Editorial: Oracle

This special issue of demos journal is an autonomous issue edited by members of the Disability Justice Network: Lina Koleilat, Muhib Nabulsi, Rômy Pacquing McCoy and Shakira Hussein. In the following pages, you will find writing and artwork by disabled First Nations and POC writers and artists relating to—and/or responding with—Disability Justice. The editing of this issue has taken place on the lands of the Ngunnawal, Ngambri, and Ngambri-Guumaal Nations; the Turrbal and Yuggera Nations; the Yugambeh Nation; and the Wurundjeri and Bunurong peoples of the Kulin Nation. Sovereignty of these lands, like all lands across this continent, was never ceded. There is no justice in a Disability Justice that isn’t foundationally anti-colonial.

Disability Justice was founded as a movement by queer, disabled women of colour on lands of the Ohlone Nations across the Bay Area on Turtle Island, a.k.a the U.S.A. in response to the failures of the Disability Rights movement. In vying for mainstream acceptance, the Disability Rights movement was increasingly abandoning the struggles of multiply-marginalised disabled people to make meagre gains for a few: namely disabled white, heterosexual, cis-gender men. Unlike the disability rights movement—and its operating theory of disability, referred to as the “social model of disability”—Disability Justice is founded on, and cannot exist without, an anti-capitalist politic; as Sins Invalid state in their ‘10 principles of Disability Justice’: “In an economy that sees land and humans as components of profit, we are anti-capitalist by the nature of having non-conforming body/minds.”¹

In an important precursor to formalised notions of Disability Justice, Marta Russell and Ravi Malhotra demonstrate that disability as a modern category is not created by “defects” of individual bodies (the medical model), nor solely by an ahistorical and decontextualised “society” (the social model), but as, “a product of the exploitative economic structure of capitalist society.”² The consequences of this formulation for disability activism are enormous: the production that defines colonial capitalist society is inherently ableist, therefore one cannot resist ableism without directly resisting capitalism. As a productive enterprise, publishing too exists within these logics. With reduced capacity for labour, it is difficult for disabled would-be writers to publish their work. From this understanding, we prioritised work by previously unpublished creators for this issue.

The theme of the issue is ‘Oracle,’ inspired by the words and work of Alice Wong:

But my body, that the state calls broken, I call an oracle. It’s not just the distant flames that I can see before you. But it’s the cold math that calculates the value of my life, an algorithm of expendability, that—whether you realise it or not—can come for you as well.³

If the State, its apparatuses of control and their “algorithms of expendability” feature often in the works collected here, it is not to appeal to the so-called Australian public to respect disabled people’s (our) humanity. Rather, it is in rejection of the politics of appeal that have done nothing to materially change the lives of multiply-marginalised disabled people for the better. Mali Hermans’s rousing poem ‘you ask’ renounces the obfuscating language of liberal diversity and inclusion discourses and the co-optation of Disability Justice by the NGO-Industrial complex; instead of requesting the assistance of abled power, Hermans demands that crips (we) care for each other in ongoing resistance against the colonising nation-state. In a powerful account, Ness Gavanzo denounces the daily bureaucratic cruelties of the healthcare system, while ku_aba_’s evocative and elliptical poem ‘004’ resists the weaponised notions of madness employed by the colony. Such works deny any possibility that the State can remedy the violence that it metes out against disabled people; only crips themselves (ourselves) can do that. Such is the knowledge of the Oracle.

Disability Justice too requires ongoing critique within our communities. The original 2015 ‘10 Principles of Disability Justice’ published by Sins Invalid makes no explicit reference to ongoing colonisation. Though these principles have more recently been updated and now include mention of colonisation, the document still fails to articulate what Disability Justice means on colonised lands where disabled First Nations people are those most impacted by the ableism foundational to colonial-capitalism.⁴

In their unclassifiable work ‘WE RISE ANGRY…’—one of two of their pieces in this issue—nayook demonstrates how the settler state’s continuing disrespect for the stolen lands of this continent’s First Nations is inextricable from the State’s violence towards disabled people. Their poem ‘in//tergeneration//al’ stages a refusal to offer expressions of Bla(c)k joy for consumption by the so-called Australian public—it stands as a stark reminder that disabled community, constituted as it is by largely settlers, is still a settler public. Darcy Hytt’s shapeshifting essay ‘Not a Beginning’ knows this all too well. With shifts between literary forms and deft use of elisions and redactions, Hytt questions—explicitly and otherwise—the very possibility of separation at the Intersection. At one point, they challenge the reader: “Tell me you see clear borders and boundaries between The Colonial Violence and The Ableist Violence… I dare you.”

Many of the pieces in this issue wrestle with disability as lived by their disabled creators; some do so without explicitly addressing ableism’s roots in colonial-capitalism. We hope that the framing outlined above makes these pages a place for works such as Lay Maloney’s arresting stream-of-consciousness poem ‘Security System,’ Ajar Sana’s ‘Title’ and CB Mako’s essay on the continuing failures of the white Disability Rights movement to be read on their own terms, rather than those determined by the colony.

The issue wouldn’t be what it is without the artworks by Dinithi de Alwis Samarawickma and Renay Barker-Mulland, ER, and Rômy Pacquing McCoy. Defiant, warm, joyful and at times ambiguous, these visual pieces assert their creators’ continued existence and invite us to look into them and imagine Disability Justice futures. A vibrant work by PiG SPiT is presented as a standalone feature poster in the middle of the issue.

Throughout this project, we have had many conversations regarding how we could enact a Disability Justice ethic in editing and publishing. Disabled autonomy in publishing is undoubtedly of the highest importance when considering how we might mitigate as best we can the harm inflicted on disabled people by publishing under capitalism. But it also raises the question of capacity of those in the editing role(s); if a project is funded by the nation-state through one of its many arts organisations, such editorial work comes with significant pressures thanks to the disciplinary function of the state —which, in another guise, we have felt impact our mind-bodies for the duration of our lives. Though we identified many of the ableist dynamics of the publishing industry, due to our own capacity as disabled editors, we were unable to do many of the things we had planned in order to resist these dynamics. Whatever our failures, we hope this issue can provide a launch-point for other radical disabled-led publishing initiatives in the future, towards which we would be happy to share our learnings from this project. We trust that there will be an ongoing, radical political home for writing and art for multiply-marginalised disabled people across so-called Australia, akin to the one Pauline Vetuna describes in their essay ‘Just the Messenger’. There might already be one—it just hasn’t found us yet.

In solidarity,

Lina, Muhib, Rômy and Shakira.

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Postscript

The submissions for this issue were received in January 2023 and the editorial written in June of that year. This is the only reason why neither the pieces collected in this issue nor the editorial above express solidarity with Palestine amidst the israeli state’s ongoing genocide.

We affirm the inalienable right of all colonised peoples to resist their colonisers by any means necessary.

Free Palestine from the River to the Sea
Always was Always will Be