Survival in/at the Intersections: A Preface for Three Papers on the Matter of Things

Abstract

These papers were independently submitted to the Ethnography Division and the Disability Issues Caucus for the National Communication Association 2019 Annual Convention. The panel was entitled: “Survival in/at the Intersections: Contributed Papers on Race, Sexuality and Disability.” The substantive content of the papers in general bleed the disciplinary borders between self and community located in particular and shifting cultural contexts. These three essays take into consideration the ways in which place and space, positions and positionalities, as well as populations and politics always impact our shifting sense of self; and how desire and distain are held in tensive relations. Each essay sustains and promotes an activism of the self—through auto/ethnographic means that consistently promote critical qualitative scholarship in/as/for social justice, to change culture and to sustain community, especially as a response to how others construct us (as them).