For institutional survivors and their younger peers labelled/with intellectual disability, the COVID-19 pandemic and its related lockdowns carry over past experiences under government-directed isolation and mandatory medical interventions. The sudden convergence of past and present necropolitical ableism in labeled persons’ lives colours this crisis, as we—a group of survivors, younger labeled people (who have not lived in institutions), and researcher/allies—attempt to simply stay in touch amid digital divides that cut off our once vibrant, interdependent in-person activities. No longer able to gather, and with limited Internet (or no) access, we resist social abandonment through phone calls. During phone conversations we discuss the affective contours of this time: grief over the past, loss of agency, restrictive rules in group homes, the dynamics of protest, fear sparked by public health orders, and a mix of anxiety and hope about the future. Taking this telephone-based dialogue as evidence of our lives in these times, we present a brief body of collectively written found poetry, a form of poetic inquiry composed of phone call snippets. This piece, coauthored by twenty members of the “DiStory: Disability Then and Now” project in Toronto, Canada, offers a snapshot of coalition-in-process, keeping in touch amid a crisis that threatens our togetherness and—for some more than others—our lives. Following Braidotti, we couch this found poetry in a brief commentary on our slow, in-progress attempt to “co-construct a different platform of becoming” with one another amid a divergence of historical and contemporary inequities.
Articles by Erin Kuri
Erin Kuri is a PhD candidate in the School of Social Work and a PhD student in the Department of Gender Studies and Feminist Research. She has over a decade of clinical experience as an advocate and psychotherapist specializing in art therapy and trauma, primarily working in the areas of child welfare, gender-based violence, and maternal and infant mental health. Erin draws on interdisciplinary feminisms, ethics, critical disability studies, motherhood studies, and trauma theory to develop collaborative and arts-based approaches to knowledge building. Her SSHRC-funded doctoral research explores how young mothers make meaning of the concept of support within the context of service provision.