Disability Justice is Collective Liberation: Pragmatist Approaches to Tactile Aesthetics and Reorganizational Tactics in Access Arts

Abstract

[eng] The aim of this dissertation is to provide a theoretical framework where the double significance of Disability Justice artistic practices aesthetic and political can be accounted for , and to show the emancipatory and coalitional potential of DJ as a place for collective liberation that interlaces social justice movements in solidarity and care bonds . To do so, the thesis elaborates on the intersections between Pragmatist politics and ethics, and the artistic practices that are flourishing in the discipline of Access Art, which constitutes a central territory of activism for Disability Justice. This connection revolves around a recovery of embodiment, which is paradigmatically exemplified by an attention to the sense of touch. Therefore, three steps are performed . In the first one, we undertake an archaeology of touch which shows how Western philosophy has been shaped by an Ocularcentric conception of knowledge and culture that has led to a tactile amnesia which is used to reinforce ableist structures that leaven on visual learners behind in many territories, and emphatically in museums. From this, we argue that paying attention to embodiment and touch constitutes a shift of standpoint with deep philosophical implications, which entails restructuring the sensory regimes ordering how we inhabit the world. Secondly, the ten Disability Justice principles are presented as the guiding regulations that establish how this reordering of the world is performed in Access Art practices. The function of each principle is examined in relation to precedent theoretical frameworks that come from Feminist Pragmatism and Critical Theory’s ideas of community, interdependence and care. Thirdly, a series of case studies built around the key work of Car men Papalia in Access Arts are narrated to show how different practitioners deploy reorganizational tactics that aim at transformative justice actions by way of revolting everyday ways of sensing, saliently redirecting our attention to the broad senses of touch. This thesis is framed in a broader project arguing that building bridges between the principles of Disability Justice and the tenets of critical Pragmatist theoretical frameworks provides a bidirectional enrichment for both fields: for Disability Justice activists and artists, existing frameworks provide a tradition in relation to which they can make sense of their praxis; and for the Pragmatist scholars, it enlivens the discipline by proving it useful to analyze and take charge of current oppressions, as w ell as affording a new standpoint from which new aspects become salient when we revisit classical texts.