Cripping Ecorelationality and Ecorelational Pleasure
In my recent research, I have been interested in productive intersections between environmental studies and disability studies, in other words, the research area that may be called green or environmental disability studies. I have been studying how concepts developed in this field find a reflection in cultural production and, more specifically, in what I call cripped ecorelational aesthetics. I define it as a form of aesthetics which creates a space for meaningful encounters between the human and the non-human, accentuating the essential vulnerability of all human and nonhuman beings and promoting an ethics of (inter)dependence and care. A key question that I would like to address in my presentation concerns the role of pleasure in this aesthetics. To this aim, I will introduce the concept of ecosexual pleasure and examine how this campy subversive intimate queer concept of pleasure manifests itself in works of disabled female artists – Riva Lehrer, Claire Cunnngham (in her audioworks created in collaboration with academic Julia Watts Belser) and Nomi Lamm (in a song performed as part of We Love Like Barnacles by Sins Invalid). As presented in these paintings, recordings, and a performance, erotic ecorelational pleasure promotes more care-ful and ethical ways of living on Earth as well as challenging ableist presumptions about the bodyminds that can give and receive or experience such pleasure.
Bio: Katarzyna Ojrzyńska is assistant professor at the Department of English Studies in Drama, Theatre and Film (Institute of English Studies, University of Łódź, Poland). Her research interests mostly oscillate around cultural disability studies. She collaborates with the Theatre 21 Foundation and Warsaw’s Downtown Centre of Inclusive Art. She has translated Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s book Staring: How We Look into Polish (Gapienie się, czyli o tym, jak patrzymy i jak pokazujemy siebie innym, Fundacja Teatr 21, 2020) and co-edited (together with Maciej Wieczorek) a collection of essays entitled Disability and Dissensus: Strategies of Disability Representation and Inclusion in Contemporary Culture (Brill, 2020).
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