Affinity Collective, Halaqat (2026)
Affinity Collective is a new project for, by, and with the crip*, neurodivergent, mad*, and chronically unwell community in Belgium. Collective affinities are shared positions that draw on identities society has imposed on people — identities often used to exclude or subordinate them — and repurpose those identifications as a basis for solidarity. The term was coined by historian Joan W. Scott, drawing on Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory.
Alison Kafer argues that collective affinities in disability politics can link diverse disabled and ill communities — from learning disabilities and chronic illness to mobility, sensory, HIV/AIDS, and mental health. What unites them isn’t shared traits but the fact that society labels them as disabled or sick and they face discrimination as a result.
Affinity Collective creates a space to critically explore how compulsory able‑body/mindedness and compulsory heterosexuality work together to uphold normativity; how gender expectations rely on assumptions of non‑disabled bodies; and where queer and disability activism intersect, diverge, and open new possibilities.
Aligning with Talila “TL” Lewis’ definition of ableism — a system rooted in intersecting oppressions that determines whose bodyminds are valued or devalued — we understand these connections as always shaped by the intertwined histories of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation.
Rooted in the disability justice principles articulated by Sins Invalid and expanded in Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, we explore access, interdependence, and collective care as political practices — and how our survival strategies, creative work, and everyday ways of caring for one another generate forms of knowledge that traditional institutions routinely overlook.
We imagine Affinity Collective as a space where care is shared, access is co‑created, and the lived expertise of disabled and neurodivergent people shapes the cultural and political futures we build together.
Part of Halaqat — funded by the EU, implemented by the Goethe-Institut.
Curated by Bethan Burnside.
Graphic design by Ise.
