When Silence Said Everything

Reading X González’s, March 24, 2018, “March For Our Lives” speech—her words and silences—as an entry point into what I term a crip theory of trauma, this essay argues that the dominant narratives about around Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) say more compulsivity “proper” citizen subject than they do actual embodied experience debilitation trauma itself. The text reconceptualizes narratives, like through critical disability studies to argue certain cripistemologies—or ways knowing—trauma arise are not otherwise available or readily accessible. Most notably, by rejecting pathologizing forces embracing knowing, analysis brings forth new working definition as embodied, affective structure. These knowing offer crucial insights for efforts grapple with ongoing forms enacted perpetuated across globe, particularly urgent against political cultural landscape that, my reading González’s speech makes clear, in many refuses hear, see, learn from knowledge produces.