The Essential Work of Crip Resistance: Demanding Dignity in Spain's Pandemic Austerity

Abstract

This article considers crip resistance to the politics of austerity with which Spain's government has reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly a decade after the 15-M anti-austerity movement and its occupations. Given the intensification of austerity politics and their effects on people with disabilities, I examine three instances of crip resistance and their virtual, local, and global settings. Beyond McRuer's expansive view of crip resistance as comprised of tactics that center disability against global austerity, my analysis establishes its groundwork in the current demands by Spanish disability advocacy groups and on Javier Romañach's modelo de diversidad funcional, the prevalent model of disability among Spanish disability activists that centers the concept of dignity. Throughout this analysis, I demonstrate how crip tactics that emerge in a crisis can help make sense of a continuing emergency as they challenge the existing conditions of cultural austerity and contribute to the concept of dignity as an organizing principle.