GDP-ism and consumerism. Furthermore ableism as such does not have to be negative. It could be used to put forward positive actions (e.g. if one cherishes the ability to live in harmony, if one cherishes the ability to live equitable with others). Anthropocentric and biocentric visions of human-nature relationship exhibit different set of ability expectations and forms of ableism.
This paper will highlight ableism as it relates to disabled people, animals and nature. This paper will especially look at the impact of the increasing ability of science and technology to modify humans (genetic enhancement), animals (genetic enhancement) and nature (geoengineering) and the shift in ability expectations that are linked to the changing abilities of science and technology products and the impact this might have on how humans animals and nature relate.
Bio
Gregor Wolbring is an Associate Professor; University of Calgary, Faculty of Medicine, Community Health Sciences, Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies; Fellow: Institute for Science, Policy and Society, University of Ottawa, Canada; Adjunct Assistant Professor, Faculty of Critical Disability Studies, York University Canada; Part Time Professor Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, Canada and Founding Member and Affiliated Scholar, Center for Nanotechnology and Society at Arizona State University, USA. He is the former President of the Canadian Disability Studies Association.
Judy Bentley
Deconstructing Symbolic Identities and Building on Eco-ability: Expanding the Domain of Environmental Justice
By, Judy K. C. Bentley
Abstract
Since its inception in the late 20th Century, the theory and praxis of “environmental justice” has grown to engage a broad range of academic disciplines in three key areas: 1) defining “environment” to include not only what is left of the “natural” wild, but also the places where we live, work and play; 2) the causes of environmental justice and injustice (inequitable distribution of toxins and environmental risks); and 3) the construction of “the ‘justice’ of environmental justice” itself (Schlosberg, 2013, p. 38).
The nascent discipline of Eco-Ability (Nocella, Bentley, & Duncan, 2012) offers a rich opportunity to conceptualize the theory and praxis of environmental justice as an intersectional domain that seeks to liberate communities and individuals oppressed by the stigmatized identities of “dis-abled,” “aging,” and “non-human.”
This presentation employs Blumer’s (1969) symbolic interactionism theory and Foucault’s (1988) technologies of the self to explore the deconstruction and reconstruction of symbolic identities, toward mutually respectful relationships between all forms of life.
The expansion of environmental justice via the eco-ability movement breaks new ground in several ways. It excavates and examines the deep connections between formerly unrelated movements of social and environmental justice. It connects traditionally disparate theories, and seemingly disconnected communities of human and nonhuman animals, by exposing their common experiences of oppression. It seeks to facilitate innovative activism, in which scholars and advocates work together to achieve meaningful change.
Bio
Dr. Judy K. C. Bentley is an Associate Professor at the State University of New York (SUNY)-Cortland, in the Foundations and Social Advocacy Department, where she teaches graduate courses in research methods and inclusive special education. She is a co-editor and contributing author of Earth, Animal, and Dis-ability Liberation: The Rise of the Eco-ability Movement (2012, Peter Lang), and a co-editor of Animals and War (in-press, 2013, Lexington Books). Dr. Bentley is the current Director of the SUNY Cortland Institute for Disability Studies. She also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Access to Independence, Inc., an independent living center in Cortland County, and the founding Editor-in-Chief of Social Advocacy and Systems Change, a peer-reviewed, online journal. Dr. Bentley is currently on sabbatical, conducting a needs assessment of the population age 60+ in Cortland County.
Joe Leeson-Schatz
Queering Vegetarian Politics: Beyond a Politics of Purity and Normalcy
By, JL Schatz
Abstract
Queering Vegetarian Politics explores how social justice campaigns have been co-opted by a politics of purity that works against coalition building. This paper argues that instead of searching for a perfect politics that we should embrace the dis-abilities within our advocacy and look for commonalities between our differences. The paper begins by exploring how different social movements prioritize single-issue politics to the detriment of others. Afterwards the paper goes on to argue how the focus on single issues and for campaigns of perfection risk undermining productive coalitions that can more effectively create change. From there I contend that embracing the intersection between queerness and vegetarianism is the best way to gain access to the multiplicity of struggles that exist. Both queerness and vegetarianism recognize that it is impossible to ever exist on a single side of an issue because there is a diverse world beyond the binaries of how politics are traditionally constructed. To adopt a queer vegetarian politics is to at once admit one’s own incompleteness and inadequacies while not giving up on those struggles that are most important. It is to always already admit failure but not to let that failure dishearten future avenues of resistance and change. As social justice theory advance, I contend that activists and academics must evolve alongside it in order to diversify their strategies and tactics so as to never close off the possibility of future merges with other struggles. To eschew a politics of purity is at once to give up the claim to normalcy, stability, and purity in order to embrace an always already fractured politics that never claims to have the final answer or have reached perfection. Once social justice theory gives up on perfection it can be better suited to conquer oppression in all its many manifestations.
Bio
Joe Leeson-Schatz is a Professor of English and Feminist Evolutionary Studies at Binghamton University where he also serves as the Director of the Speech and Debate Team, which was ranked 1st in the nation in 2008. He has published essays on technology and apocalypse, environmental securitization, disability studies, and the influence of science-fiction on reality.
