New Books Network – Interview with J. Logan Smilges, "Crip Negativity"

Date: January 9, 2026
Host: Clayton Gerard
Guest: Dr. J. Logan Smilges
Book: Crip Negativity (University of Minnesota Press, 2023)

Episode Overview

In this episode, Clayton Gerard interviews Dr. J. Logan Smilges about their book Crip Negativity, which offers a critical re-imagining of disability liberation. The conversation moves beyond standard paradigms of access and inclusion, scrutinizing the frameworks that currently govern disability politics. Through the lens of "crip negativity," Smilges invites listeners into the complexities of anti-ableist struggle—prompting us to reconsider the value (and potential) of so-called "bad feelings" and less celebrated affective states in the work of imagining more just worlds.

Key Discussion Points

About the Author and Genesis of Crip Negativity

Timestamps: 02:53 – 07:03

• Dr. Smilges introduces themselves as a queer, trans, disabled, and disability justice-focused scholar (02:53).
• The impetus for the book stemmed from their own therapeutic journey and coming to terms with "bad crip feelings": "I had accumulated a reservoir of bad feelings that I not only had zero vocabulary to talk about, but also had very little stamina to sit with and actually feel." (04:55)
• The COVID-19 pandemic created the space and urgency to articulate and explore these feelings, both individually and in community.

Defining "Crip Negativity"

Timestamps: 08:00 – 12:52

• Crip negativity is framed as “bad crip feelings being felt cripply.”
• Three-pronged definition:
  1. Bad Crip Feelings: Any negative feelings experienced by people navigating ableism, intentionally using “crip” to untether the focus from just disability.
  2. Being Felt Cripply: Feelings that are too much, too little, or inappropriate by normative standards; pathologized by mainstream psychiatry.
  3. Skepticism Toward Access/Disability: Questioning the notion that access is always good or that disability is a neutral category, situating both within broader matrices of power (class, race, gender, citizenship).

Quote:
"Ableism is not owned by disability, that there are in fact many people who ... do not use or perhaps do not experience disability in the ways that we currently understand it, but who nevertheless feel themselves suffocated by ableism." — J. Logan Smilges (09:50)

Methodological Influences and Interventions

Timestamps: 13:58 – 19:31

• Smilges works interdisciplinarily, engaging queer studies, Black studies (esp. Afropessimism), and mad studies to disrupt disability studies’ conventions.
• The book critically re-engages the "antisocial thesis" in queer theory, seeking to overcome its limitations, particularly its narrow focus and lack of intersectionality.
  • Emphasizes learning from thinkers like Saidiya Hartman and Fred Moten about "refusal" and the risks and affordances of negative feelings.
• Seeks to broaden how we conceptualize and practice negativity in community and resistance.

Quote:
"Saying no to the world as it is is not an easy task, and it often has debilitating, sometimes even fatal consequences for the people who do it." — J. Logan Smilges (18:00)

Vulnerability in Scholarly Writing and Public Impact

Timestamps: 20:35 – 24:26

• Smilges intentionally foregrounds personal vulnerability and autobiography to clarify stakes and positionality in their work.
  • Scholars often focus on these autobiographical dimensions, sometimes at the expense of critical engagement.
  • Non-scholarly readers—activists and organizers—respond most productively, aligning with Smilges’ commitment to public scholarship.

Quote:
"Those states or stating those states is, in my opinion, one of the most important things that a scholar can do, because it lets your reader know, here is who I am, here is why you should trust me, and here's where the limits of my knowledge are." — J. Logan Smilges (22:12)

"Access Thievery" – Rethinking Access, Survival, and Thriving

Timestamps: 25:59 – 34:19

• Access Thievery: Refers to the extralegal (sometimes criminal) strategies marginalized people use to secure access denied by institutions.
• Challenges the narrow, legalistic understanding of access ("reasonable accommodation"); expands the concept to include the materialities of survival amid layered oppression (e.g., race, class, geography).
  • Example: Academic conferences are inaccessible not just physically, but also economically, culturally, or based on location.
• Pushes for access not as "bare minimum," but as a vision of abundance, luxury, and collective thriving.

Quote:
"I want so much accommodation that by the time I enter the space, I'm already light years ahead of everywhere else. … I want life to be easy and I want it to be plush and gentle." — J. Logan Smilges (32:13)

Beyond Survival: From Negativity to Joy

Timestamps: 34:19 – 35:49

• Host reflects how thinking about thriving, not just surviving, links crip negativity to emerging discourses of "disabled joy" and "mad joy."
• Smilges, in this spirit, resists "reasonable accommodation" and exposes how it perpetuates the very "bad crip feelings" their book analyzes.

Labor, "Life Strike," and Communal Refusal

Timestamps: 35:49 – 40:27

• Life Strike: An intentional withdrawal or refusal to continue life-activities when "life itself feels like labor"—a boundary, not a negotiation.
  • Draws analogy with labor strikes, emphasizing both personal limits and the necessity of community support to sustain refusal.
  • Crip negative responses are inherently communal—no one can strike alone and survive.

Quote:
"Life isn't working when life itself feels like work. That is the condition under which a light strike becomes useful." — J. Logan Smilges (36:57)

Crip Negativity as Critique

Timestamps: 41:26 – 45:13

• Crip negativity offers critique in two forms:
  1. Intensification: Turns disability critique inward and outward, refusing to settle for institutional forms of access/accommodation.
  2. Refusal to Critique: Sometimes, refusing to engage in critique itself becomes resistance—choosing instead to simply sit with the feeling, envisioning new worlds beyond the need for critique.
• Sometimes, just being with feeling is itself a form of action.

Quote:
"Ableism is sometimes just a fancy word for society that doesn't give a fuck." — J. Logan Smilges (40:34, as read by host)

Crip Negativity in Action—Focusing on Response, Not Just Theory

Timestamps: 46:02 – 48:44

• The book foregrounds verbs—practices of refusal, thievery, critique—as both theoretical and practical responses rooted in community histories.
• Smilges hopes to offer language that honors and amplifies these long-standing survival strategies.

Quote:
"The language of Crip negativity may be new, the crackle of Crip negativity and certainly the existence of bad Crip feelings are the furthest thing from new." — J. Logan Smilges (46:17)

Crip Negativity and Abolition: The Power of Collective Negativity

Timestamps: 50:05 – 53:22

• Draws on poetry and theory (esp. Cameron Awkward-Rich) to connect abolition to modes of refusal and letting go.
• Embraces the idea of “falling apart” in community—deep, weary care that arises from sitting in the shit together, not from trying to fix or escape it.
• Care is not always making things better, but being together in the difficulty.

Quote:
"[Crip care] does not insist that they feel differently. It only insists that they feel alongside. And that's something we can do. ... We don't have to do it by ourselves." — J. Logan Smilges (52:18)

Closing & Upcoming Work

Timestamps: 53:44 – 55:02

• Smilges shares they are finishing a novel, bringing the politics of Crip Negativity and Queer Silence to fictional form: “It’s a dark academic novel ... and has been one of the more emotional and yet satisfying projects that I’ve worked on.” (53:52)

Notable Quotes

• "Ableism is not owned by disability, that there are ... many people who ... do not use or ... experience disability ... but who nevertheless feel themselves suffocated by ableism." (09:50)
• "Life isn't working when life itself feels like work." (36:57)
• "Ableism is sometimes just a fancy word for society that doesn't give a fuck." (40:34)
• "[Crip care] does not insist that they feel differently. It only insists that they feel alongside." (52:18)

Major Timestamps

• 02:53 – Dr. Smilges introduces self and context
• 08:00 – Definition and three prongs of Crip Negativity
• 13:58 – Methodology: Intersection with queer, Black, and mad studies
• 25:59 – Explanation of "Access Thievery"
• 35:49 – Concept and communal value of “Life Strike”
• 41:26 – Crip negativity as critique and refusal
• 50:05 – Crip negativity, abolition, and collective care
• 53:44 – Smilges’ next project: A novel

Tone and Language

Smilges’ style blends candid, personal vulnerability with incisive, interdisciplinary critique. The conversation maintains a balance between deep theoretical insight and practical, affective wisdom, often punctuated with humor and hard-won clarity about lived reality under ableism.

Summary Conclusion

This episode thoughtfully dissects how Crip Negativity challenges received wisdom in the disability politics canon, asking what happens when we take bad feelings seriously as sites for care, critique, and transformative collective life. Smilges urges listeners—and readers—to abandon both the minimums of "reasonable accommodation" and the compulsion to always overcome, instead inviting us to dwell together, gently and honestly, in all the discomforts of our shared world, as a basis for both survival and, crucially, thriving.