Over-sights and Shared Vision: Collective Resistance Against a Disabling Society

ZARAE WHAKAKA DAVIS
COMMISSIONED AND EDITED BY XAN COPPINGER
ARTWORK BY OLIVIA CHIN

Xan Coppinger: “Blindspots are vulnerable and intimate spaces. Inhabited by many, missed by many, erased by many. These places of subjective non-existence also create liberatory and emancipatory invitations—not just towards revealing more perspectives, but to making visible the very finitude, partiality, and subjectivity of each. In a way, graciously owning up to ever more blindspots. The blindspot I wished to invite more exploration in is at the interweavings of ableism and colonialism.

Zarae and I had shared a drink one evening and discussed our experiences between Zarae’s study in genetic counselling and my work and lived-experience of disability advocacy. By exploring their diverse relationality, knowledges, and situatedness, I felt potential to notice things perhaps otherwise missed; and an appreciation for how multiple subjectivities could co-constitute, reimagine, and reproduce together.

So, in a ripple effect, when Léopold approached me, I approached Zarae with an invitation to explore such landscapes interweaving ableism and colonialism. The questions I posed, with encouragement to respond to what felt most magnetic, was around exploring carceral practices of care at the nexus point of reproductive justice. How do practices of care function within and against violent systems of hegemony? How does the question of scale (at the field of vision of the individual, the family, the community, the society) unsettle this? How can we make visible these nexus points at which our bodily reproductions interface with ideological reproductions?”

This piece was written on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong people of the Kulin Nations. I recognize their sovereign leadership, and their ongoing and unbreakable connection to this Country. Concepts discussed here—such as practices of care and community—have been embodied by First Nations people on these lands since the beginning.

The conversation with Xan which sparked this piece followed several years of being taught (but not necessarily learning) about disability, within settler-colonial academic institutions. Seasons spent engaging with these institutions constitute more than just a passive passing of time. It is a deliberate imposition from colonial systems onto our consciousness; strengthening those same systems, within our minds and out in the world. This must be actively resisted through theory and praxis. It is not enough to simply “disagree.”

Reflecting on responding to a question of “blindspots” at a juncture of health, disability, and colonialism; I considered whether the term “blindspot” was itself ableist. A “blindspot,” as something unseen, is not inherently negative. It can be understood as an invitation to greater understanding. However, the way we are using the term here may not be entirely accurate. Rather, we are considering oversights that we could perceive if we challenged ourselves to do so. The pull, for me, to respond to this question was therefore to identify and challenge oversights within my own thinking. This drew me to explore what already exists, in my networks and close by. Who has been engaging in collective practices of care; challenging narratives of disability; and embodying inclusion?