When Leadership Falls Short: The Crisis of Care in Library Work
Posted on in Blog Posts
Crip Time in the Academic Library
Posted on July 10, 2024 in Blog Posts
Authors:
Brea McQueen
Crip time, a phrase often attributed to the scholar Alison Kafer, can broadly be understood as a new way of thinking about time. Simply put, it is the idea that disabled folks experience time, milestones, and life events in ways that do not align with normative understandings of time or the socially accepted way that time is understood in everyday life. It is, for the most part, a nonlinear way of understanding and moving through time, and it takes into consideration the flare-ups, setbacks, and fatigue that often accompany disability.
Crip time in a practical sense can be seen in time blindness in ADHD folks who find themselves either repeatedly running late, frozen in “waiting mode,” or consistently losing track of time. It can be understood as the unpredictability of needed or even excessive sick days for someone with chronic fatigue or pain whose body has decided for them that they cannot work that day. It helps explain why folks who have spent countless hours, days, and years in and out of hospitals and doctor offices, waiting for diagnoses or receiving treatment, are forced to put their schooling, careers, or passions on pause.
Understanding crip time is important because it allows us to acknowledge how normative standards of time can be inaccessible for many disabled people. This becomes even more critical when we acknowledge time’s relationship to productivity and capitalism, and the impact of chronopolitics, or “the politics of time governing academic knowledge generation, epistemic entities, and academic lives and careers,” on individuals. Prioritizing deliverables on a strict timeline over inquiry and exploration at one’s own pace further supports a chrononormative framework of time and eliminates space for those who, while just as skilled and talented as their normative peers, must operate with the disadvantage of crip time.
The academic library is no exception to these inaccessible expectations of time. There are obvious examples, such as the strict structure of the 9–5 workday or the rigid timeline of the tenure and promotion process. However, chrononormativity also shows up in our committee work, in the deadlines for publications or other scholarly works, and in our instruction sessions. Chrononormativity is particularly prevalent in our one-shot instruction models.
The one-shot can be very unforgiving for someone who is experiencing crip time. It is often a fast-paced environment in which we pack in as much information as possible in an attempt to equip our students with all the tools they need to be successful. For many, the quick tempo of the one-shot model does not create an environment conducive to good instruction or learning. Continuing to operate in a framework of chrononormativity ensures that only nondisabled people are given the opportunity to fully engage critically with their academic work or instruction.
When designing my instruction sessions, I try to consider how I can build flexibility and forgiveness into my instruction sessions. For me this often looks like:
- Including short, frequent breaks that give students an opportunity to catch up if there were moments when they fell behind or needed additional time to process the information delivered during the first segment. This also gives me time as the instructor to take a breather and reset if I am struggling with brain fog or fatigue.
- Creating material or handouts that actively walk students through the content of the one-shot. This is useful for those who were either unable to attend their session due to an absence or those who were present but needed additional time to process the information.
- Encouraging students to reach out on their own time to set up one-on-one appointments that allow us to work at a speed and time that work best for their needs.
Because no two people experience time in the same way, there are no hard and fast solutions to creating a perfectly accessible environment for students or us librarians. I do, however, think it is important to start these conversations and examine the different ways that people encounter time and the impact it can have on their ability to access information, services, and working environments.
About the author:
Brea McQueen is an activist and academic librarian whose work primarily focuses on the intersections of disability and librarianship, and challenging normative ideas of what librarianship should look like.
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