Radical Exposures: Crip and Queer in Maggie Nelson’s Autotheory

Abstract

In a culture that damns outliers as oversharers, Maggie Nelson uses her memoirs Bluets (2017) and The Argonauts (2015), to offer a radical performance of self-exposure. Through disclosures on care, she confronts readers with crip and queer identities to challenge their otherness in a society that prioritises heteronormativity and able-bodiedness, silencing the ‘Other.’ She brings these subjects to the fore of public discourse through co-construction. This is a collaborative practice of including secondary references, biography, and theory in first-person accounts, inimitably supported by her form ‘autotheory.’ Featuring an abundance of voices from high and low culture and Nelson’s inner circle enhances the quality of self-exposure in her work and shows how polyvocality counters the ordinary silencing of marginalised voices. This article offers a literary analysis of Nelson’s life writing to make a case for self-exposure. It lays out the contemporary context of her work and examines feminist, crip and queer practice through physical care and family making.