On Ambivalence: Disclosure, Disability, Trauma, and Precarious Affects

Abstract

Following other critical disability studies scholars’ contributions to thinking more capaciously about how disability studies as a field must reckon with experiences of pain and suffering, this autoethnographic article calls for readers to grapple with experiences of disability or chronic conditions that are intimately tied to experiences of trauma. Using storytelling as method, the author explores their shifting affective stances to their lived experiences with epilepsy, autoimmune disorders, mental disability, medical interventions, and trauma over time. Weaving autoethnographic collaged narrative with disability, feminist, and affect theories, the author argues that adopting ambivalence as an affective stance toward disability can make room for the always evolving and contradictory emotions and experiences that impact indivdiuals’ relationships to claiming disability.