When I was fifty I believed it was still possible for the disabled to achieve equality in the United States. Twenty years later that belief has gone up in smoke. I feel like the polar bear in the social media meme who’s alone on an ice floe. This is a a feeing shared by thousands upon thousands of disabled folks. The helplessness is manufactured by fascism. I won’t feel helpless. I refuse. America is a biopolitical nightmare, one might call it a laboratory for the subjugation of human beings. This is why people in the United States can’t have diversity though they talk about it. Diversity without biopolitical awareness, without recognizing the role of the state in determining which bodies have or do not have value is just fluff. When will the Americas become a laboratory for freedom? I wish the wood cutter would wake up. Embodiment means many things but in neoliberal diversity fluff culture it means enjoying your body however you choose. If the body is difficult, heavy, gimpy, twisted, blind, then diversity movements aren’t inclined to welcome you. Diversity means convenience and ease and is therefore generally in cahoots with biopolitical determinism—some bodies have value, others don’t. As a university professor who’s disabled my body is problematic. If I require accommodations I’m difficult, sometimes a malcontent. Acceptable embodiment is policed. Policed bodies are inherently devalued bodies. Black Lives Matter. Disabled Lives Matter. Women’s Lives; Migrant Lives—but not so much in the breech. ICE raids are what happens while we were busy making other plans. Apology to John Lennon ’s ghost.
Planet of the Blind 