In Songs of the Gorilla Nation, Dawn Prince-Hughes shares her life and experiences with autism. In her quest to find answers and a diagnosis of her aspergers, she managed to bond with gorillas who allowed her to learn about herself and eventually formulate her own take on crip politics. While these aspects in theory demonstrate a broad and inclusive method of learning and understanding, including nonhuman animals in crip politics falls short in practice. Despite Prince-Hughes’ useful take on collective reimagining, as described by Kafer in Feminist, Queer, Crip, her focus on nonhuman animals subsequently assumes a transcendence of race. In such discourse, the failure to acknowledge the historical equating of people of color to animals reveals
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In Prince-Hughes’ case, her wooing of women came off to others as a bizarre due to her misinterpretation of how relationships work (81). For instance, despite her lack of feelings towards women, she felt it was “honorable to play it through to the end”, and often assumed the next step after a casual hook-up would be moving in together (Prince-Hughes 82). Such example of her performance of “playing it through” in a way demonstrates her accidental performance which intersects with Sandahl’s idea of queering with the crip in “Queering the Crip or Cripping the Queer?” (37). Fortunately, her experience and studying of gorillas allowed her to learn from their human-like cues, of which she could not always learn from actual humans. This learning experience also made Prince-Hughes recognize that she had questions on her methods of interacting with …show more content…
However, when translated to practice, its generalization of humanness silences the things that already separate humans. The comparison of human and nonhuman issues is extremely complex considering some humans are in fact treated like animals, while some animals are treated better than marginalized humans. Although animal rights are important, it is crucial to prioritize the injustices that people of color have endured for years. Without doing so, the foundation for crip politics would severely under represent its diverse population. Before broadening cirp politics to include nonhuman animals, perhaps it should be broadened in a way that recognizes black and brown people while simultaneously not ignoring its past medical and historical
In Prince-Hughes’ case, her wooing of women came off to others as a bizarre due to her misinterpretation of how relationships work (81). For instance, despite her lack of feelings towards women, she felt it was “honorable to play it through to the end”, and often assumed the next step after a casual hook-up would be moving in together (Prince-Hughes 82). Such example of her performance of “playing it through” in a way demonstrates her accidental performance which intersects with Sandahl’s idea of queering with the crip in “Queering the Crip or Cripping the Queer?” (37). Fortunately, her experience and studying of gorillas allowed her to learn from their human-like cues, of which she could not always learn from actual humans. This learning experience also made Prince-Hughes recognize that she had questions on her methods of interacting with …show more content…
However, when translated to practice, its generalization of humanness silences the things that already separate humans. The comparison of human and nonhuman issues is extremely complex considering some humans are in fact treated like animals, while some animals are treated better than marginalized humans. Although animal rights are important, it is crucial to prioritize the injustices that people of color have endured for years. Without doing so, the foundation for crip politics would severely under represent its diverse population. Before broadening cirp politics to include nonhuman animals, perhaps it should be broadened in a way that recognizes black and brown people while simultaneously not ignoring its past medical and historical