Crip Intimacy, Crip Worldmaking

Authors

  • Robert McRuer George Washington University, Washington, D.C., United States Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37130/epzrmw30

Keywords:

Adina Pintilie, disability, crip intimacy, activism, You Are Another Me—A Cathedral of the Body

Abstract

This essay examines the ways in which Adina Pintilie’s 2018 film Touch Me Not contains a critique of ableism or compulsory able-bodiedness. Placing the film in a larger, generative context of global disability culture, or crip worldmaking, the essay also provides a close reading of the role of disability activist Christian Bayerlein in it. The central figures in Touch Me Not, until the end, largely represent a discomfort with their own bodies and intimacy. Bayerlein, in contrast, explicitly rejects such discomfort and articulates a love for his own body and for sexuality that ultimately serves as a model for other figures in the film. The idea “you are another me” runs throughout Pintilie’s work, and this essay suggests that this phrase should be read in a way that affirms difference: you are another me but we are also different from each other, and the differences between us should be celebrated and might in fact be understood as pleasurable.

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Author Biography

  • Robert McRuer, George Washington University, Washington, D.C., United States

    Robert McRuer is Professor of English at George Washington University, where he teaches cultural studies, queer theory, and disability studies. He received his PhD in English in 1995 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of The Queer Renaissance: Contemporary American Literature and the Reinvention of Lesbian and Gay Identities (NYU, 1997); Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (NYU Press, 2006), which won the Alan Bray Memorial Book Prize from the GLQ Caucuse of the Modern Language Association; and Crip Times: Disability, Globalization, and Resistance (NYU Press, 2018). Crip Theory has been translated into Spanish as Teoría Crip: Signos culturales de lo queer y de la discapacidad (Kaótica Libros, 2021). In 2003, he co-edited with Abby Wilkerson, a special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies titled “Desiring Disability: Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies.” “Desiring Disability” won the Best Special Issue Award from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. With Anna Mollow, he co-edited the anthology Sex and Disability (Duke UP, 2012) and with David Bolt, he served as general co-editor of the six-volume series A Cultural History of Disability (Bloomsbury, 2020), which has volumes reaching from antiquity to the modern age. His articles and interviews have appeared in multiple locations, including PMLA, Genders, and the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. He has given lectures and workshops in English and in Spanish on disability, sexuality, and globalization in more than twenty countries internationally.

References

Campbell, F.K. (2009) The Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Chandler, E. (2018) “Disability Art and Re-worlding Possibilities,” Auto/Biography Studies 33(2), pp. 458-463.

Davis, L. (1995) Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness and the Body. London: Verso.

Johnson, M.L. and McRuer, R. (2014) “Cripistemologies: Introduction,” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 8(2), pp. 127-147.

Linton, S. (1998) Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity. New York: NYU Press.

Mollow, A. (2012) “Is Sex Disability? Queer Theory and the Disability Drive” in McRuer, Robert and Anna Mollow (eds.) Sex and Disability. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 285-308.

McRuer, R. (2006) Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. New York: NYU Press.

Puar, J.K. (2012) Sex and Disability, in McRuer, Robert and Anna Mollow (eds.) [Book Blurb]. Durham: Duke University Press.

Conesa, A.M. (2020) ‘The Myth Behind the Mayan “In lak’ech”’ [Online]. Available at https://monroyconesa.medium.com/the-myth-behind-the-mayan-in-lakech- e24b33e18c8c (Accessed 15 April 2023).

Maldonado Ramírez, J. (2020) “Sentir la discapacidad en tiempos neoliberales: optimismo cruel y fracas”, Nómadas 52 [Online]. Available at http://nomadas.ucentral. edu.co/index.php/component/content/article/2592-estudios-criticos-latinoamericanos- en-discapacidad-nomadas-52/1054-sentir-la-discapacidad-en-tiempos-neoliberales- optimismo-cruel-y-fracaso (Accessed 15 April 2023).

Disability Culture Rap (2000) Directed by Cheryl Marie Wade and Jerry Smith [Film]. St. Paul: Advocating Change Together.

Touch Me Not (2018) Directed by Adina Pintilie [Film]. Bucharest: 4 Proof Film.

Yes, We Fuck! (2015) Directed by Antonio Centeno and Raúl de la Morena [Film]. Barcelona: Barcelona Independent Living.

Bylund, Christine (2022) Collateral Sounds [Sound/Art Installation]. Available at: https://www.rosabrus.nu/ljudarkiv/collateral-sounds-sidoskada-christine-bylund/ (Accessed 8 June 2023).

Pintilie, Adina (2022) You Are Another Me—A Cathedral of the Body [Multimedia Exhibition]. Romanian Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia. Available at: https://cathedralofthebody.com/en (Accessed 15 April 2023).

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Published

2022-12-12

Issue

Vol. 25 No. 2 (2022): I AM ANOTHER YOU. Mediating Intimacy and Body Politics / MOLIÈRE: 400th Anniversary of his Birth

Section

Articles

How to Cite

McRuer, R. (2022). Crip Intimacy, Crip Worldmaking. CONCEPT, 25(2), 2-13. https://doi.org/10.37130/epzrmw30