Composing Disability: Diagnosis Interrupted George Washington University

The most recent installment of a biennial series exploring current trends in disability studies, Composing Disability: Diagnosis, Interrupted, was held at George Washington University (GWU) on April 3–4, 2014.¹ This event was a team effort organized by Joseph Fisher, Wade Fletcher, and other staff members at GWU’s Disability Support Services along with faculty in the Department of English (Robert McRuer, David Mitchell) and the University Writing Program (Abby Wilkerson); it was co-sponsored by GWU’s Office of Disability Support Services, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. The conference took as its launching point the May 2013 publication of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Through keynotes, panel conversations, and performances, this event considered the interplay between the diagnostic work performed by the medical industry and the experiences of disabled people. These critical approaches to the DSM-5 confronted many of the problems the manual creates, but it also explored the potential of disability to radically reconfigure notions of community. Most importantly, it provided a venue for participants to consider how we all negotiate our varied relationships to institutional structures (from the corporate university to legal, educational, and medical professions).

Diagnosis, Interrupted was an energetic, multi-site affair. In addition to keynotes and panels addressing a range of historical and cultural contexts (medieval to contemporary), it featured a diverse array of events: a reading by graphic novel author Ellen Forney, a one-on-one interview (Ann Cvetkovich with Wilkerson as interlocutor), a group poetry reading, and presentations by student presenters (undergraduate and graduate). The goal of community building began long before the event via its Facebook page, a dynamic blog on tumblr, and vigorous live tweeting of the proceedings as they transpired.²

The event opened with a keynote by Katie Rose Guest Pryal: “Authority Lost: The DSM-5’s Fall from Legal Grace.” Pryal examined the “rhetorical power” of the DSM and its pervasive impact across all aspects of the legal profession. In a revealing analysis of mental illness disclosure statements on state bar applications, Pryal discussed how DSM-inflected psychiatric questions (for instance, asking if an applicant has ever been diagnosed with bipolar disorder) enact a gatekeeping process that determines who has the “rhetorical power to enter the courtroom in the first place.” While such exclusionary uses of the DSM are deeply problematic, it remains a valuable mechanism for gaining access to treatment, insurance, and other benefits. Pryal’s keynote vividly revealed ambivalence toward the DSM’s outsized impact in contemporary culture: it is at once exclusionary and enabling, clarifying, and stigmatizing.

The next session, “Crazy Sex: Pathology, Alternative Sexualities, and Non-Normative Desires,” explored flows of communal affect, sexuality, and the possibilities of radical crip community. Leslie Freeman spoke of “losses and longings” in crip communities and translating grief into art, and she reflected on how queerness and disability shape her identity as an outspoken femme, activist, and performance artist. Her talk movingly morphed into an impromptu elegy for those the crip community has recently lost. Freeman noted that she was working with Lisa Bufano on a dance at the time of her death and spoke about the creative “process of making dance with an absent partner.” She also remembered Christopher Bell and his role in Freeman’s own entry into queer/crip community. Bethany Stevens opened with a prospect of world-transformation in “Orgasmic Freedom: Cripping Sex and Speaking Shame.” She observed how feelings of shame often associate themselves with disability, and contemporary culture still assumes heterosexual norms and “phallocentrizes” its thinking about sexuality. Crip/queer people can and should “politicize our sexual oppression,” and sexual fulfillment is a factor in the lives of disabled people that is just as important as seemingly “pragmatic” concerns of housing, transportation, and employment. At this point, David Mitchell decided to forego his scheduled talk to make more space for conversation. It was evident that audience members had responded intensely to the presentations. A shared sentiment emerging from the discussion was the urgency to combat social pressures that point...