Open AccessShifting the Weight of Inaccessibility: Access Intimacy as a Critical Phenomenological Ethos
Author(s) -
Desiree Valentine
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
puncta
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2475-1308
DOI - 10.5399/pjcp.v3i2.9
Subject(s) - ethos , feeling , intersubjectivity , relation (database) , conversation , autonomy , interpersonal communication , institution , interpersonal relationship , social psychology , psychology , sociology , economic justice , epistemology , computer science , communication , law , philosophy , political science , social science , database
This paper offers a critical phenomenological view of the concept of access intimacy, a term coined by disability justice advocate Mia Mingus. Access intimacy refers to a mode of relation between disabled people or between disabled and non-disabled people that can be born of concerted cultivation or instantly intimated and centrally concerns the feeling of someone genuinely understanding and anticipating another’s access needs. Putting in conversation this notion of intimacy with Kym Maclaren’s critical phenomenological account of intimacy, I show how accessibility is not about what one person or institution can do for another but involves an ongoing, interpersonal process of relating and taking responsibility for our inevitable encroachment on one another in ways that enhance one another’s freedom.