Summary of "Six Ways of Looking at Fractal Mechanics"
This is in two parts. Yes. Even on Kolektiva where we have 10k characters.
This essay was very hard to write. Many people read it before it was finally published. Reviewers, people who read work before it is published and suggest changes, did not like my first draft. I wrote and rewrote this paper many times. I like it, in the end. But I am sorry that it is just as difficult to understand as it was to finish. I am going to try to summarize this one in plain language. I will probably have to try again when I am better at plain language writing.
One of the hardest parts about writing this paper was how often people wanted me to change the order. Another hard part was how academics do not like it when you write like an artist instead of a scholar. I am not saying that my writing is good art. But I wrote it almost like a poem, and I did this on purpose. Sometimes I think the fact that I was writing artistically is what made the reviewers so confused.
This will be both a plain language summary and a plain language story about why I wrote this paper, and how I wrote it.
These next parts are the parts that are the most like a poem. These are the parts I wrote because I wanted to help the reader to feel the things I felt. To be uncomfortable, sad, angry, but also to laugh. These were also the parts I wrote first. I first wrote these parts in the spring of 2018. The paper was not published until the fall of 2021.
Scene 1: The young women stand by their posters in the gallery. They are standing between a poster on the legacy of the sheltered workshop and the resistance of the disability community to one side and, on the other, a poster by undergraduate special education students about barriers to service access for “Adults with ASD.” Their own posters are of themselves. Their portraits, smiling. Their bullet points, describing. Their futures, absent. They stand, uncannily still, eyes deflected—on display. They have been included. They know, now that they are here, that they are here to be observed—not to be witnessed.
This scene is about something upsetting I saw at a meeting where disabled college students were presenting research. It became very clear that the students with physical and sensory disabilities had been allowed to conduct research projects, but the students with cognitive disabilities were only allowed to make posters about themselves. You could tell that they understood they had been treated differently, and that they didn't know they were going to be treated differently until they came to the meeting. There were also non disabled students presenting their research. This could have been a nice example of inclusion, except the non disabled students' research projects were about people with disabilities. Disabled students were included, but not respected.
Scene 2: He enters the auditorium. His body, familiarly unruly, comfortingly uncanny. I am entangled with cables, cursing the projector blustering about absent conference IT staff. His access needs are well known. His AAC is not a surprise. But the conference would not provide tech support, and he has been included. Equity is not justice.
This scene is about a meeting I went to where a non speaking person was presenting his work. There were ramps in the room, but no support for hooking his computer voice up to the speakers. He was included, but not supported.
Scene 3: We begin our panel. A strategic, calculated, and artful assault on the state of special education and education technology. We neuroqueer crip critics, masterful if uncanny orators, stand opposite a rookery of nonplussed vultures—special educators and their brood, here to observe autism “in the wild.” Our own people, our crip people, absent. We have been included.
This scene is about a time when I presented my work at a meeting with my friends. I was so excited to have my first chance to present my work in front of other disabled people. But most of them did not come. Some other session was more interesting to them. Instead, the people who came were mostly special education teachers. We felt like zoo animals. The only people that wanted to see us were people that wanted to compare us to their textbooks. We were included, but not loved.
Scene 4: We sit in the back of the ballroom. We pass notes like cheeky school children. We are in Autistic Space. Noises spill from his sinuses, filling the rafters on opalescent waves—sonorous, sublime. “Shhh,” they turn their vulture necks. Craning to see. Who dares to (neuro)queer this crip time? No Tourette’s, no unruly bodies. They only want us here if we can be quiet. Apparently, we are not includable.
In this scene, I was so excited to get to talk to my friend. My nonspeaking friend. To get to talk to him in his way - with pen and paper and screeches. But the only disabled people that belong at the meeting are the ones with quiet bodies. We were included, but not wanted.
These things happened at a meeting that was supposed to be run by disabled people, for disabled people. But when I was there, so many bad things happened to me and my friends. I was very disappointed, because the meeting was all about liberation, but I watched as disabled people hurt other disabled people. People were celebrating their power while disempowering others.
This is sometimes called "neoliberalism". To be neoliberal, or to do neoliberalism, is to say you are helping someone when you are only helping yourself. Specifically, it is to say you are doing something good for someone, but you are actually supporting the same system that harms that person in the first place.
Here are some examples. The Best Buddies program is a neoliberal program. It is a neoliberal program because it says it is a program to help people with intellectual disability find friends. To do this, the best buddies program signs up non disabled people who want to do charity work by being a friend to disabled people. But that's not friendship. It's pitty. So best buddies pretends to give you a friend while supporting the society that believes you can't make friends any other way.
The sheltered workshop is a neoliberal program. Sheltered workshops are neoliberal, because they say they are going to give disabled people a job, but really they are giving the disabled person a boring task for less than minimum wage. They give you a pretend job, like Best Buddies gives you a pretend friend. They support a society that believes you cannot do good work to support your community.
Many of the college programs for people with intellectual disability are neoliberal programs. They are neoliberal because they pretend you are going to college but they are really controlling what classes you can take and what you can study. They support a society that believes there are only certain things you can do with your life.
So I was very frustrated at this meeting because it was a neoliberal meeting. But it was even more frustrating because the people running it were disabled. I felt they should have known better. I joked that it was NeoLiberation. It was pretend liberation.
—
The neoliberal machine has come for inclusion.
Always watching, surveilling, assaying—neoliberalism snatches up our resistances. Categorized, analyzed, defined, discretized. Labeled. Branded. Repackaged. Capitalized.
A radical movement becomes a social movement. A social movement becomes a policy. A policy becomes a program. A program becomes an industry.
“We will be inclusive,” You say. “We will be welcoming,” You say. “We will empower you,” You say. I say, “Who is We?”
Inclusion has a flaw, you see. One that Neoliberalism has found easy to exploit. A software vulnerability, or perhaps a feature. Inclusion, unfortunately, does not necessitate the abdication of power. You offer me a seat. But it is still your table.
We are empowered to conform. We are welcomed to be observed. We are liberated into a NeoliberalLiberation.
Thanks. I hate it.
—
This feeling that I was feeling, this feeling of NeoLiberation, reminds me of a feeling that Sarah Ahmed wrote about in her book "On Being Included" - she wrote about "that feeling of coming up against the same thing wherever you come up against it." (pg. 175)
As I sat with this feeling, and thought about the "sameness", or the repetition, of what was happening between these scenes, I remembered fractals.
See reply for part 2.
https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/article/view/33181/28261
#Fractals #ColiberationLab #TechJustice #DisabilityJustice #CripTechnoscience #Inclusion #Institutionalization #Neoliberalism #NeoLiberation #CollectiveAction
