Alison Kafer is a disability studies scholar whose work examines how assumptions about the future — what counts as a desirable life, a livable body, a good outcome — are shaped by ableism. Kafer holds a position in the Department of Feminist Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
Kafer’s central contribution is a critique of how disability is imagined in relation to futurity. Mainstream narratives about the future tend to assume that disability is something to be eliminated — through cure, through prevention, through technological “fix.” Kafer argues that this framing renders disabled people absent from imagined futures, treating their existence as a problem to be solved rather than a way of being in the world.
Her concept of “crip time” challenges normative temporalities — the assumption that bodies and minds move through time at standard, predictable rates. Crip time acknowledges that disabled people experience time differently: medical appointments restructure daily schedules, chronic pain alters the rhythm of activity and rest, and bureaucratic processes (insurance approvals, accessibility accommodations) impose their own temporal demands. Rather than treating these differences as deficits, crip time treats them as a starting point for rethinking what reasonable expectations about time look like.
Kafer draws on feminist and queer theory to argue that disability politics cannot be separated from struggles over gender, sexuality, race, and reproduction. Her work connects to the broader disability justice framework developed by Patty Berne and others, which insists on the intersectional nature of disability experience.
Notable works
- Feminist, Queer, Crip (2013) — argues for a political/relational model of disability that centers futurity, access, and interdependence
Related terms
- disability justice — the intersectional framework for disability politics
- Patty Berne — co-creator of the disability justice framework