I was never alone or <i>oporniki</i>: An ethnographic play on disability in Russia By CassandraHartblay. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020. 218 pp.

The book by Cassandra Hartblay is a stage play based on ethnographic research with people with disabilities in Russia. The title of the book plays an essential role in understanding the book's core theme. I Was Never Alone or Oporniki is based on the phrase by one of Hartblay's interlocutors, Alina, who said, “I was never alone, I always had a lot of people … there were always people around me” (p. 34). The term attempts to challenge the traditional views of disability as an isolating and inherently negative experience. Oporniki (from opora—backbone, core, central support; p. 94), also a part of the title, in spoken Russian, stands for persons with mobility disabilities who rely on wheelchairs and other assistive devices. It is also a reference to support, holding people up. If there is opora, then there is no place for being alone. The author poses the question whether disability access can be reframed as central support for a disability theory of performance ethnography (p. 105). The idea of opora also extends to the experience of the ethnographer, who is no longer alone when conducting performance ethnography (p. 100). A deeper exploration of the word's meaning opens up avenues for deeper epistemological and ontological discussions in all the fields that are brought up in this book. I Was Never Alone or Oporniki challenges the traditional genres of writing in anthropology, disability studies, and performance studies. From an anthropological perspective, there is a temporal distancing between the time of field research and bringing the voices and the context of that fieldwork to life through publications and other more traditional academic outputs. Performance ethnography—the genre Hartblay is working with—challenges this temporal distancing and, instead, synchronizes the story and its evocation. By putting all these fields in conversation with each other, the author raises the issues of what it means to perform ethnography, how to talk about disability onstage in cross-cultural settings, and how disability studies can enrich both performance and ethnography through radical vulnerability and commitment to accessibility throughout the process. Structurally, the book is composed of the play as well as the ethnographer's essay that provides reflections about the meaning of ethnographic play and performance ethnography in the context of disability, social difference, health, and postsocialism. The first part opens with the play adapted from the ethnographic interviews with six people with disabilities conducted by Hartblay in northwestern Russia. The author's interlocutors share snippets from their lives while a theater audience replaces the researcher by becoming the performers’ albeit invisible dialogue partner. By opening the book with the performances, the author invites the readers to immerse themselves in a theater-like environment. The second part of the book unpacks the process of creating a play and delves into a discussion about what it means to do disability anthropology which the author defines as the “work that the word disability, its social construction, or social effects [does] in a given context” (p. 86–87). By introducing the essential cultural and historical context of disability in Russia, the author analyzes the context of the research and the meaning of disability in ethnographic research and performance studies. The author delves into discussions that unpack the complexities of the intersectional nature of disability studies, anthropology, and Slavic studies. The author ties in constructs and terms that might have different meanings in different contexts. For example, the term “disability culture” carries a specific meaning in disability studies and refers to the “situated knowledge that produces a sense of shared identity between people with disabilities.” In the anthropological sense, the term can refer to multiple disability cultures, and universality does not apply. Furthermore, the book analyzes how this play challenges the representation of disability onstage. As it is cogently explained, disability is traditionally used as a trope to elicit pity or other archetypes that perpetuate stereotypes about disability and deprive it of complexity and multidimensionality. Yet, despite the potential of performance ethnography, it is not without its challenges. A portrayal of disability from a foreign context highlights the production challenges (e.g., considerations of lighting onstage and how the scene is perceived depending on the lighting). It also foregrounds considerations of how monologues are interpreted by the audience unfamiliar with implicit cultural scripts. For example, unemotional remarks might be perceived as something that was said in distress, whereas it might be just an irony. One of the dilemmas that the book raises in relation to our understanding of disability is how opora can coexist with its absence or with systemic injustices that people with disabilities experience. One of the interlocutors, Sergei, demonstrates the liminality of what it means “not to be alone.” He shared experiences of not always being accepted, of being tolerated. “Here in Russia … we don't hate people with disabilities, they don't hate them, but they are somehow hidden away from society” (p. 42). The term tolerantnost’, which is similar in meaning to the English tolerance, is commonly used in discourses around diversity and inclusion in Russia, and cross-cultural meanings around that would be fascinating to juxtapose with the bottom-up approaches. What does it mean to move between the spaces of acceptance and exclusion? Can we discuss the barriers and injustices without generalizing and using clichés about disability? Future studies can build on this work to explore this question further. The book is an excellent text for interdisciplinary audiences in disability studies, anthropology, and performance studies. Through performance ethnography, the traditional understanding of what it means to do research is transformed into a project built on sustainable relationships and collaborative knowledge production. Relationship building and collaboration speak to the values of disability justice by honoring the voice of people with disabilities, addressing the systemic issues of inaccessibility of performance spaces and the absence of authentic representation, and engaging in cross-cultural, intersectional, and critical disability anthropology.

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