00:00 >> JEFF: Means that we have to check a list of people who have registered with them and
00:03
let them in, so.
00:06
For those of you just joining us, I want to welcome you.
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I am Jeff Martin, I'm the Director of Communications and Public Affairs here at the AAA, and I
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am an older white male with graying brown hair, and wearing dark black-rimmed glasses.
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And in the background, I have a -- I'm sitting in my kitchen with a Christmas tree behind
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me.
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I want to welcome everyone.
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Welcome to Disability Ethnography and Performance.
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This is a two-part series that started last week, last Thursday, with a webinar entitled
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Collaborative Scripts: Disability and Chronic Illness Through Ethnographic Theatre and Film.
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And I have to tell you, if you haven't -- if you weren't a part of that last week, please,
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do look it up.
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It was a fantastic performance.
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The writing and direction was done so well, and the acting was superb.
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I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I know you will, too.
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Look it up.
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You can do that by -- as a matter of fact, I am going to put -- Nell, if you would put
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up there the website.
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Our basic website.
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Come to AAA and look for the webinar series, and you'll be able to -- we'll have it posted
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there soon.
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You'll be able to see the recording and the slides.
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The same with what's going to take place today.
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Today we're Doing/Undoing Disability Ethnography and Performance, and it's going to be equally
01:44
as entertaining and as insightful as last week's one.
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A few housekeeping items.
01:50
To make this more accessible for everyone, you'll see we're already -- we're providing
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ASL, but we also will be providing closed captioning.
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If you would, for those who don't know, move your icon to the bottom of your screen, and
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you'll see -- your cursor, you'll see an icon that says "closed captioning."
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Click on that, and you'll be able to enable it.
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While I'm at it, and you're moving your -- you're already moving your cursor, look for the icon
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at the bottom that says "chat," and that's our chatroom.
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Use that to discuss anything you want with the other attendees.
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And also, if you have any questions for the presenters, put it in there.
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But to help us, start with the word "question:" and then ask your question.
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It helps us as we go through to sort who's asking the questions.
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We are going to try to leave time at the end for question and answers.
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So, we'll be able to address them then.
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Also, if anyone has any questions or specific needs, in the participant list, or the chat
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room, actually, you can actually look for Nell -- she's our accessibilities coordinator,
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and you can ask her specifically any questions or needs that you might have.
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Lastly, and this is always important, to help us with bandwidth and everything, please,
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remember to turn off your video, and also mute yourselves to help us.
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So, without any more ado, let me introduce Pam.
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>> PAMELA BLOCK: Hi, everyone.
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I am Pamela Block.
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I am a disability anthropologist at Western University in the Anthropology Department.
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I've been here just over a year, after 17 years teaching in disability studies and the
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health professions in a U.S. university.
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I am a 52-year-old woman with salt and pepper hair, shoulder-length, and I'm wearing a knitted
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shawl.
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I sit in a dining room/music room/COVID office.
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Behind me is a dining room table with a buffet covered in masks and Hanukkah preparations,
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a piano, a guitar case.
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There's a menorah with candles behind me.
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The shawl was a present from Karli Whitmore from CASCA, one of the presents she sent as
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a thank you to the 2020 Program Committee for our efforts.
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And as I said last week, the only way I can imagine AAA topping this would be if they
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sent knitted items to all of us made of yarn spun by Devva.
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More on that later.
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These webinars, today's and last week's "Collaborative Scripts: Disability and Chronic Illness Through
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Ethnographic Theatre and Film", which involved the play readings and a video, play readings
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from Cassandra Hartblay's ethnographic play and film by Megan Moodie, which, as Jeff mentioned,
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is available, or will soon be available on the AAA website, for those who missed it.
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And there -- these were originally planned as in-person, co-sponsored sessions for the
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Canadian Anthropological Society and the Canadian Disability Studies Association during the
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2020 Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences Congress that was supposed to be
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here at Western University last May.
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I was on the Program Committee for CASCA, and I had organized all these events, and
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more.
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The Committee had a wonderful slate, but, unfortunately, the pandemic came, and the
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world changed, but I'm so grateful to the AAA for providing a home to these wonderful
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sessions that allow us to use disability wisdom to continue to make and perform art and discuss
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art and scholarship during the pandemic and to broaden our definition of what constitutes
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ethnography.
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In this virtual gathering, let's first take a moment to remember that we are all of us
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connected through the winds and waters of our earth.
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Let us acknowledge Indigenous elders, past and present, and the people who held the land
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of our homes and university before the arrival of colonizers and invaders.
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Western University is located on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee,
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and the Leni-Lunaape peoples.
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Now, I'm going to briefly introduce our three presenters.
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They will be providing their own image descriptions.
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Arseli Dokumaci is an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies, in the Communication
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Studies Department at Concordia University.
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Arseli is also the Canadian Research Chair in Critical Disability Studies and Media Technologies,
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and she is currently establishing an interdisciplinary Disability and Media Lab at Concordia.
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Arseli's research focuses on medical anthropology, performance, and disability studies, and her
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research appeared in various journals, including Current Anthropology, South Atlantic Quarterly,
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and Performance Research.
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Petra Kuppers is an internationally active disability culture activist and a community
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performance artist.
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She creates community -- participatory community performance environments that think-feel -- think/feel
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into public space, tenderness, access, and experimentation.
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Petra grounds herself in disability culture methods.
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She received the American Society for Theatre Research's best dance/theater book award,
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the National Women's Caucus for the Arts' Award for Arts and Activism, and her performance
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poetry collection, "Gut Botany," and named one of the top ten -- that was named one of
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the top ten poetry books of 2020 by the New York Public Library.
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She teaches at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and on the Low-Residency MFA in Interdisciplinary
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Arts at Goddard College.
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Her next academic book project, Eco Soma: Speculative Performance Encounters, will appear
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with the University of Minnesota Press in fall 2021.
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And, finally, Devva Kasnitz, disability anthropologist, foundational in the field, and a long-time
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co-author of mine, including our edited volume "Occupying Disability."
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She is the spring 2020 and 2018 Kate Welling Distinguished Scholar in Disability Studies,
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Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and the adjunct professor at CUNY University of New
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York School of Professional Studies in Disability Studies, and she is the Executive Director
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of the Society of Disability Studies.
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And she also is a Senior Scholar Award Recipient for the Society of Disability Studies and
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has held many roles in the Society over decades, including president and board member, in addition
09:02
to her current role as Executive Director.
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Now, I am passing the torch on to our first presenter, Arseli.
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>> ARSELI DOKUMACI: Thank you very much, Pam, for this introduction and for organizing this
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webinar.
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I would also like to thank the American Anthropological Association and its wonderful staff, as well
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as the interpreters and transcribers, and I'd also like to thank my fellow presenters,
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both this week and last week.
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I'm a light-skinned woman wearing dark glasses with short glass hair, and behind me is a
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library and a flower.
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So, let me start.
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One morning I stood up from the toilet, pulled up my jeans in the slowest of motions.
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My hands and shoulders were inflamed and painful.
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Then came the hardest part: how the hell was I going to zip up?
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Everyday life is full of such tinkerings for me, because since my teenaged years, I've
09:56
been living with a chronic disease that is causing pain and gradual disablement.
10:01
Because this disease affects the joints and joints mean movement, your everyday life turns
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into a stage where you have to choreograph the dance of avoiding pain.
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I will now share my screen.
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The slide shows a hand holding a spoon by grasping its handle with an index fing and
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pushing it on the thumb's knuckle.
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In this presentation, I'm going to talk about such ingenious ways of living with disability,
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to borrow from Neil Marcus, that are buried in the most hidden corners of everyday life
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and in the tiniest of our actions.
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These are ephemeral micro acts/arts of everyday survival that I'm calling activist affordances.
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Activist affordances emerge out of two visual ethnographies.
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The first one of which took place in 2009 in Istanbul and Quebec, where I worked with
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23 participants who have nonapparent disabilities related to rheumatoid arthritis.
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As shown in the slides, I visited with participants at their home, interviewed and filmed them
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as they performed very simple daily tasks.
11:14
Quote, end quote.
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The second ethnography took place in Montreal, where I followed three differently disabled
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individuals as they navigated the public spaces of this highly inaccessible city, such as
11:27
crossing streets covered with snow, as shown in the slides.
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To give an outline, I will begin with the traditional idea of affordances, followed
11:37
by my own theorization of it, introducing first what I call shrinkage, continuing with
11:42
performance, and, finally, talking about the concept of activist affordances.
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The theory of affordances was developed by James Gibson in ecological psychology.
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Gibson coined the term in his own words, "In order to refer to the mutuality of the organism
12:00
and the environment in a way no existing term does."
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Affordances refer to the possibilities of action, the actualization of which depends
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upon the reciprocity between the properties of the organism and all of the environment.
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Now, this is all good, but what I propose in my theory is that let's look at when that
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mutuality cannot be readily found in the given order of things and what happens thereafter.
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I would like to ask to stop the video recording for -- momentarily.
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I will be showing video clips -- video clips.
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First two are -- Now, drawing on these moments, I propose to
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think of disability ecologically as the shrinking of the environment and its existing set of
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affordances.
12:45
With the concept shrinkage, I surely do not mean a deficit approach.
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Rather, I am thinking along with Alison Kafer, who called for stories that not only admit
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limitation, even failure, but that recognize such failure as ground for theory itself.
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Shrinking is the ground for a theory of activist affordances because precisely at such moments,
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as I will now show something else happen.
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Can we again pause the recording please?
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I -- Going back to my slides.
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Whether it's a disabling barrier, an ableist habitus, or the experiencing of chronic pain,
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disease or debilitation, disability occurs, I argued, as a narrowing down of the environment
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and its space for action, but precisely at such moments of shrinkage as we have seen,
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it is the space of performance that opens up and allows us to make that environment
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afford otherwise.
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By performance, I mean along with Diana Taylor, what moves between the as-if and the as-is,
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between pretend and new constructions of the real.
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Think of actors on stage who bring into being an elsewhere and elsewhere by operating within
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the very constraints of the stage.
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Same happens in everyday lived with a disability.
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Just like actors improvising on stage, disabled people may move, sense, and behave in such
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ways that they enact the affordances -- that enact affordances unimaginable otherwise.
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Affordances within which their pain will be minimized and their non-normative bodies would
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somehow be reciprocated by the environment.
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This is what I call activist affordances.
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I define activist affordances as micro, ephemeral, and performative acts of world building with
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which disabled people literally make up, and, at the same time, must make up for whatever
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affordances fail to readily materialize in their environments.
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Such as this micro moments of brushing your hair by bending your head.
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Or these moments of using a pair of old gloves, your arthritic nodules, or your teeth to open
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bottles.
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Increasing utopia -- I don't know what happened there.
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Sorry about that.
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Increasing utopia, José Muñoz proposes that we consider embodied queer performances as
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a feature in the present, as outposts of actually existing queer worlds.
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Following Muñoz, I propose we consider activist affordances as the outpost of actually existing
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accessible features.
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I'm arguing this because none of my participants in this slide had ever access to or even knew
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of such adaptive tools such as an elongated comb, a button hook, or an ergonomic chair.
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And yet they were able to imagine and actualize the way affordances of these objects in and
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through their performances.
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In short, they danced the affordances of accessible world in their physical absence.
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And they did so within what Nirmala Erevelles would call the historical material conditions
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of becoming disabled.
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Consider Ahmed's story, a physically disabled person with a cane shown on this slide.
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Ahmed grew up in rural Turkey in early '90s, which lacked basic infrastructure.
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This was also the time when Ahmed fell ill at 10 years old.
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His feet were entirely enflamed.
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He could not walk without support.
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I asked Ahmed if he was able to attend the school regularly, which was far from their
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home with a village path and no transportation in between.
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Ahmed's reply, "Of course.
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My dad carried me back and forth."
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Ahmed's father did so every single day for three years.
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He became the very affordance of what would have, in ideal circumstances, been a wheelchair,
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an adaptive public transportation, or a smooth-surfaced road.
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In the current shaping of the environment, we may not have adaptive tools or assistive
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technologies at our disposal.
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We may not be readily provided with infrastructures or services that would sustain our actions.
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We may not live in an accessible world, and perhaps we never will, but when an activist
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affordance is created, it is as if such livable niches were already built.
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It is as if such accessible futures have already arrived.
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Only that they exist in our dreams, performances, and unfinished makings.
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Thank you.
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>> PETRA KUPPERS: Well, hello, everybody, and thank you so much for having me.
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I'm so glad to be here.
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Thank you for Pamela to bring me in here.
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I'm so glad to be presenting with these people.
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I'm Petra Kuppers, she/her.
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I come to you from the Anishinaabeg territory in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and I'm wearing a
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red velvet top.
18:00
I'm -- Behind me is a pink wall with lots of different lights, and I'm wearing yellow
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glasses, and I am a large woman, a white woman, in her mid-50s, and I have a shaved head,
18:15
and behind me, occasionally, you can see glimpses of a Cthulhu War of the Worlds kind of image
18:21
that gives you a little bit of the sense of the science fiction and dark fantasy flavor
18:25
of my work.
18:27
All right.
18:29
So, I think my presentation will hook up really well with Arseli's, because there's so many
18:33
-- there's so many interesting connections there, and I hope you'll -- you'll hear some
18:37
of those.
18:38
In this talk, I will take you on two ecosomatic explorations: community performance in macro
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and micro worlds.
18:45
So, in January 2020, just before the pandemic shifted performance making throughout the
18:51
world, I co-created a performance workshop with a group of anthropologists and others
18:56
who were interested to move and think about disability and intersectionality.
19:01
We visited with the Museum of Archeology Ontario on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe,
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Haudenosaunee, Lunaapeewak, and Attawandaron peoples in London, Ontario, Canada.
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For our visit, we set up an alternative knowledge walk-through: a performance structure I often
19:19
use for museum, gallery, or archive visits.
19:23
And here is how one of the participants, Amala Poli, described the experience, so I'm citing
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Amala here.
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"The local Museum of Ontario Archeology was the site of our first group activity on the
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third and final day of the workshop.
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I chose this activity, the Alternative Knowledges Tour for discussion here, as the museum experience
19:44
is often guided by the written plaques next to artifacts, demanding our attentions, structuring
19:50
knowledge, and consumption of the various kinds of stimuli within the museum.
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Guided by Petra Kuppers's gentle suggestions, individual participants meandered into different
20:00
corners of the archaeological museum, choosing artifacts to present them to the other participants.
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This exercise disrupted the conventional expectations of the museum space, as each of us created
20:13
a two-part process.
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We first presented our chosen object or image in its historical context to honor it in its
20:20
own right and then added a creative element that speculatively guided the rest of the
20:25
individuals through a new and imaginative experience of the chosen artifact.
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It gave us occasion to coexist in a space of respectful attention and care, listening
20:36
and absorbing each other's creative and imaginative energies together."
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This is what Amala wrote on the Medical Humanities Blog, and I'm grateful for her for -- for
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archiving some of our experiences together.
20:51
Around us in the museum, the history of archaeology lay exposed in its own sedimentary layers.
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In my station, I stood in front of a glass screen, not touching.
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Behind the glass was a small mammoth plastic creature.
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And, Nell, I would love you to share the image that I gave you now.
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So, you're going to be now in the presence of this small mammoth creature.
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Ok.
21:17
There you go.
21:18
So, there it is.
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A small mammoth plastic creature with impossibly red lips at the end of a long trunk.
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Next to it lay excavated, fossilized mammoth teeth.
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I spent time looking, being, being lost, opening.
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I sensed for what would come through in speculative modes of eco soma attention.
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Then the group came around to my station.
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I didn't know what would happen.
21:44
I hadn't planned it out.
21:46
I just trusted my improvisatory skills, and I also trusted that something would offer
21:50
itself to me if I asked gently enough, if I pressed into the earth right there.
21:56
We went on a dream journey.
21:59
Inviting them with my voice, I had everybody drop into this particular location thousands
22:03
of years ago.
22:05
I cannot fully remember what I spoke in that dream meditation.
22:09
I am altered when I do these things.
22:11
Since so much of my memory is sensory, image, and sensation flashes, I offer it in a complex
22:17
pronoun, not claiming anything for the group, but also inviting you in, you who are listening
22:22
to me.
22:23
This remains from this dream journey in my memory.
22:27
"At one point, you/I/us are sitting on the ground, there is sparse grass below, sandy
22:35
soil beneath that, a gentle breeze, alone, but the community is not far.
22:41
The sky is wide.
22:44
Something comes up from behind, massive, but not threatening.
22:47
Awe-inspiring, but not violent.
22:50
There is a musky smell.
22:53
You/I/us feel the heft of its being in the trembling earth beneath.
22:58
There is no threat.
23:00
It lays its long snout on you/me/us.
23:04
The shoulder, a weight, air flow and humidity on cheek.
23:10
It kisses you/me/us.
23:13
Warm breath blow.
23:14
Then it withdraws, a question mark as much as a benediction."
23:22
And we now can take the picture away.
23:25
Eventually, I returned to our consensus world on the floor in the museum in front of the
23:32
glass cabinet in the circle of our group.
23:34
And here is that little plastic mammoth now asking me about anthropomorphism, about who
23:39
does what to whom, about pedagogies that are open to what is on the limit, about embodied
23:44
journeys that can't be remembered.
23:47
Unruly senses.
23:49
Land yielding with a gift to a quiet request.
23:52
People breathing in meditation, yielding even as none of us in our multi-racial community
23:57
can really trust one another in a world of White supremacy, eugenic impulses, and colonial
24:04
injustice.
24:05
We brought a lot of our pathways to this meeting, where we came from, our people, our land.
24:10
Now, we are on this land.
24:12
We/you/I breathe, fill lungs together, center wellbeing and community in risk.
24:20
We/you/I in a museum, or here in a webinar, breathe with the dust and memory that Tiffany
24:27
King reminds me of, and I quote Tiffany King: "Slavery and genocide linger in places we
24:33
do not expect and cannot yet see or define."
24:37
I'm also holding on to Tiffany King's later comment, and I ask myself to not get too hopeful,
24:42
to not get too carried away: the tasks her book to "arrests settler colonialism's tendencies
24:48
to resuscitate older liberal humanist modes of thought to create new poststructural and
24:53
postmodern forms of violent humanisms that feed off Indigenous genocide and Black social
24:59
death."
25:00
Let's not get romantic in the violence of the anthropological museum, even as we explore
25:05
new kin.
25:07
Stay at the limit.
25:08
And yet, here we are, there we were, yielding to a queer interspecies kiss.
25:15
All right.
25:17
Go with me to a second field visit, this time in our own living room, again touching strata,
25:24
touching objects.
25:25
I invite you now to stim with something in your own home.
25:29
Just look around yourself.
25:30
You're all in homes.
25:32
I can't see you on the screen, because only one of us is visible, or two of us with the
25:36
interpreter, but find something, anything.
25:39
Like a small -- I'm holding a little plush animal, or maybe it's a pillow.
25:45
Just hold something while I'm reading the next bit, and just touch it, feel it, think
25:50
about stimming.
25:51
This way of affirming our own boundaries, something that comes to us from neurodiverse
25:56
worlds.
25:58
Once a week, a number of local artists meet in Turtle Disco, my home in Ypsilanti, Michigan,
26:04
in a repurposed living room, which faces out to the street.
26:08
It is a somatic writing studio I co-create with my wife and creative partner, Stephanie
26:12
Heit, a dancer and writer.
26:14
[dog barking in background] She and I both identify as disabled: I'm a wheelchair user;
26:20
Stephanie is bipolar and lives with brain injury.
26:23
Most of the people who come to Turtle Disco likewise identify as disabled and as queer.
26:28
Our Turtle Disco practice is purposefully local.
26:33
For me it is the pendant of my ongoing and long-standing wider international practice.
26:38
Turtle Disco and its local web follows the impetus given by feminist science writer Donna
26:43
Haraway.
26:45
In the last chapter of her influential book "Staying with the Trouble," she discusses
26:49
communal storytelling as a tool for imagining new futures.
26:52
[dog barking in background] She focuses on a person in a commune, Camille, a fictional
26:57
entity of the Children of the Compost, a collaborative web of speculative narratives.
27:03
Camille is genetically bonded to monarch butterflies in an effort to save them from extinction,
27:08
and readers follow five generations of Camilles and their changing physicalities and adaptive
27:15
embedments, or affordances.
27:18
Turtle Disco sees itself in this future lineage: local; sustainable; aware of the histories
27:24
of extraction, exclusion, and colonial violence in our place; with neighbors coming together,
27:29
engaging in art/life practice to sustain ourselves as a chosen web.
27:34
In our practices, Turtle Disco rehearses for Haraway's small cooperatives, small communities,
27:40
healing and recharging caves.
27:42
Turtle Disco imagines itself as a health/care/performance/practice to hold ourselves, non-human others, including
27:49
the dogs that you keep hearing in the background here, and the world toward new forms of co-habitation.
27:56
In one of our practices, object theater work and shared animacy, honoring life and story
28:01
everywhere, becomes very resonant.
28:04
My own disability manifests itself primarily through chronic pain.
28:09
In one of our weekly sessions, "Contemplative Dance and Writing," led by Stephanie Heit,
28:14
individual movements and meditation are followed by an Open Space segment.
28:19
In this segment of the practice, people can choose to participate and engage each other
28:23
to witness from the side.
28:25
I often wish to participate, but my limbs might be frozen by pain.
28:31
To get off my cushion station and move into the circle can be too hard.
28:34
Even though Stephanie and I have installed a grab bar on the wall by my nesting spot,
28:40
one of the affordances, I sometimes cannot easily rise up.
28:44
So one practice I engage in is to drape a soft, fluffy blanket that is part of my nesting
28:49
station over myself.
28:51
And I have it here.
28:52
Here's one of my blankets.
28:53
I'm holding a turquoise plastic blanket.
28:56
[phone ringing] Then I animate it -- Then I animate it like a puppet.
29:02
I creep and slide slowly into the middle of the room, unable to see where I'm going, but
29:07
slowly and in keeping with my pain rhythm: a pink or turquoise plush monster puppet,
29:13
a blob, an amoeba, unconcerned with high kicks or wide reaches, but rippling with sensitive
29:19
edges and fringes, sliding and pooling across the wood floor.
29:23
As you hear this, and as you feel where you are and what you're holding, feel and name
29:29
your sensations.
29:30
What are you sitting on?
29:33
What is it made of?
29:34
What are you holding?
29:35
How did it come to this place?
29:36
What is your relation to it?
29:39
What stories does the material tell you when you use your own sensitive fringes, your fingertips,
29:43
maybe your lips, to touch it?
29:46
How does it feel to contort your own body into new configurations, to create new relations
29:51
to what is familiar to you?
29:54
Enjoy the stretch.
29:56
Eventually, in Turtle Disco, my draped body encounters something: maybe someone is reaching
30:00
out to me, or there's a foot in my trajectory.
30:02
At this point, the drape, my body, become an unit -- a new unit.
30:08
The new assemblage becomes puppet: non-facial, sensing in tactile ways, with readable and
30:15
relatable emotions and narratives.
30:17
In my reading of what is going on, we, the people in the room, play like children, able
30:24
to animate everything around us -- and we play like adults, able to connect our imagination
30:29
with strata of knowledges we have of objects we use as somatic extensions.
30:34
'Made in China' wind-down toys, or little plastic toys, bob rhythmically on the wood
30:39
floor.
30:40
As we finger them, labor conditions, plastic pollution, and supply lines enter the dance,
30:45
too.
30:46
There's a tiny plastic whale I play with, touching its round surfaces.
30:50
And while I hold the little whale in my hand, suddenly, we spontaneously make sounds in
30:56
the studio, chirping and humming in call and response, slowing and booming.
31:02
Slowly, my improvising bodymind weaves into the dance, the effects of sonar and seismic
31:08
blasting of whale life, and on whale pods.
31:13
Non-realist representations that take flight from recognizable human figures and bodily
31:17
configuration can allow for deep expressive potential, and can offer rich avenues for
31:23
disabled performance makers.
31:26
Instead of mimicry, we find other ways of creating relationalty, of infusing objects
31:30
with emotions and interactivity.
31:32
This is a facet of ecosomatic imagination at play: an extending of one's skin envelope
31:39
of expressive collaboration with materials, enacting and literalizing the poetics of new
31:44
materialists perspectives on material's agency.
31:48
In my manipulation of the blanket, for instance, the blanket also speaks back to me.
31:53
I'm aware of its materiality: an oil-based process creates the fluffy, soft and easily
31:58
washable fleece blanket we are using, and I am aware of the fiber shedding that accompanies
32:04
these materials and contaminates our waterways.
32:08
The objects can carry a lot.
32:10
If someone is not feeling up to eye contact or is very tired or wants to act out of some
32:15
angry scene without endangering the rest of the living actants, these objects, this blanket,
32:21
can help us to do so.
32:22
In these pain-practices in Turtle Disco, becoming with other, and becoming fictional, are all
32:29
avenues for self-expression and modes of connectivity.
32:33
Time, space, and bodies shift under pressure in many different ways.
32:39
So, that was my talk.
32:41
These are my soma, my eco soma writing methods, touching through, touching with, in respect,
32:47
with a pause for pain practices, for memory, in community.
32:53
Thank you for listening.
32:55
And I hope you enjoyed your objects.
33:17
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Hello.
33:23
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Tanya: read the chat.
33:36
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Say again, Devva.
33:38
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Go ahead and read the chat.
33:42
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Go ahead and read the chat.
33:47
I describe myself as a 70-year-old Jewish woman, who is never still, but not always
33:52
in pain, and I have a mountain of gray hair on my head.
33:56
I'm wearing silver grape earrings and a dress painted with flowers.
34:01
I sit on Weot, Karouk, and Yourok land in a room almost buried in paper and books.
34:10
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Can someone pin me?
34:15
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Can someone pin me?
34:20
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Next slide.
34:25
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Say again?
34:27
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Next slide.
34:29
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Next slide.
34:31
I'm sorry.
34:43
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Yes.
34:44
Push play.
34:46
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Go ahead and push play.
34:52
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: If you don't have captions on, you might want to turn them on.
34:59
>> TANYA ANDERSON: If you don't have captions on, you might have to turn them on.
35:04
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: The woman you see is Tanya.
35:10
>> TANYA ANDERSON: The woman you see...
35:12
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Is Tanya.
35:13
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Is Tanya.
35:14
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Blonde hair and blue shirt.
35:18
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Blonde hair and blue shirt.
35:22
[no audio on video]
35:33
>> TANYA ANDERSON: We don't have any sound on the audio.
35:35
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: That's okay.
35:37
That's not real...
35:40
>> TANYA ANDERSON: That's okay.
35:43
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Ok, that's good enough.
35:46
Stop the video.
35:50
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Stop the video.
35:52
That's enough.
35:53
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Go to the next slide.
35:57
>> TANYA ANDERSON: And go to the next slide.
36:10
>> DEVVA KASNITZ/TANYA ANDERSON: I open my classes -- with this video or a dance.
36:26
A flourish.
36:29
A flourish of my wardrobe.
36:33
I start this way to destabilize my audience.
36:50
It shows off what I clearly can't do.
36:57
>> TANYA ANDERSON: It shows off what I clearly can't do.
37:01
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: At the same time that it trumpets.
37:06
>> TANYA ANDERSON: At the same time that it trumpets.
37:09
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: What I can do.
37:11
>> TANYA ANDERSON: What I can do.
37:13
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: That no one would expect me to do.
37:18
>> TANYA ANDERSON: That no one would expect me to do.
37:21
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: And that they can't.
37:23
>> TANYA ANDERSON: And that they can't.
37:25
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Okay, by the way.
37:27
>> TANYA ANDERSON: By the way.
37:28
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: You didn't miss anything.
37:32
>> TANYA ANDERSON: You didn't miss anything.
37:34
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: By not having audio on the video.
37:41
>> TANYA ANDERSON: By not having audio on the video.
37:45
>> DEVVA KASNITZ/TANYA ANDERSON: Because the joke is...
37:52
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: That I can't understand myself.
37:57
>> TANYA ANDERSON: That I can't understand myself.
38:00
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: And I realize that halfway through.
38:05
>> TANYA ANDERSON: And I realize that halfway through.
38:07
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: I switch from making sense.
38:13
>> TANYA ANDERSON: I switch from making sense.
38:15
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: To pure gibberish.
38:19
>> TANYA ANDERSON: To...?
38:21
Gibberish.
38:23
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Because I realized.
38:27
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Because I realized.
38:28
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: I can't spin and talk at the same time!
38:34
>> TANYA ANDERSON: I can't spin and talk at the same time.
38:39
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Next slide.
38:40
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Next slide.
38:45
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: I record everything that happens in my class.
38:55
>> TANYA ANDERSON: I record everything that happens in my class.
38:58
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: So, here is me.
39:02
>> TANYA ANDERSON: So here is me.
39:04
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Performing my student's brain.
39:09
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Performing my student's brain.
39:11
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: For the students.
39:14
>> TANYA ANDERSON: For the students.
39:15
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Oh!
39:16
My goodness!
39:18
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Oh, my goodness!
39:20
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Look at her talking!
39:23
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Look at her talking!
39:25
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Now, if you're not on gallery view.
39:31
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Now, if you're not on gallery view.
39:34
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Go to gallery view.
39:37
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Go to gallery view.
39:38
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: So you can see me.
39:41
>> TANYA ANDERSON: So you can see me.
39:43
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Look at how her face contorts!
39:47
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Look at how her face contorts!
39:50
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Who could ever understand her?
39:54
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Who could ever understand her?
39:57
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: She just keeps talking.
40:01
>> TANYA ANDERSON: She just keeps talking.
40:03
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Oh no.
40:04
She is looking at me!
40:07
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Oh, no, she is looking at me!
40:09
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: What will I do if she asks me a question?
40:13
>> TANYA ANDERSON: What will I do if she asks me a question?
40:16
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: How would I even know it's a question?
40:19
>> TANYA ANDERSON: How will I even know it's a question?
40:21
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: What should I do?
40:24
>> TANYA ANDERSON: What should I do?
40:26
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Do others understand her?
40:28
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Do others understand her?
40:30
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Am I alone?
40:32
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Am I alone?
40:36
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Poor babies.
40:40
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Say again?
40:41
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Poor babies.
40:43
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Poor babies.
40:45
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Of course, they can't.
40:50
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Of course, they can't.
40:52
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Think that.
40:54
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Think that.
40:55
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: And listen.
40:58
>> TANYA ANDERSON: And?
41:00
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Listen.
41:01
>> TANYA ANDERSON: And listen.
41:02
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: At the same time.
41:04
>> TANYA ANDERSON: At the same time.
41:08
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Next slide.
41:10
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Next slide, please.
41:13
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Tanya?
41:15
>> TANYA ANDERSON: I developed this technique long ago to both stop myself from trying to
41:21
delude myself that I could blend into the wallpaper,
41:24
and to be sure that I controlled the narrative.
41:29
And the slide depicts an image of Devva, it's in profile, and she's dressed with a tiara,
41:37
she's wearing glasses, and her long, flowing, gray and dark hair, fairy wings, and holding
41:45
a wand with a star.
41:48
She's wearing long, looped necklaces.
41:52
And it's a beautiful image.
41:55
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: It's my fairy godmother persona.
42:01
>> TANYA ANDERSON: It's my fairy godmother persona.
42:03
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Next slide.
42:04
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Next slide.
42:09
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Autoethnography.
42:11
Why autoethnography?
42:13
To bring out nuance.
42:15
I moved from Australia to Sicily over three years of studying reproduction and immigration
42:21
for my dissertation, but my best data on the Sicilians' concept -- conception of female
42:27
physiology came from the kitchen table and bathroom conversations about whether or not
42:33
it was a good idea for me to have a baby or to see if I properly cleaned my disabled body
42:39
-- the conversational foil to understanding general ethno-embodiment.
42:45
Because of my speech impairment, I use chat, text, and e-mail as others use the telephone
42:51
and face-to-face conversation.
42:54
I have verbatim transcripts of all my classes and most meetings I attend from employing
42:59
Computer Aided Real-time Transcription or CART as an accommodation.
43:06
As data, I mine these texts altered only to protect others' anonymity.
43:14
Forgive me.
43:16
I make no claim to generalization.
43:18
Today, I am content to demonstrate how anthropological tools make my lafe -- life more meaningful
43:25
to me with verbatim, electronically captured data.
43:30
Next slide.
43:33
Disability studies, disability anthropology, and disability justice are contested terms
43:40
with issues of ownership and appropriation.
43:43
We have had 30 years of experience doing disability studies and thinking about it by that name,
43:50
long enough for it to be misappropriated by others who recognize it is hip, but little
43:55
else (think rehab).
43:58
For many, this necessitates the use of the modifier "critical disability studies" or
44:04
even "crip studies."
44:06
Appropriation still rules when recently a professional job was advertised as a chair
44:12
in "Crip Studies" when by law it cannot be reserved for a Crip.
44:17
With enormous growth in publications, teachings, popular culture, and public policy about disability,
44:24
we need to understand the social, educational, and organizational history in service of understanding
44:30
current cutting edges and where we think some of the resulting blood flow may soon take
44:36
us as austerity becomes an embodied disability crisis, lest we fall off the peripheral cliff
44:42
edges of academia.
44:51
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Next slide.
44:52
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Next slide.
44:54
I offer "disability anthropology" as foil to "anthropology of disability" as others
45:00
offer "disability justice" for "disability rights."
45:03
Each is a subtle shift of emphasis.
45:07
It helps us to see ableist pedagogy implied in how power structures, aimed to "support"
45:13
disabled students and faculty, irrevocably entwine disability embodiment in the experience,
45:20
whether seeking funding or instructional accommodations.
45:24
Who controls these material, temporal, and organizational means of apprehension explains
45:32
why "intersectionality" as a term can never be too far from "disability."
45:38
It explains why disability anthropologists, disabled or not, have turned to versions of
45:43
autoethnography to demonstrate what we experience and what that experience teaches.
45:50
I will parallel my simple history of disability studies with examples from my autoethnography
45:56
of pedagogical performance, pedagogical organizations, and how they have encouraged and impeded the
46:03
creation and performance of teaching and learning.
46:20
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Ok, we want sound.
46:25
>> TANYA ANDERSON: With no sound.
46:26
My disability...
46:28
Did you want me to read, or did you -- >> DEVVA KASNITZ: No, see if we can get the
46:33
sound on.
46:35
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Can you put the sound on?
46:41
Thank you.
46:45
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: I'll just do it live.
46:47
>> TANYA ANDERSON: I'll just do it live.
46:49
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Go ahead and -- My disability is that when I walk into a room, everyone
47:00
in that room who can see or hear labels me as disabled, and treats me differently.
47:12
Because of how I look, and how I move.
47:17
Because of how I sound, I am instantly set apart.
47:26
Tanya, would you do the second half?
47:30
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Sure.
47:31
Tanya, you do the second half.
47:32
Can you go ahead and forward about halfway through the video?
47:36
Thank you.
47:37
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Yeah, there you go.
47:39
>> TANYA ANDERSON: And that is my disability.
47:41
I can't blend.
47:43
I can't hang out in the background.
47:46
I'm always...
47:50
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Visible.
47:51
>> TANYA ANDERSON: I'm always visible.
47:52
I'm on display.
47:55
And of course my reaction is if everyone is going to stare anyhow... let's give them something
48:03
to look at.
48:04
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Ta-da!
48:06
>> TANYA ANDERSON: That's all.
48:08
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: That's all, folks.
48:09
>> TANYA ANDERSON: That's all, folks.
48:24
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Okay, I'm done.
48:27
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Okay, I'm done.
48:42
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Everyone, turn on their cameras.
48:47
>> PAMELA BLOCK: I'm thinking we never really talked about how we would handle question
48:52
and answer.
48:53
Um, we don't have a lot of time.
48:55
We're right at the hour, but I think that the best way to handle it would be, like,
49:04
if people have questions, to put them on the chat.
49:07
And if we don't have time to answer, which I think we have very little time right now,
49:14
um, I think that we can try to get back to you later.
49:21
You know, like, contact us, contact the presenters, and uh, they will try to respond to you directly.
49:29
So, I think we will end the formal presentation here, and thank everyone for attending,
49:39
and we look forward to getting your feedback, or your questions, as we move forward.
49:48
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: And I'll provide the video to AAA to post.
50:00
>> TANYA ANDERSON: And I will submit the video to AAA to post.
50:04
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Yeah.
50:08
>> PETRA KUPPERS: Well, this is Petra.
50:10
Thank you, everybody, it was wonderful to present with you, Devva, and Arseli.
50:13
It was great, and thanks for organizing us, Pam.
50:16
So much appreciated.
50:19
>> ARSELI DOKUMACI: Same here.
50:20
Thank you, everyone.
50:21
Thank you, Petra, thank you, Devva and Pam, and for everyone for listening.
50:25
>> PETRA KUPPERS: Yay.
50:26
And I'm glad that some of the people from the Western University Residency are actually
50:31
here on the call with us, so.
50:32
So great to see you again.
50:34
Hi, Matthew.
50:35
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Thanks, everyone.
50:36
>> JEFF MARTIN: Thanks, everyone.
50:38
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Stay tuned for more from AAA.
50:45
>> TANYA ANDERSON: And stay tuned for more from AAA.
50:48
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: For more from SFAA.
50:54
>> TANYA ANDERSON: And more from SFAA.
50:57
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: And from SDS.
51:00
>> TANYA ANDERSON: And from SDS.
51:02
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: That's the Society for Applied Anthro.
51:08
>> TANYA ANDERSON: That's for -- that's the Society for...?
51:10
>> PAMELA BLOCK: Applied anthro.
51:12
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Applied anthro, thank you.
51:13
>> DEVVA KASNIZ: Society for Disability Studies.
51:16
>> TANYA ANDERSON: And the Society for Disability Studies.
51:18
[background laughter and noise] >> DEVVA KASNITZ: And these conversations
51:22
will flow from one conference to the next.
51:29
>> TANYA ANDERSON: And these conferences will flow from one conference to the next.
51:33
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Yeah, they're all connected.
51:34
>> TANYA ANDERSON: They're all connected.
51:40
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: So, come!
51:42
>> TANYA ANDERSON: So, come!
51:43
[laughter] >> DEVVA KASNITZ: Come, come.
51:45
Bring your students.
51:47
>> TANYA ANDERSON: Bring your students.
51:49
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: We have the SDS deal...
51:58
>> PETRA KUPPERS: I love how we have... I'm sorry.
52:00
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: ... bring all your students for free.
52:05
>> TANYA ANDERSON: And the SDS deal is, and I missed a little bit in there, but basically,
52:09
you can bring all your students for free.
52:11
>> PAMELA BLOCK: If you're a member?
52:13
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Yeah.
52:14
If one professor is the member.
52:15
>> PAMELA BLOCK: If the professor is the member, the students can attend for free.
52:18
That's pretty amazing.
52:20
>> DEVVA KASNITZ: Yeah.
52:21
...
52:23
>> PAMELA BLOCK: Another disability coven hack.
52:28
>> PETRA KUPPERS: For those of you who can't read the chat,
52:30
>> JEFF MARTIN: All right.
52:30
>> PETRA KUPPERS: ... for whom the chat is not accessible, I just want to point out that
52:33
we have people here from all over the world, and that's just lovely to see, you know?
52:36
Just, we, people here from Chile, Indonesia, India, all over.
52:42
So great.
52:45
>> JEFF MARTIN: Ok, thanks again, everyone.
52:47
>> UNKNOWN VOICE: Thank you!