Cripistemologies and resisting the calls to return to normal

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to engage crip theory in a critical analysis of the calls within elementary education for a return to normalcy. I seek to question the ways Covid-19 has reinforced orientations towards normalcy by asking where normalcy went and how the calls for its return reveal the fundamental limits of inclusion within schools. Uses of the terms normalcy, normal, and normative within the context of this article refer to the mythical white, male, able-bodied, middle-class, heteronormative figure that remains hegemonic as well as widely resisted, questioned, and critiqued within critical disability studies. Through the application of crip theory and cripistemologies, I contend in this article that calls to return to normally engage in a persistent effort to erase and exclude disabled children and youth from a potentially transformative and necessary conversation about how we might pursue conceptualizations and enactments of inclusion outside of its current adherence to normative neoliberal aims and objectives. Rather than accepting the conditions of inclusion (i.e., the sustaining of normalcy) in its current neoliberal iteration, in this article I invite educators to crip calls for inclusion and crip calls for a return to normal.