Abstract
In disability studies, discussing the process of becoming disabled is often discouraged. It is not ok to ask “what happened” because it positions disability as an accident and otherwise undesirable. Instead, the field has focused on the social model as a way to divorce disability from discourses about suffering, and rightly so, affirm disabled identity while challenging social societal attitudes that devalue disabled life and obstacles such as environments inhospitable to disabled bodies. Despite the interventions of scholars like Susan Wendell, Tom Shakespeare, and Margaret Price, there is still an understandably strong resistance in the field to discussing disability and suffering. What has happened, however, is that the experiences of becoming disabled for those who occupy multiple marginalized positions must be elided. For instance, to ask disabled black women “what happened” might reveal narratives like that shared in Assata Shakur’s memoir, which reveals that she experienced a temporary physical disability, in the form of paralysis, and chronic illness as an effect of state violence. As Nirmalla Erevelles has argued elsewhere, disability is often the result of racialized socio-economic subjugation. In this paper, I analyze Assata Shakur’s 1987 memoir, Assata: An Autobiography, as but one instantiation in a body of African American literature that links state violence to becoming disabled. I argue that Shakur uses her bodily fragility to bear witness to the violence the state executes against the U.S. marginalized communities.
Highlights
In May of 1973, Assata Shakur, along with Sundiata Acoli and Zayd Shakur, was stopped by state patrollers on the New Jersey Turnpike.1 What began as a stop for a supposed traffic violation ended with Zayd and state trooper Werner Foerster dead, and Shakur in critical condition
Assata and Sundiata were tried for Foerster’s murder and Shakur convicted. Throughout her trial, Shakur, her legal team, and her supporters maintained Shakur’s innocence; they argue that she was targeted by the FBI, a claim they feel has been substantiated since information about the FBI’s COINTELpro became widely disseminated public knowledge
For Shakur and her supports, Shakur’s injured body gives insight into “the truth” of what happened that night on the New Jersey Turnpike, a truth that situates Shakur as not just innocent of the crime for which she is accused and a victim of the state troopers’ racial profiling and violence
Summary
In disability studies, discussing the process of becoming disabled is often discouraged. For Shakur and her supports, Shakur’s injured body gives insight into “the truth” of what happened that night on the New Jersey Turnpike, a truth that situates Shakur as not just innocent of the crime for which she is accused and a victim of the state troopers’ racial profiling and violence In her 1988 memoir, Assata: an Autobiography, illness and disability emerge as a prominent yet underexamined aspect of her narrative and disabling violence central to her critique of the U.S Reading Shakur’s narrative as troubles critical and theoretical moves in disability studies to divorce disability from discourses of tragedy and suffering by underscoring how oppressive states exercise power through disabling violence. Unlike Nelson’s book, this paper argues that these political activists thought that the medical community was more than just adversaries, they positioned the medical community as just as violent as the police
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