I am especially grateful to Joseph Choueike and Tom Murray; and to Kim Q. Hall, Angela Hewett, Dan Moshenberg, Craig Polacek, and Abby L. Wilkerson. Their generosity and love are at work in this book, and this simple acknowledgment cannot begin to do justice to the ways in which they have sustained me and kept me focused on the simple fact that another world is possible. When Joseph (and so many others) can finally move freely, they all know I hope to thank them more properly in Rio de Janeiro.
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson may not remember saying “you know, this is disability studies,” as we rode the elevator up to a conference room in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in late 1998, where we were going to discuss AIDS cultural theory with a Washington, D.C., reading group focused on theories of the body. The writing of Crip Theory, however, in some ways commenced with that moment. Obviously, disability theory and disability liberation would not be where it is without Garland-Thomson’s foundational work. My own project, likewise, would not exist were it not for her scholarship and friendship. I am particularly grateful, as well, to the other members of that body theory reading group, including Debra Bergoffen, Carolyn Betensky, Bill Cohen, Jeffrey Cohen, Ellen Feder, Katherine Ott, and Gail Weiss. Jeffrey Cohen, in particular, has read significant portions of this book at every stage, and I have benefited immensely from his input.
The friendship and support of my other colleagues in the department of English at George Washington University have been invaluable; thanks especially to Patty Chu, Kavita Daiya, Gil Harris, Jennifer James, Meta DuEwa Jones, Jim Miller, Framji Minwalla, Faye Moskowitz, Ann Romines, Lee Salamon, Chris Sten, and Gayle Wald. I could single out each of them for large and small things: Jennifer James, for instance, knows equally well when to engage me in rigorous conversations about disability studies and intersectionality and when to send yellow tulips to my apartment. Jennifer DeVere Brody and Stacy Wolf left GWU long ago, but I continue to miss them; their ideas helped shape my thinking for this book as well. My students at GWU continually challenge me, and I acknowledge, in particular, Michael Bennett, Mara Berman, Jacob Blair, Yael Boloker, Evan Brustein, Andrea Cerbin, Joel Englestein, Keith Feldman, Robert Felt, Paige Franklin, Miriam Greenberg, Emily Henehan, Joe Fisher, Tim Nixon, Almila Ozdek, Myra Remigio, Niles Tomlinson, Aliya Weise, and Nathan Weiner. Finally, Connie Kibler gets thanked so often, it seems, in queer studies books, but I do want to acknowledge her influence. She seems to have some new idea for (or about) me with each turn of the calendar.
The more openly Marxist Expository Writing Program at GWU has been replaced with, or disciplined by, an efficient and more corporate University Writing Program, but the full and parttime members of that program know that they have my solidarity as they struggle both to sustain a critical cultural studies pedagogy and to access more just working conditions for academic laborers (including full and guaranteed health care). I am particularly grateful, again, to Abby L. Wilkerson, but also to Eric Drown, Gustavo Guerra, Randi Kristensen, Mark Mullen, Pam Presser, Rachel Riedner, and Phyllis Mentzell Ryder. Many of these colleagues have read and commented on various drafts or chapters of this book. Beyond this, Gustavo Guerra and Heidi Guerra have pulled me away from this book and toward celebratory affirmations of non-work-related aspects of life as often as anyone else, and they know how vital those times have been, for me and for Joseph.
Several colleagues listed above have also been involved in a Washington-area reading group on disability studies since the late 1990s; I thank as well my other friends in that group: Megan Davis, Lisbeth Fuisz, Susan Goldberg, Joyce Huff, Julia McCrossin, Julie Passanante, Todd R. Ramlow, Claudia Rector, and Nolana Yip.
Kim Q. Hall and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson were among those involved in the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on Disability Studies, held in 2000 at San Francisco State University. All those connected to that transformative event have had an influence on this book; I especially thank Sumi Colligan, Jim Ferris, Ann Fox, Diane Price Herndl, Martha Stoddard Holmes, Cathy Kudlick, Paul Longmore, Cindy LaCom, Carrie Sandahl, Sue Schweik, and Linda Ware.
Many others in queer and disability movements (broadly understood, and in and out of the academy) have at various points given me encouragement, feedback, and community: Stacy Alaimo, Tammy Berberi, Michael Bérubé, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, Saralyn Chesnut, Sarah E. Chinn, Sally Chivers, Eli Clare, Michael Davidson, Lennard J. Davis, John D’Emilio, Shifra Diamond, Carolyn Dinshaw, Lisa Duggan, Jill Ehnenn, Nirmala Erevelles, Beth Ferri, Anne Finger, S. Naomi Finkelstein, Chris Freeman, Terry Galloway, Noreen Giffney, David M. Halperin, Kristen Harmon, Jason Hendrickson, Mark Jordan, Alison Kafer, Ann Keefer, Joe Kisha, Georgina Kleege, Christopher Krentz, Petra Kuppers, Riva Lehrer, Kristin Lindgren, Simi Linton, Nicole Markotic, Vivian May, Ken McRuer, Madhavi Menon, David Mitchell, Anna Mollow, Sammie Moshenberg, Tom Olin, Michael O’Rourke, Ken Quandt, José Quiroga, Ellen Samuels, Dylan Scholinski, Barb Sebek, David Serlin, Tobin Siebers, Sharon Snyder, Marc Stein, Gayle Bozeman Van Pelt, Tamise Van Pelt, Priscilla Wald, Greg Walloch, and Cynthia Wu.
Finally, Michael Bérubé’s editorial acumen and friendship have helped nurture this project to completion. I am grateful to NYU Press more generally, but especially to Eric Zinner and Emily Park, both for their enthusiasm and support for this project and for the critical and ongoing work they have done to support queer and disability studies.
There is a tradition on this continent that perhaps reaches back to Anne Bradstreet’s Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America (1650) and that is highly developed in the acknowledgments sections of academic books in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This tradition consistently suggests that others, while they might have contributed to the successful aspects of the project, are not to be held accountable for a book’s “main defects” (to adapt Bradstreet). From where I sit, writing at the turn of the millennium and 350 years after Bradstreet, this strikes me as a tradition worth inverting. If there is anything disabled, queer, or crip about this book, it has come from my collaborative work with those named above, and many others. I take responsibility, however, for the moments when crip energies and ideas are contained or diluted in what follows, and I know that others will continue to push the work of this book, and the movements that made it possible, beyond those moments of containment.
Portions of the introduction appeared previously as “Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence,” in Disability Studies: Enablingthe Humanities, edited by Sharon L. Snyder, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, MLA Publications (2002); and as “As Good As It Gets: Queer Theory and Critical Disability,” in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 9.1–2 (2003):79–105. Reprinted here with permission from MLA Publications and Duke University Press.
An earlier version of chapter 4 appeared as “Composing Bodies; or, De-Composition: Queer Theory, Disability Studies, and Alternative Corporealities,” in JAC: A Quarterly Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Rhetoric, Culture, Literacy, and Politics 24.1 (2004):47–78. Reprinted here with permission.
A much shorter version of chapter 5 appeared as “Crip Eye for the Normate Guy: Queer Theory and the Disciplining of Disability Studies,” in PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 120.2 (2005), 586–592. Reprinted here with permission.