Re•Storying Autism: An Interview
Re•Storying Autism: An Interview with Patty Douglas and Carla Rice
David denborough
The Dulwich Centre
Patty Douglas
Brandon University
Carla Rice
University of Guelph
Abstract
The Re•Storying Autism project is a Canadian–British collaboration that seeks to interrupt dominant and limiting narratives of autism through an alternative storytelling process. Short films made by people who identify as autistic or who have attracted a label of autism tell preferred stories that shift understandings, expand representations and create space for practices of difference. Carla Rice and Patty Douglas, two of the project leaders, caught up with David Denborough to reflect on the principles and practices embraced by the Re•Storying Autism project, and to consider the project’s potential for contributing to a framework that may be useful to narrative practitioners.
Mad mothering
Mad mothering: Learning from the intersections of madness, mothering and disability
Patty Douglas
Brandon University
Katherine Runswick-Cole
University of Sheffield
Sara Ryan
Oxford University
Penny Fogg
University of Sheffield
Abstract
This paper brings together the fields of Mad Studies (LeFrancois et al.), Matricentric Feminism (O’Reilly, Matricentric Feminism) and Critical Disability Studies (Goodley, “Dis/entangling Critical Disability Studies”). Our aim is to expose and challenge “relations of ruling” (Smith 79) that both produce and discipline ‘mad mothers of disabled children’. We begin our analysis by exploring the un/commonalities of the emerging histories of the three disciplines. We then identify analytical points of intersection between them including: critiques of neoliberalism; troubling the ‘norm’ (including radical resistance and activism); intersectionality, post-colonial and queer theory. Finally, we turn to points of divergence and possible tensions between these theoretical approaches as we explore the absence of disability in Matricentric Feminism, the contested place of mothering in Critical Disability Studies and the absence of mothering in Mad Studies. We are invested throughout in the political possibilities of affect and activism that emerge from the feminist insight that the ‘personal is political’. Finally, we consider what can be learned from an intersectional critique of ‘good mothering’ and how this theorization might inform social justice work.
This is the accepted author copy of an article forthcoming (2021) in the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies.
Recommended Citation:
Douglas, Patty, Katherine Runswick-Cole, Sara Ryan & Penny Fogg. (2021). Mad
mothering: Learning from the intersections of madness, mothering and disability. Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. 15 (1): 39-56.