Crip Digital Intimacies: The Social Dynamics of Creating Access through Digital Technology

Megan A. Johnson (), Eliza Chandler, Chelsea Temple Jones and Lisa East
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Megan A. Johnson: The Centre for Art and Social Justice, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada
Eliza Chandler: School of Disability Studies, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada
Chelsea Temple Jones: Department of Child and Youth Studies, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON L2S 3A1, Canada
Lisa East: School of Disability Studies, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada

Societies, 2024, vol. 14, issue 9, 1-17

Abstract: Disabled people are uniquely positioned in relation to the digital turn. Academic ableism, the inaccessibility of digital space, and gaps in digital literacy present barriers, while, at the same time, disabled, Deaf, and neurodivergent people’s access knowledge is at the forefront of innovations in culture and crip technoscience. This article explores disability, technology, and access through the concept of crip digital intimacy, a term that describes the relational and affective advances that disabled people make within digital space and through digital technology toward accessing the arts. We consider how moments of crip digital intimacy emerged through Accessing the Arts: Centring Disability Perspectives in Access Initiatives—a research project that explored how to make the arts more accessible through engaging disabled artist-participants in virtual storytelling, knowledge sharing, and art-making activities. Our analysis tracks how crip digital intimacies emerged through the ways participants collectively organized and facilitated access for themselves and each other. Guided by affordance theory and in line with the political thrust of crip technoscience, crip legibility, and access intimacy, we argue that crip digital intimacy emphasizes the interdependent and relational nature of access, recognizes the creativity and vitality of nonnormative bodyminds, and understands disability as a political—and frequently transgressive—way of being in the world.

Keywords: disability arts; crip; digital intimacy; critical access; technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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