A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Etheses - Queen Margaret ...

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and really peed off… I saw myself as different at this point and… I don‟t know,
what‟s the word… excluded… that I was different from normal able-bodied
people… (l.226ff.)
I would suggest that Hazel, as a professional working within a charity for disabled people, if
asked, would struggle to come up with a definition of the social model of disability other
than in general terms. Throughout her interview she uses the term „people living with
disabilities‟ (e.g. l.1:224), emphasising people‟s humanity before their „disabilities‟, and
expresses herself in terms framed by the medical model. Yet in this statement she expresses
as clear an understanding of the social model as any expressed in my interviews with
disabled activists: I felt different then, and really peed off… I saw myself as different at this
point and… I don‟t know, what‟s the word… excluded… that I was different from normal
able-bodied people… What Hazel is expressing here is a sense that being disabled is not an
individual condition but an oppressive role.
All they‟re trying to do is make a connection
Of the sixteen disabled people I interviewed only two described unasked for interest as
anything other than unwanted intrusion.
Ash states that:
I‟ve always noticed that people have been very, very helpful in the street… opening
doors and that… even people that you wouldnae expect… just to say, like, football
supporter people… letting a guy by and that… (l.1.47)
As Paolo Friere has remarked, self-depreciation is a characteristic of the oppressed, deriving
from their internalization of the opinion the oppressors hold of them (Friere, 1974:38). To
Ash it seems an act of kindness that strangers should take the trouble to notice him and offer
help.
As Bourdieu notes:
Resistance can be alienating and submission can be liberating. Such is the paradox
of the dominated and there is no way out of it (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 2007:24).
The smiles and kindnesses of all sorts of non-disabled people, even „football supporter
people‟, can as easily be experienced as expressions of warm fellow feeling as the gestures
of members of a relatively powerful social group expressing condescension to members of a