Slides from the presentation (extract) Red Shirts and Black Holes: Academic practice, avoidance and affect Diane Carr, Institute of Education, University of London Avoidance in/and the Academy. The International Conference of Disability, Culture and Education. Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, Liverpool Hope University 11-12th September 2013

The obscured and the avoided Monsters in games are read as metaphor, rather than approached as images of disability or impairment (as in other fictions, see Smith, Snyder and Mitchell). Meanwhile, ability in games ‘hides in plain sight’ when it comes to critique or reflection. When ability is discussed, it is taken at face value and approached in terms of learning or in-game pedagogy. When games and disability has been discussed it is nearly always in terms of technology and tools, therapy and accessibility.

Horror and science fiction games offer an opportunity to critique representations of disability and ability (and to explore related issues of technology, status and the body, for instance). But this work also involves managing problems of expectation (of what disability is, and of what ‘research about games and disability’ is) And managing related expectations about conceptual framing, the purpose or research, and the place of disability theory

Themes that have emerged in early reviews The following is based on reviews of the research proposal, reviews of conference abstracts, post-presentation feedback and some chatting... Discipline Existing ‘games and disability’ research is clinical, therapeutic or concerned with accessibility. It has a clear function. It constructs disability in particular (familiar) ways. It reifies particular discourse and frameworks. It fits with dominant ‘technology and education’ tropes. The sheer, accumulated weight of these paradigms is such that they generate the equivalent of a conceptual black hole. Operating in the vicinity of a black hole creates problems of coherence and distortion (and opportunities for avoidance) that have potential implications for those who venture outside (hence the reference to red shirts). Conceptual geography Some reviewers seem keen to achieve a ‘safe distance’ via epistemology - e.g., attempts to return disability to the clinic, to contain it in a positivist framework, or at least to move it somewhere else, e.g., to a difference conference track.

Themes that have emerged in early reviews, cont. Voice For some reviewers it seems that authorial voice is inconsistent with disability (e.g.., references to my ‘laudable intellectual curiosity’, or to the problem of ‘speaking for’ a social group of which I’m assumed not to be a member). The implication is that disability is associated with absence, dependence, silence - which in turn says something about the perceived role of helpful, able researchers and the purpose of research (which takes me back to the issue of disciplinarity). Romance Some reviewers seem to yearn for a ‘proper’ disabled subject. They urge me to use social scientific methods (that are vaguely defined yet highly valued) and to go find one. Disorientation As suggested when reviewers write that ‘this addresses an important topic that has been woefully neglected’ and then immediately steer me towards completely unrelated literature.