Mad in America

If there is no crying in disability studies then what becomes of those whose emotions are disabling or those whose disability is invalidated because it is considered just a feeling?  This seminar explores the often overlooked imbrication between emotions and disability in queer and affect theory through readings of Ann Cvetkovich’s Depression and José Muñoz’s “A Jeté Out the Window.” Accounting for the ways excessive emotions, such as mania and depression, can be disabling allows for more bridges between crip and queer theory to be realized. Building on Robert McRuer’s work connecting queerness and disability and José Muñoz’s theorization of brown feelings, the affective position of people of color, Mr Forrest names the slipperiness between disability identity and emotions as crip feelings/feeling crip. The term uses “crip” to signify how the confluence of disability and emotions further troubles the able-disabled identity divide and expands McRuer’s “ability trouble” not only to allow understandings of emotions to be put into crisis but also to proliferate opportunities for political alliances.