Sunaura Taylor on tracing ecologies of multispecies disablement, injury and resistance

Whilst living in realities polluted with ableist, colonial and capitalist values of human domination and subordination of the more-than-human, where can we seek inspiration and hope for manifesting alternative futures of inclusivity, vulnerability and reciprocal care? How can tracing trails of injury and resistance to generational disablement of human and more-than-human communities equip us with the necessary tools for building a disabled future that is grounded in the values of living with and caring for the body and the environment?

This month, we are joined by the wonderful Sunaura Taylor, an artist, writer and author of Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation (The New Press, 2017) and Disabled Ecology: Lessons from a Wounded Desert. Taylor has written for a range of popular media outlets and her artworks have been exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. She works at the intersection of disability studies, environmental justice, multispecies studies, and art practice. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in the Bay Area with her daughter Leonora, husband David, and their two cats, Rosie and Pirate. 

In this heart-felt episode, Sunaura offers us ways of mapping out disabled ecologies by framing our ecological crises as a multispecies disablement that extends out to biotic and abiotic bodies, human and more-than-human life, and across generations. Using the themes of her book Disabled Ecology: Lessons from a Wounded Desert as a grounding, Sunaura sows seeds of hope and radical imagination for a disabled future, which resists ableist and colonial systems of power to foster values of alternative caregiving and meaning-making of the diversity and beauty of our worlds.

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