Dis/Appearing Dis/Ableism: Dis/Illusionism and Cure
I will never be fixed, cured;
I am not broken.
You lower the curtain,
But I refuse to dis/appear.
Show magic and illusionism makes visible the conflation between disability and the necessity of cure (Dearborn, 2008). Sawing a person in half, filling their body with knives, draws upon human anxieties of be(com)ing disabled. Restoring this body, making it once again “whole,” alleviates these anxieties. We are given reassurance that disability can be easily reversed, cured, fixed. At the same time, disability and disablement are presented as a tragedy, a process that makes us “less than,” and a state to seek recovery from.
Drawing upon the work of Kafer (2013), Morrigan (2017) refers to the concept of curative time – the obligatory orienting of disability toward a cure. Disabled people exist within curative time because of the pervasiveness of the medical model of disability, which understands disability as a form of bio/medical defect, from which people can be cured through medical intervention.
People are drawn to cure for many reasons; treatments can help us minimize symptoms, pain, and the impact of dis/ableism and (in)accessibility in our lives. In fact, the very idea of cure can provide hope for the future (personal communication, 2019). Clare (2014) describes how the idea of restoration can be a powerful idea when dealing with loss.
However, the issue of curative time is how it conceptualizes dis/ability. Disability is understood as a temporary state, which exists only until the right “cure” can be purchased, found, or developed. In other words, disability is only understood in relation to a cure. This forces us to live in anticipation of the future, placing our lives on hold. By viewing disability as a state of deficiency, the potential strengths of our lived experiences and corporeal realities are made invisible; like the magician’s assistant, they are made to disappear.
Magic helps us grapple with the ontological (ways of being) and epistemological (ways of knowing) questions of living (Bailey, 2006), allowing for meaning-making and providing possibility for creating change. In my opinion, magic does not seek to change ourselves but rather the world around us. Magic does not allow for cure, but rather survival.
What if the sawing through, or stabbing of flesh is not metaphor for disability, but rather disablement? According to the social model of disability, we are not disabled by internal and innate difference, but rather through environments that are not built with people like us in mind. What if the cure we are looking for is the cure for discrimination, disablement, dis/ableism, (in)accessibility, and oppression? Which spells can we use to reverse the process of disablement – the flight of stairs, the glaring fluorescent lights, the people who look/move away when we stim, shout, or talk to people they can't see? What would it take to make dis/ableism visible – and then make it disappear?
Bailey, M. D. (2006). The disenchantment of magic: Spells, charms, and superstition in early European witchcraft literature. The American Historical Review, 111(2), 383-404.
Clare, E. (2014). Meditations on natural worlds, disabled bodies, and a politics of cure. Material ecocriticism, 204-218.
Dearborn, K. (2008). Intersecting Illusions: Performing Magic, Disability, and Gender. In Performing Magic on the Western Stage (pp. 177-196). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Kafer, A. (2013). Feminist, queer, crip. Indiana University Press.
Morrigan, C. (2017). Trauma Magic World: A Critical (auto) theory Of Reenchantment.
