Mobilizing Metaphor: Art, Culture, and Disability Activism in Canada by Christine Kelly and Michael Orsini (review)

Mobilizing Metaphor, edited by Christine Kelly and Michael Orsini, provides an interesting collection that explores disability and Deaf arts, culture, and disability activism in Canada. The book provides new knowledges concerning disability and Deaf arts, which are considered to be under-represented within Canadian disability movements. The book offers an abundance of insights into how activism is being used to challenge disability perceptions. A strength of the book is the exploration of the different forms of disability and Deaf art activism including storytelling, poetry, digital media, and dance. Mobilizing Metaphor also provides an insight into the various research methods used to collect data, including focus groups and performance ethnography. This provides the reader with a range of ideas and opportunities for engaging with disability and Deaf arts.

Mobilizing Metaphor is divided into three sections. The first section explores critical places where disability scholarship and artistic practice come together to enact social change. In Chapter 1 there is an interesting engagement with disability history and the problems encountered when allowing a circus programme to be part of an exhibit. Most of the chapter is taken up by emails between the activists and the museum in which they wish to host their exhibit. Despite this, the chapter helps to provide an insight for those interested in engaging with disability arts by highlighting the problems encountered with disability art as a form of activism. Chapter 2 considers the practical elements of how the arts allow disabled people to engage when other forms of activism are not accessible. Still focusing on experiences of activism, Chapter 3 examines a theoretical approach, the practices and outcomes of “Poster Virus,” in order to resist and oppose those that regulate the lives of people living with HIV. This chapter helps to bring HIV and AIDs into disability arts. As the book is also interested in Deaf arts, Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrate how the arts are being used to promote Deaf awareness. In Chapter 5, Vero Leduc explores how her graphic signed novel It Fell on Deaf Ears is a form of activism. There is interesting engagement with Deaf belonging and Deaf voices. Throughout each chapter the role of voice is an important element. This is a major strength of the book as it provides each contributor the opportunity to express his or her own experiences and helps to strengthen the importance of voice within disability research. The book engages with various people involved with disability activism, including disabled artists, activists, and scholars. This approach aids in providing a mixture of disabled people with a voice.

The second section engages with first-hand accounts of using art to promote disability justice. This section offers a new way to look at how disability activism is being expressed in a multitude of ways. For example, Chapter 6 explores how dance can be used to foster social justice. This chapter offers a good discussion of how inaccessibility is expressed through dance. It engages with numerous methods, including performance ethnography. Chapter 7 offers an insight into how an online comic strip called Cripz is being used to challenge common myths surrounding disability within the media. This chapter offers a timely approach to fighting disability perceptions. For example, in Chapter 10, Diane Dredger explores how art can be used to challenge and change attitudes toward disability. At first she explores how other disabled artists, such as Frieda Kahlo, combined art with disability. The artist takes influence from famous works and paints herself into them in order to promote her own experiences as a disabled person.

The final section considers new and renewed visions of agency and autonomy expressed through disability activist work. In Chapter 11, Pamela Moss introduces the notion of “perching,” the practice of positioning oneself within biomedicine while maintaining a critical view of it in order to gain legitimacy of living with ME. In this section we begin to...