Cripped Ecology, Ill Planet
In her book Bodyminds Reimagined, Sami Schalk asks us “What might it mean to imagine disability differently?” (2) Her work, situated in the exploration of black speculative fiction, engages with (dis)ability studies and black feminism to gesture toward a reimagining of what Margaret Price termed the ‘bodymind’, a concept predicated on “the enmeshment of the mind and body.” (5) How might this enmeshment be understood in the context of chronic conditions, themselves experienced as a direct result of climate change and biomedical violence? Is the planet - made sick by extractive capitalism and anthropogenic action as Shukla, Settee, Lincoln and others claim - now existing in a state of (dis)ability? While Price and Schalk consider (dis)ability within the context of the human, how might we consider the further enmeshments of bodyminds to the planet where one is “training to manage catastrophe’s rage”? (Ortiz 26) In other words, how does one reconcile the drives of (dis)ability studies with the cripped ecology of the earth we stand on?
Traces of such a reconciliation can be found, for example, in eighteenth-century texts where scientists, physicians, and theoreticians, like John Winthrop, who, in his A Lecture on Earthquakes (1755), describes the Earth as a “heterogeneous body” (19) wherein “mountains rage with uncommon fury” (17). Much of the eighteenth-century’s scientific imaginary of the planet resides within the notion that the planet is alive, and therefore capable of being harmed and causing harm. While these interpretations may have somewhat dissipated in later western theories in favour of Enlightenment ideologies of the planet needing management and intervention from humans, we are now seeing a resurgence of scholarship seriously considering the planet as an agential, living body, thanks to the rising voices of Indigenous peoples in mainstream academics and fringe activism. In this sense, scholars and researchers have been asking what the impact of climate change is on the body and what is the impact of our bodies on the planet? Scholars like Catharine Houppert, Robert Nixon, Rachel Carson, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, as well as authors like Joshua Whitehead, Leanna Betasamosake Simpson, Jeannette Armstrong, Linda Hogan, and many others explore the interrelations between the planet and humans in a myriad of ways from chemical waste disposal, to colonialism and illness.
In our current age, what is commonly referred to as the Anthropocene, human and non-human bodies need to navigate “in a world organized by self-devouring growth” which is “eating away at the very ground beneath our feet” (Livingston 1), thus destabilising an imaginary of a stable, able-bodied world. Further, theorists like Timothy Morton reconsider the environment, not a separate entity “external to the human” (68), but as something holistically part of us and us of it. In an essay on Frankenstein, Morton asks us to think about “[what] happens … when someone writes about something monstrous: something that is not only ‘natural’ in the sense that it is non-human, but also ‘unnatural’ in the sense that it defies expectations about what nature is”? (146-7) While his focus is on the Creature, his question might be re-focused on disability and chronic illness as “unnatural” and yet “natural” occurrences, whether they manifest themselves by accident, or through pollution, toxic waste or chemical weapons. As such, this issue of The Harbour Journal seeks papers that engage with questions of dis/ability in a world (crippled) by extractive capitalism, colonialism and climate change, and looks to create an issue that reimagines disability and chronic illness as manifestations of a cripped ecology and an ill planet.
The Harbour Journal at the Université de Montréal invites writers to submit academic or creative work for publication in our fifth issue that explores the acts, processes, and reimaginings in writing on a cripped ecology and ill planet. Academic and creative works may consider a multitude of topics ranging from, but not limited to:
- Crip and (dis)ability studies
- Ecocriticism
- Planetary health/studies
- Chronic illness
- Pandemics
- Otherwiseness
- Literary criticism
We invite writers to submit full academic works (6000-8000 words bibliography included) with a 250-300 word abstract, in MLA format. Creative writers may send works such as poetry (no more than 5 poems), a short story, an excerpt of a play, film script or novel (2000-5000 words) in MLA format as well. All authors are requested to provide a separate short bio (50-150 words) in their submissions. The articles and creative works themselves must not contain any identification to ensure proper peer-review. Submissions must be sent by Dec. 18th to the editors in chief at the following email addresses:
Bibliography
Kafer, Alison. “Bodies of Nature: The Environmental Politics of Disability.” Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities: Toward and Eco-Crip Theory, edited by Sarah Jaquette Ray and Jay Sibers, University of Nebraska Press, 2017, pp. 201-241.
Livingston, Julie. Self-Devouring Growth: A Planetary Parable as Told from Southern Africa, Duke University Press, 2019.
Morton, Timothy. “Frankenstein and Ecocriticism.” The Cambridge Companion to Frankenstein, edited by Andrew Smith, Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 143-157.
Ortiz, Naomi. Rituals for Climate Change: A Crip Struggle for Ecojustice, Punctum Books, 2023.
Price, Margaret. “The Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain.” Special Issue: New Converstions in Feminist Disability Studies, in Hypatia, vol. 30, no. 1, 2015, pp. 268-284.
Raiani, Yasmina. “On Pain.” Medium, nov. 9, 2019. URL: On Pain. ﷽ | by Yasmina Raiani | Medium.
Ray, Sarah Jaquette. A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet, University of California Press, 2020.
Schalk, Sami. Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction, Duke University Press, 2018.
Winthrop, John. A Lecture on Earthquakes: Read in the Chapel of Harvard-College in Cambridge, N.E., November 26th, 1755. On Occasion of the Great Earthquake Which Shook New England the Week Before. Harvard University Press, 1755.