Crip theory

Robert McRuer's study looks at how disability and queerness are expressed in present-day culture. Disability studies and queer theory both examine how certain bodies, desires and identities get labeled normal or cast out as abject. McRuer argues that these two fields have rarely been analyzed in depth alongside each other, and this book makes that connection its central task.

To do so, McRuer brings together feminist theory, African American and Latino/a cultural criticism, composition studies, film and television scholarship, and debates over globalization and resistance to it. He sets out the core ideas of crip theory and asks how such a perspective could reshape cultural and historical work in the humanities.

The book works through specific cases: the legal and personal story of Sharon Kowalski, the performance art of Bob Flanagan, and the journals of Gary Fisher. It also critiques the tamed versions of queerness and disability promoted by the Millennium March and by Bravo's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Throughout, McRuer traces how dominant and marginal bodies and sexualities are formed, and how disability and queerness can disrupt and reshape those categories to argue that a different world is possible.