Becoming Disabled: Part 3
As we come to the end of Disability Empowerment in Higher Education Month (DEHEM), I thought it was fitting to close my three-part series on becoming disabled as a scholar. In many ways, this past month has been much like previous months, consumed by my dissertation with reality television and vampire teen dramas strewn in for comic relief. Still, I planned to discuss how becoming disabled affects my research and I realised I shouldn't downplay two formative moments that happened to me in October. For narrative purposes, I will tell them out of chronological order, if that's ok with you.
First, I will start with a brag: I am getting good at being disabled. Not that it's a competition, because any disabled person will tell you that one can only "win" against another version of one's self. But, if I'm being honest, compared to a decade ago, or even two years ago, I have developed and taken ownership of the tools that help me live a full life, including giving in with relish to drive that pivots my philosophical research towards critical disability studies. That's probably why I got cocky and reckless when I decided it was time to pretend I could keep up with ableds.
This month, I chose to experience something that I have been wanting for a long time: a multi-day academic writing retreat. I admit it, I gave in to the promise of a studious atmosphere, all of my meals catered, no dishes to do, and increased productivity. After all, I have a PhD thesis to finish and three days in the Scottish countryside sounded so nice after months of basically being home-bound. So, blame my hubris or blame academic ableism, but I committed to this self-inflicted boot camp and it nearly claimed me.
To be clear, I am not against the principle of a writing retreat, or indeed the idea of binge-writing, and I'm definitely very much in favour of dedicated writing times (maybe one day I'll wax lyrical on my love of the Pomodoro Technique). However, full days of focused writing, no matter how long the lunch break, is not for me. I realised that, in the name of sacred productivity, I had completely thrown out everything I knew about my working patterns: how my bodymind processes information, how many rest periods I need a day, how my best writing comes after times of deep yet playful thinking (I may be elbow deep in metaphysics, but I am fundamentally silly). After trying so sincerely to follow someone else's schedule I broke down; in addition to an intense surge in full bodymind pain, I was shaken to my roots and a wave of self-doubt submerged me. How could I have been so naive as to think I could do this? It took me a long phone conversation with my partner and a 12-hour night's sleep to come back to my senses: I got this. I just need to accept that my way of working is carefully crafted to suit me and I should honour the time and effort I invested in discovering it. I got this.
Just as being disabled doesn't mean I don't have drive or ambition, being a disabled scholar doesn't mean I don't care about the quality and efficiency of my work; I just need to constantly re-evaluate and reclaim what "quality" and "efficiency" mean to me. The rub lies in the fact that this is not a solitary activity. I perform it within the context of society, academia, and, more immediately, my own discipline, philosophy. Which brings me to my second formative October episode: the experience of being seen.
It may have been published in 2015, but Kristie Dotson's "How Is This Paper Philosophy?" is ageless and deserves to be a classic (and probably its own post eventually). Briefly, Dotson questions the academic discipline of philosophy's ability to include work from diverse scholars. As a black woman philosopher, she does not simply mean that philosophy departments are mostly homogenous in terms of race, gender, class, and ability (although this is definitely a factor); she questions the discipline's ability to house diverse ways of philosophising, of practicing and presenting philosophical thoughts and arguments. After examining the systemic need to ask whether research that deviates from the "highlight problem, then propose a solution" model can be "philosophy", Dotson concludes that as long as academic philosophy insists on demanding that diverse scholars use mainstream (read: white, male, straight, global north) standards to justify the philosophical-ness of their philosophising, diverse scholars will feel unwelcome and are very likely to leave the formal discipline altogether.
As a disabled Filipnx woman philosopher, I needed to read Dotson. I needed to know it wasn't all in my head, that I am not alone my raucous relationship with academic philosophy. In the human push and pull of wanting to belong and not being satisfied with the status quo, I had become convinced that I was the problem, despite all of my aforementioned self-affirming progress, and I needed to be told it wasn't my fault. Dotson, by naming the reason behind all of the dismissive comments I have received over the 13 years I have spent in various philosophy departments, reignited my desire to walk through the forest of the trees of knowledge and listen to the lessons of the leaves. No one can take away what I have learned over those 13 years and no one gets to tell me I am not a philosopher.
This post was supposed to be about my research, but I guess I got carried away. I won't apologise, because clearly this is what I needed. I'll just be over here, becoming disabled.