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Supercrip

Supercrip

Sunshine's picture

 

I think Eli Clare would use Supercrip as his username. On page 13 he wrote “Supercrip lives inside my body, ready and willing to push the physical limitations.” Clare wants the idea of “supercrip” to be dead, but until that happens this username could be a way that he reclaims it. 

 

I chose a picture with protesters because it shows “both” sides of the story, and Clare had ties to both sides. I loved “Save a logger, save the owls, and kill a logging exec.” (pg 59) I think in these types of situations it is so important to take a step back and think about what is truly happening. The environmentalists and the loggers were pitted against each other, without realizing that they both had a common enemy. Who knows where they would be now if they put their energy to better use; fighting against the logging execs. I think one of Clare’s motifs was finding the REAL solution to the problem, instead of looking for an easy way out.  Such as, the conflict between the loggers and environmentalists, demonizing freak show owners but not doctors , or asking people to raise money to find a cure, insead of challenging people to let go of their ableism. 

 

Source:http://michellemalkin.com/2012/11/28/obama-the-job-killing-owl-killer/

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I also believe that Eli Clare would chose to identify himself in this group as "supercrip". The word comes up many times when Eli speaks about dealing with people who are nondisabled. I have never experienced 'crip-theory' in school before and I believe this is the experience of many of the 360 students. Because we are reading Exile and Pride as the first text in two of our three courses, we are giving serious value to Clare's work and assigning him the supercrip label by default (subconciously).

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Personally, I don't think Clare would define himself as Supercrip in a public setting. He does say that he has supercripdom within himself, but that is not him. He does want supercrip to be dead, as you stated -- as he stated -- and it is not really a slur or identity to reclaim. Instead, it is a falsehood, a societal creation that does nothing but harm and erase disabled people. It is not a term that has been used against anyone as a negative term, like, say, crip, that can be flipped on its head and held up instead of being a tool to put down.

 

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