port-man-toes: the aroace - queercrip - transmad - neuroqueer erotics of digital collaboration

S. Cavar + ulysses/constance bougie

abstract


Cavar and Bougie aren't a couple, but as far as scholarship goes, you could say they've been getting it on. In this dialogue, we (Cavar and Bougie) will consider the titillating constraints and radical possibilities in scholarship across space and time zones, for work that is not only cripistemological in framework but also aromantic and asexual in method and manifestation. Exploring the unspeakable and unthinkable language of academic crushes, scholarly kink, and cybersex(uality studies), we will unpack our relationship as trans, neurodivergent queers and nascent scholars to each other and the critically queer, severely disabled digital spaces in which our relationship emerged. What's the romantic/sexual equivalent of this kind of reflection? Love letters back and forth? Plain old sex? Or do we not need an equivalent lol aro love letters—mutual love letters to a shared discipline rather than person as love object love letters not to each other but from 2 parties to a shared 3rd party! Ultimately, we ask: What does a queer, crip, and aro/ace approach to collaboration look like? What might it mean to explore scholarly "coupledom"? And what might be learned—what vital and visceral knowledges might be shared—with and through an erotics of virtual cowriting, uniquely available to us as scholarly homemakers in an increasingly digitized landscape? Fusing the queer quotidian with messy, spontaneous crip collaboration, and through both text and texts, we will explore the boundaries of our collaboratory experiment and the (crip)istemic possibilities it offers.

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