M. Perel's blog

I am entering this discussion within the fibers of personal and professional desire/response/ community discourse.

On one hand, it delights me to know that notes for this discussion on disability/disablement were made during the Movement Research Festival Potluck, though also find admitted irony in the fact that I could not attend it due to my own chronic pain (as disability or from a physical disfiguration that is the disability, who can define which?).

Something that has been a little hard for me to enter in this blog is the technical apparatus of "disability" and its various functions...

I prefer more to find agency in a discussion of the mechanism of suffering, which is a very personal and continuous ____ for one who is disabled.

This ____ is my gift to you, reader to insert whatever word you think fits best.

I think of "place," "ground," "text," "momentum," "test," "dance," "funk," or "motherfucker." For me that is more interesting than this idea of re-invention that we seem to be fantastically splashing around in through this discourse.

I am not saying that it is beside the point to re-work this term, or to create perspectives or situations where this sense of the abled and disabled border is dismantled.

I think that the previous bloggers have done an excellent job of that on the nonsite,

but I AM saying that pain is pain,

discomfort is important information, and that can't be by-passed by a revision of terminology or code.

The most important art that I have witnessed or been a part of has emerged from or addressed

the artist's struggle to overcome suffering,

whether it is rooted in disfigurement,
addiction,
loss of many kinds,
and the awkward place
where a desire cannot be met
but persists in its strength of presence,
like the struggle for identity whether that is maintaining one or uncovering one. Read more