Do disabled people have their own history—or at least, a specific way of writing and telling it? It is with this question in mind that we have selected these documents from France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States, from institutional archive centers or gathered and made available online by volunteers from associations and collectives.
Mainly comprising of periodicals edited “by and for” those concerned, these documents show how groups of disabled people have been inspired by the 1960s and 1970s movements, and the activist press that has subsequently emerged. They also reveal the range of strategies applied by the disabled in the way they use means of communication. While in the 1980s some artists shared their performances by selling video tapes by mail, and some periodicals produced audio versions on tape for the blinds, in the early 2000s, autistic people set up their own meeting places in Second Life’s virtual space.
Published between the early 1970s and the late 2000s, these publications represented many spaces for self-determination and autonomous expression. They were adapted to specific contexts, but shared the same priority: how to call oneself? In the 1960s, the then little used term “disabled” helped to politically federate within a single group what the medical discourse would split into categories. Whereas the disability medical model made a distinction between a mental or physical, visible or invisible, mobility or sensorial disability, the theoretical framework of the social model that emerged in these publications defined disability according to an experience-based community shaped by a shared experience of time, exclusion and ableism violence.
Over time, there also developed a similar quest to find other names—names that aim to break from those that are too closely associated with charity, pity and contempt. English-speakers claimed the term “cripple,” which they shortened to “crip,” while Germans use the term Krüppel (meaning “cripple” or “invalid”). In January 1993, the American magazine Mouth Magazine organized a competition entitled “Name Those People Contest,” and selected as winner the pun “dislabeled.”
Founded in 1973 by the Comité de Lutte des Handicapés (CLH), the journal Handicapés Méchants (“Beware of the Disabled” or “Angry Disabled”) followed on from the workers’ and students’ movements in May 1968, and the first political mobilization of people with disabilities in France. Going against the grain of charitable approaches to disability, the “angry disabled” claimed the right to live and make their own choices, asserting that it is society that must adapt to the disabled, not the other way around. Namely, they reject being assign to sheltered workshops, which they consider to be an exploitative system that benefits capitalism. The issues addressed the various battles led by disabled people in France: accessibility, right to education and work, autonomy, sexuality…
Created by the association Impuls and the Club of the Disabled and their Friends (Club Behinderter und Ihrer Freunde, CeBeeF) in 1976, the magazine Puls (Pulse) was one of the Swiss disability movement’s main voices.
LUFTPUMPE (The Air Pump), launched in March 1978 in Cologne, was conceived as a magazine for disabled and non-disabled people, in line with the ideology of the Clubs of the Disabled and their Friends (CeBeeF). Based on an initially regional foundation, the magazine reached a circulation of 6,000 copies in 1981, with its editing team growing and four editions (Rhine-Main, Cologne, Munich and Berlin) being published. That year, LUFTPUMPE became the main media platform of the protest movement against the UN International Year of Disabled Persons in West Germany.
Founded in 1979 by a group of disabled individuals in Bremen, Krüppel Zeitung (Cripples’ Newspaper) soon grew with contributors from Hamburg, Emden, and Berlin. In the aftermath of the 1968 social movements, the publication not only formulated claims, it also called for a radical break from normality. It rejected the term “disabled”—which aims to cover “the reality that society, institutions, the non-disabled dominate the disabled” by “simulating integration and partnership”—and adopted that of Krüppel (cripple or invalid) and chose as their emblem an engraving representing Quasimodo throwing stones at the supporters of integration.
Originally a four-page pamphlet created by two women, Cass Irvin and Mary Johnson, for the local activists’ community in Louisville (Kentucky), The Disability Rag became one of the main national publications of the US disability rights movement. Besides covering the national news, it helped the disabled out of their isolation before the advent of the internet and social media by having a large section dedicated to the readers’ mail. As an opinion journal, it also devoted considerable space to visuals and caricatures criticizing the miserable representations of fundraising campaigns as well as the hegemonic narratives presenting disabled people as examples of overcoming adversity. The publication changed its name in 1995 to become the magazine entitled Ragged Edge at the time of launching its website, Ragged Edge Online, which was active until 2007.
In reaction to the UN International Year of Disabled Persons in 1981, disabled activists organized the Krüppeltribunal (Cripples’ Tribunal), based on the Russell Tribunal, to raw attention to the violation of disabled people’s human rights. The organizers denounced the segregative politics towards the disabled led by the German government and called for a radical mass resistance. Fifteen trials were organized, gathering several hundred people. The charges addressed the living conditions in institutions, the arbitrary use of power by the authorities, the lack of accessibility, sheltered workshops, discrimination towards disabled women, psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry. This event marked one of the founding dates of the movement for autonomous life in Germany.
In April 1986, Krüppel Zeitung and Luftpumpe merged under a new title: Die Randschau—Zeitschrift für Behindertenpolitik (The Marginal Gaze—Journal on the disabled’s politics). The nationally published journal continued with the objectives of the two previous periodicals: to support and encourage the disabled people’s resistance against oppression and exclusion, and to promote their self-determination. It was conceived as “a tool for all those who observe our society’s evolution, its trends, and its promises from a particular perspective, that of the disadvantaged, with—to put it plainly—a marginal gaze.”
Founded in 1990 by Lucy Gwin, a disability rights activist, at the time of the US disability movement’s victory with the ratification of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Mouth Magazine welcomed contributions from numerous artists, including photographer Tom Olin, and poets Neil Marcus and Cheryl Marie Wade. Initially entitled This Brain Has a Mouth, the magazine later became Mouth, The Voice of Disability Rights in 1992, then Mouth, Voice of the Disability Nation in 1997, and finally Mouth, Voice of the DisLabeled Nation from 2002 onwards.
Founded in 1992 by Jim Sinclair, Kathy Grant, and Donna Williams, Autism Network International (ANI) was an organization defending autistic people’s rights based on the principle of self-advocacy. Its news bulletin, Our Voice, focused primarily on essays and poetry and remains one of the longest-running publications for the neurodiversity movement.
Autistic Liberation Front Headquarters on Second Life was founded in 2006 by the avatars Muskie Marquette, Alfhild Briers, and Natasha Shatzkin. In this virtual three-dimensional space, they created a Jorge Luis Borges library, a Museum of Autism, a memorial, as well as a peer-help place called “Faith World of Sun and Shadow.”
Translated by Karine Leroux