feminist queer crip

Alison Kafer, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2013, 276pp.,

ISBN: 978-0-2530-0922-7

, $75.00 (Hbk)/ISBN: 978-0-2530-0934-0, $27.00 (Pbk)

Feminist Queer Crip by Alison Kafer covers many of the issues that have been widely discussed in feminist or disability studies for some time. Kafer, who is currently an Associate Professor of Feminist Studies at Southwestern University in Texas, deals with topics such as transgender and reproductive politics, ecofeminism and cyborg theory, as well as queerness and disability. As an overarching frame for her analysis, Kafer deploys crip theory with the objective of offering a politics of crip futurity.

Drawing on McRuer's (2006) conceptualisation of crip theory as a main reference point, Kafer makes a clear distinction between the meanings of crip or crip theory and disability studies. For Kafer, the term crip still has the ability to make people feel uncomfortable and stir things up and, therefore, has a much greater potential to challenge common understandings of bodies and minds, of normalcy and deviance. Kafer sympathises with crip theory, because she misses a critical pungency in disability studies, whereas crip theory is more contestatory, more eager to investigate the risks and exclusions of identity politics. It also acknowledges the important influence of identity in the development of the disability rights movement. Consequently, the author positions Feminist Queer Crip along the lines of this thinking in radical and seemingly contradictory terms.

For her investigation Kafer divides the book into seven thematic chapters. She deals specifically with...