What is Crip Theory? Also something that we are in the project of inventing but crip theory is a multifaceted, analytic again, for approaching culture from a perspective that centers disabled experiences, embodiments and movements. I think that crip theory has often been driven by queer crips though it is of course an analytic that is in development across disabled and queer communites. But I do think that from the work of, say, Eli Clare or Carrie Sandahl on crip theory has had a real resonance for queer crips who were looking for languages that were similar to the languages of queerness. And queerness, what does it do? It describes the slipperiness of desire and sexuality and affection and bodily interactions about desire. Queerness captures all of that. I think crip theory ended up, and has been something very appealing for queer crips because it also talks about the slipperiness of embodiment and the inadequacy of that binary, able-bodied — disabled for describing how we think and move and experience embodiment and behave and so forth. So I think that there is a way in which crip theory is to disability studies what queer theory are to lesbian and gay studies. Both projects are sort of absolutely central and absolutely needed, but are doing slightly different work. One thing that I think crip theory does that's slightly different work is play with identity in new kinds of ways. So if disability studies often has been about affirming, in absolutely central and important ways, disability identity crip theory is about sort of working with identity and against it simultaneously. So identity becomes both something that we take on and use politically but also resist for many reasons, not least the need to forge coalitions across multiple identities. Those are some of the things that crip theory is. Very interesting. May I ask you, what is ableism? I think ableism functions similarly to it's cousins: homophobia, racism, sexism. On a basic level, ableism is about forms of exclusion that get codified and naturalized in various systems of power. So I would be in the camp that doesn't see ableism as just about individual opinions, though certainly people have individual opinions that are discriminatory towards people with disabilities. But i think most theorists of ableism I'm thinking of someone like Fiona Kumari Campbell here. Most theorists of ableism would see it as sort of built into the structures of our societies. So basically the ways in which, obviously most literally, architecture functions but also systems of education, media, our ways of speaking. All of those are sort of put in place for an able-bodied world and often naturalize able-bodiedness as though that were the sort of only way to be as a human being, which of course is not the case. Nor is it even the case for the majority of bodies and minds So we have sort of idealized, as an ableist culture a mode of being that very few people can ever actually embody or inhabit What is the reason for that? That's a good question if you think about what I just said about ableisms cousins. What are the reasons for racism, what are the reasons for sexism, what are the reasons for homophobia? On some basic level, a powerful group in each case has benefitted from the privileges of a system that gives them more power. So sexism is a form of not only exclusion, but oppression of women. And that system has benefitted men. Ableism comes from the attempt of certain groups of people to sure up their power and to exclude others. But the reasons that it continues I think are often elusive. In a location like Sweden or in many liberal communities in general people don't necessarily intend to exclude or discriminate or have negative attitudes. But because ableism is so elusive and as I said is in our very language, in the very spaces we move through often ableism is reproducing divisions and exclusions even without intention. Yes.