ABSTRACT 158 LEONARDO, Vol. 57, No. 2, pp.158–161, 2024 https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_02497 ©2024 ISAST ARTISTS’ ARTICLE How Can It Not Know What It Is? Remembering Disability as Part of the Whole INDIRA ALLEGRA AND ALLISON LEIGH HOLT Disabled artists Indira Allegra and Allison Leigh Holt met through the Ford Foundation Gallery exhibition Indisposable: Tactics for Care and Mourning, a follow-up to Indisposable: Structures of Support aſter the Americans with Disabilities Act [1]. is three-year collaboration with multiple artists and scholars emerged as eight online chapters, each addressing how some lives—especially disabled, poor, queer, Black, In- digenous, and people of color (BIPOC)—are oſten deemed disposable. How Can It Not Know What It Is? emerged from Allegra and Holt’s shared respect for other-than-human in- telligence and critical use of media in each of their practices. CripTech is a meaningful catalyst for this discussion as it is a creative practice committed to reimagining enshrined notions of how a bodymind can think and communicate with and alongside technology [2,3]. e classic 1982 sci-fi film Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott and written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is the starting point for an open, excerpted conversation between Allegra and Holt about extended cognition and systems of control, with par- ticular attention to the role of memory in preserving disabled histories within a collective human experience. Allison Leigh Holt: For me, what the call for this issue (“CripTech and the Art of Access”) initially sparked was a scene in the original version of the film Blade Runner. At an AI-manufacturing corporation, police detective Rick Deckard arrives to try out the Voigt-Kampff test [4], a new empathy test designed to distinguish emotionally and intel- lectually advanced androids from humans. He’s been as- signed to exterminate certain so-called replicants that are mutinying, seeking to extend their short life spans. eir creator and corporate head, Tyrell, asks to see how this empathy test performs on a human first, and suggests his assistant, Rachael. Deckard tests her and she’s dismissed without learning the results: e assessment revealed that she is a replicant. Discussing this with Tyrell, Deckard says, “How can it not know what it is?” Rachael’s construction is so sophisticated that she believes she is human, going to great lengths to prove and defend her lineage. But her sense of self is grounded in fabrication. Deckard’s comment, to me, gets to the core con- ditions of racial capitalism, especially in the United States: If you’re denied access to your history and your origin, you’re denied the means of knowing who and what you are. In Florida, the Stop WOKE Act (passed in 2022 by Gov- ernor Ron DeSantis) restricts schools and businesses from having certain conversations that acknowledge the real his- tory and impact of white racism in the United States. As a result, students of all backgrounds are kept from realizing a full picture: How can they understand their place within the full scope of American history? Without access to informa- tion—say, about slavery and racial segregation laws—these young people have no support to develop a sense of being self-grounded in historical fact. e ideologies behind the Stop WOKE Act also appeal to a conservative political base, which raises DeSantis’s likelihood of raising campaign funds to back his bid for the presidency. In this way, the denial of access to historical knowledge in schools is connected to the manufacturing of a false national mythology in which racial capitalism does not exist. In Blade Runner, the goal of the Tyrell Corporation is stated to be “commerce.” Replicants that are implanted with Indira Allegra (artist, writer), U.S.A. Email: info@indiraallegra.com. ORCID: 0000- 0003-1543-6803. Allison Leigh Holt (artist, scholar), U.S.A. Email: allison.holt@gmail.com. ORCID: 0009-0008-9690-3533. See https://direct.mit.edu/leon/issue/57/2 for supplemental files associated with this issue. How Can It Not Know What It Is? is a conversation that uses the revered sci-fi film Blade Runner (1982) as a frame to explore the role of memory and affirming disabled identity in collective human experience, specifically concerning technology, the power of self-knowledge, and how these concepts intersect with capitalism and contemporary politics. In an open conversation excerpted here, the artist-authors discuss what it means to be wholly human, navigating subjects from memory to extended cognition, from national mythology to the ethics of AI. L5702_interior.indd 158 1/17/24 12:06 PM Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/leon_a_02497/2217023/leon_a_02497.pdf by RENSSELAER POLYTECHIC INSTITUTE user on 26 January 2024