Unemployed at the time, not visibly disabled, but having become quite unwell in the middle of a pandemic, this poem illustrates my anxious and exhausting insomnia against the caretaking labor for my youngest child. I worked to minimize the projections of stress and anxiety onto her, laboring for stillness and comfort. As Luce Irigaray states in An Ethics of Sexual Difference (1993), “Music comes before meaning. A sort of preliminary to meaning, coming after warmth, moisture, softness, kinesthesia” (168).
Articles by Jennifer Scuro
Jennifer Scuro is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Molloy University in New York. She is the author of The Pregnancy ≠ Childbearing Project: A Phenomenology of Miscarriage (Rowman & Littlefield International, Feb 2017) and Addressing Ableism: Philosophical Questions via Disability Studies (Lexington Books, Oct 2017). She is on the Governing Board of the Cultural Studies Association and co-chair of the Critical Feminist and Queer Studies Working Group.