Transmobility: Possibilities in Cyborg (Cripborg) Bodies

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Published: Apr 1, 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v5i1.29617
Keywords:
transmobility, cripborg, cyborg, disability and technology, mobility device, assistive technology, wheelchair, walker, scooter, crutches, prosthesis

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Mallory Kay Nelson
Syracuse Stage, Syracuse University
Ashley Shew
Virginia Tech
Bethany Stevens
Georgia State University

Abstract

This creative, experimental contribution blends written words and sketches depicting our crip bodies engaging with various mobility technologies, including crutches, walkers, prosthetic limbs, and manual and power wheelchairs. By picturing and describing our crip bodies with varieties of technologies that we use, we use these pictures and corresponding narratives about disabled bodies in technology to tell a larger story about the constitution of disability with technologies, as well as the modes of mobility available to disabled bodies. Our visual and narrative elements serve to argue that disabled bodies have a wider array of mobilities and ways of being than are afforded to non-disabled bodies. We resist super-crippery and insist on cripborgery. Crip bodies are taken as sites of possibility, adaptation, and creative reflection.

Article Details

Issue
Vol. 5 No. 1 (2019): Special Section on Crip Technoscience
Section
Image & Text Works

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Author Biographies

Mallory Kay Nelson, Syracuse Stage, Syracuse University

Mallory Kay Nelson is a disability design specialist and scholar. She is presently serving on the Board of Directors for the Society for Disability Studies and is involved in disability culture, advocacy, education, employment and community building. Mallory received her MFA is Costume Design from Carnegie Mellon and has had her design work seen internationally representing the USA. She hopes that Transmobility becomes the standard for the social and medical models of disability when talking about movement. 

Ashley Shew, Virginia Tech

Ashley Shew serves as an assistant professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech. She is the author of Animal Tool-Use and Technological Knowledge (2017) and co-editor of Spaces for the Future: A Companion to Philosophy of Technology (2017). Her current work looks at the narratives about bodies, disability, and technology.

Bethany Stevens, Georgia State University

 Bethany Stevens is a wheelchair using sexologist working on her PhD in sociology. Her dissertation focuses on the politics of pleasure within the disability communities. Taking a semester off from her doctoral work, she taught a senior capstone course in disability studies and sexuality as the 2019 Kate Welling Distinguished Scholar in Disability Studies at Miami University.