This past Wednesday we returned to the center to continue work on our boxes. When the artists came back from their snack break, we split off into our pairs, and made a kind of assembly line to get things done--although Carl* and I had to work on our project alone, since we were a little bit behind after I missed a week. We used one of the tools to carve our legs into fun, curvy shapes, and I rode the stationary bike for a *long* time. While we did that, another pair worked on cutting the pegs for all of the boxes, so that we could attach the legs with wood glue. When we finished our leg cutting, we took a brief musical interlude (I made some beats on the table with the wooden legs and Carl and I danced).

Here's some info about the new book Black Kripple Delivers Poetry and Lyrics, by Leroy Moore, aka Black Kripple and found of Krip Hop. 

Brief interview with Leroy about the book as part of a (successful) Indiegogo fundraiser for the book:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/black-kripple-delivers-poetry-and-lyrics-the-book#/

Website for his project Krip Hop Nation:

http://kriphopnation.com/

While there are many threads that weave into a complex tapestry for our discussion this week, there's one particular thread I'm seeing interwoven in many of these readings: that of shame. Disability, especially intellectual and mental disability more generally, is something that far too many cultures regard as shameful. This we see in Esther's work, and in too many other places. It's all too common a practice to "hide away your defectives"--in institutions in the modern day, for instance, but all across Western history. Our readings for today somewhat show that this is present in other cultures, too, but the influence of Western conceptions of disability are ever-present.

Qui Alexander's talk really resonated with me last week. As I said during the discussion, I was wary about this class because I never connected his face to his name, and thought that I was going to be taught about yoga by a white woman. I was really uncomfortable with that idea. But hearing from Qui was really enlightening. What he said about the disconnect between social justice work and embodied practices really got to me, and made so much sense; marginalized bodies cannot be apolitical, and so take on a lot of violence inherently. The only way to eradicate that is to use embodied practices, and somehow, those practices like yoga are only available for the most privileged. 

In their piece “A Glossary of Haunting”, which is written as an alphabetized series of glossary entries in the first-person, Eve Tuck and C. Ree problematize the connection between peace and justice. Under the entry titled “Decolonization”, they write, “justice and peace don’t exactly cohabitate. The promise of social justice sometimes rings false, smells consumptive, like another manifest destiny” (647). Comparing justice to manifest destiny is a powerful move. Manifest destiny, the assumption that the expansion of the colonization of America was inevitable, further fueled that unapologizing expansion.

Righting Wrongs, Wronging Wrongs, and Restoration 

My connection to this Glossary of Haunting came through my involvement with restorative justice. In being a member of the Bryn Mawr College Honor Board, I was able to experience restorative justice in action. Instead of attempting to right wrongs, restorative justice aims to heal individuals and communities. This may not look the same as the "revenge" Tuck & Ree discuss, but it acknowledges the damage and hurt that have been caused, rather than attempting to ignore them. A restorative justice model may not work to heal years of colonialism and settelor violences, and not much may, but it is certainly an approach that can work for individuals with relationships that can be repaired and built upon. 

“The capacity to do research, in this broad sense, is also tied to what I have recently called ‘the capacity to aspire’ [. . .], the social and cultural capacity to plan, hope, desire, and achieve socially valuable goals. The uneven distribution of this capacity is both a symptom and a measure of poverty, and it is a form of maldistribution that can be changed by policy and politics” (Appadurai 176-77)

Sorry for posting so late!!   :(