At first, I was really confused as to what exactly this was. I felt like each and every subsection of the essay comprised of a completely different voice, talking about completely different aspects of cripistemology. They didn’t seem to work collectively as a whole, and I felt lost in all these different “I’s”, “i’s”, “us’s”, and “you’s” that each segment seemed to refer to. Some tackled cripistemology from an etymological standpoint, while others approached it in conversation with the intersectionality of identities. All in all, I never understood where each of these arguments were approached from.
However, I later recognized that it was absolutely my fault for not recognizing the essay for what it was–– a literal, virtual roundtable on the topic of cripistemology. At this point, I didn’t know how to formulate my thoughts around all these voices that had something to say about cripistemology. If I were to make a stance based on my opinions, I wanted to be read up on more than a summary-esque form of each voice on cripistemology. What the roundtable did teach me though, however, is that there are a few voices that speaks up for this and yet, there is a lack of these voices ever reaching people beyond the community involved. This reminded me of how we lack a platform where people who aren’t actively involved in the disability community have no way of getting into the system to learn about what the community has to say. I think it would be important for such roundtables to not only be limited to the professionals theorizing in the disabled community, but also open to the public in a way we can academically discuss the discourse related the the pedagogy of disability.
This also reminded me of a talk I had with my friend, after a McGill Coffee Hour chat with a guest speaker (a professor at Vanderbilt) about the importance of widespread understanding and acceptance of feminism. But instead of encouraging or empowering us, the chat with the professor made us feel even more lost, dejected, and marginalized because the only people that have shown up to the coffee hours were women or involved in the queer community. There was one male student in attendance, but instead of an attitude of acceptance and welcoming, I felt a hostile air around us towards the one male student that has come to the coffee chat. As if all the patriarchal stem directly from that one student. The student seemed so distressed. He came to learn about how he could contribute to the empowerment of feminism, but instead left dejected. I somewhat felt the same way about this roundtable. I felt like there were a lot of terminologies being thrown around that I didn’t understand or could relate to. I am not saying that educated discussions and debates are not important, but just felt like this roundtable might easily be rendered useless if the only people reading or engaging in the roundtable are those already closely involved in the discourse, and are familiar with the material.
LUCY MOON 