Wretched Refuse: Disability, Disposables, and the Cripistemology of Camp

The article moves beyond some of the more recognizable intersections of disability and camp—the flamboyant irreverence of disabled performers—to ask how a crip sensibility can modify our very definition and epistemologies of the camp aesthetic. Leveraging the definitional kinship between bodies considered disposable and objects slated for discard, a new cripistemology of the camp aesthetic redefines camp through relations of care—those practices through which we nurture that which is beyond recovery and past the point of repair. Building on but departing from important work in disability studies that emphasizes crip theatricality and camp spectacle, the article explores the different affects that circulate through the intimacies and animacies of camp objecthood.