Cripping Consensus: Disability Studies at the Intersection

Abstract

Last year's twenty-fifth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) offers an opportunity to reflect on its impact and legacy beyond public policy. One good indicator of its effect on cultural fields is the recent publication of Keywords in Disability Studies (2015), a multi-authored critical encyclopedia of major terms and issues. Modeled on Raymond Williams's Keywords (1976), this volume provides short summaries of themes, terms, and concepts central to disability studies. A cursory look at entries in that volume reveals that, in addition to predictable terms like illness, prosthetics, madness, and genetics, keywords that might as easily be found in an equivalent cultural studies volume also appear: minority, reproduction, citizenship, modernity, space. What differentiates such terms in Keywords in Disability Studies from analogous entries in, say, Keywords in American Cultural Studies (2007) is how central embodiment and cognitive difference are to the major terms of cultural studies generally.