Independence Day? More like Interdependence Day, as disabled artist Jim Ferris reminds us each year. In 2016, he mused about this small annual tradition: It's a modest performance intervening in the dominant rhetoric that is so whelming this time of year, about freedom, independence, liberty, all god-terms in Western and especially American discourse whose meanings can be quite slippery except that when operationalized they all seem to pretty much exclude access and opportunity for disabled people. Interdependence Day is a way to remind us all that we all, nondisabled as well as disabled, rely on other people all the time, that no one of us is an island entire of itself, that we require others not just for material needs but to know who, where, and how we are.
Crip News v.39
Crip News v.39
Crip News v.39
Independence Day? More like Interdependence Day, as disabled artist Jim Ferris reminds us each year. In 2016, he mused about this small annual tradition: It's a modest performance intervening in the dominant rhetoric that is so whelming this time of year, about freedom, independence, liberty, all god-terms in Western and especially American discourse whose meanings can be quite slippery except that when operationalized they all seem to pretty much exclude access and opportunity for disabled people. Interdependence Day is a way to remind us all that we all, nondisabled as well as disabled, rely on other people all the time, that no one of us is an island entire of itself, that we require others not just for material needs but to know who, where, and how we are.