“The time of undiagnosis” :Queer Futurity and the Politics of Recognition in Alison Kafer’s “Time For Disability Studies and a Future for Crips”
In Chapter 1 of Feminist, Queer, Crip, Alison Kafer builds on Lee Edelman’s concept of queer time in his essay “The Future Is Kid Stuff: Queer Theory, Disidentification, and the Death Drive” in order to critique political futurity from a disability studies perspective. More specifically, Kafer refers to “disability in time” to examine “temporalities of disability,” namely, the ways in which disability shapes an individual’s relationship to time, particularly with respect to concepts such as longevity and labor (26). For Kafer, concepts such as “crip time,” the idea that an individual with a disability might require additional time to perform particular functions or to arrive at a specific destination, illustrate the ways in which disability often serves as the impetus for a “reorientation to time” (27). Though individuals often employ “crip time” in informal settings, the state seemingly recognizes and formalizes this concept through policy measures such as providing “extra time on exams” or “extra reading periods” for students with disabilities (26). Yet, as Kafer clarifies later in the article, relying on politics of recognition often fails to provide people with disabilities with timely, affordable access to essential goods and services. By extension, then, the inadequacies of the politics of recognition diminish hopes of crip futurity. Thus, through underscoring the deficiencies of a politics of recognition approach to disability — specifically, with institutional formalities such as disability diagnosis — Kafer points toward the need for a reframing of disability in terms of both temporality and policy.
In reference to the work of anthropologist Sarah Lochlann Jain, Kafer introduces the term “’prognosis time’” to discuss the ways in which awaiting formal diagnosis of a disability renders the concept of futurity as “tenuous, precarious” (34). Pointing to the experiences of Laura Hershey and how her diagnosis “changed her entire orientation to the world,” Kafer establishes prognosis as the catalyst for developing new ways of relating to futurity, as often, a bleak prognosis leads to increasing emphasis on the present, rather than the specter of the future, as “[t]he present takes on more urgency as the future shrinks” (37). Still, these paradigm shifts and the possibility of a more liberated view of both present and future they bring, depend on a prognosis. However, as Kafer suggests, for those suffering from ostensibly invisible disabilities, such as “chronic fatigue and chronic pain” or “Iraq War Syndrome or PTSD,” formal recognition in the form of a medical prognosis remains elusive, often requiring years of persistent visits to doctors and expensive specialists (37). For Kafer, this time spent awaiting formal recognition constitutes “undiagnosed time,” a period Kafer views as a type of “queer liminality, living always in anticipation of a moment that has not yet arrived” (37–8). In characterizing undiagnosed time as a form of queer time, and in framing this discussion in terms of a failure of recognition, Kafer gestures towards a critique of a politics of recognition, as such a rights-based approach to justice reform often fails to result in widespread justice reform for disabled or queer individuals. As a result of these failures of the politics of recognition, individuals fail to access the goods and services needed to safeguard the quality, if not the quantity, of their lifespan. Hence, through her discussion of prognosis time, Kafer interrogates a rights-based, recognition-based approach to social justice, in the process, critiquing the fantasies of futurity such an approach supports.
