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

Within a culture which represents disability as individual tragedy it is easy for the impaired
individual to experience disability as something personally wrong. There may exist a sense
of having been treated unfairly or of having been dealt an unjust hand in life, and a vague
notion that for things to change there will need to be an improvement in attitudes, but beyond
that there lies a lack of clarity about how this is to be brought about. Ash suggests that to his
way of thinking positive changes occur as a result of a natural social progress:
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I feel it‟s getting better all the time… there‟s some words which shouldnae be said,
some horrible words that are… but the thing is they‟re no said as much… like the
word you use for Down‟s Syndrome… they‟re no said as much as they were when I
was younger, so that‟s like a step forward… kind of respect… people are respecting
more people that are disabled, and… in fact, maybe in the 70s, horrible things were
said, horrible words, and… I think it‟s just a natural progression that things move
on…that things move on… and people become more accepting… (l.1:174ff.)
In the meantime, Ash accepts his place in life as belonging with other disabled people:
The majority of my friends are mentally ill or physically disabled… I keep
with my people… they keep with their people… it‟s probably just the way it
goes… it‟s to do with day centres, and… you know, I go to a day centre
for… and I do think it‟s good… lumbering‟s no the right word… I do think
it‟s good keeping all the disabled people together… (l.2:23ff.)
We can recognize in Ash‟s statement the effects of disciplinary power. He has learned to
want what he has been told it is in his interests to want.
Discipline systematically works to emphasise its effective and benign productivity
while disguising its repression, so a disciplined social formation or a disciplined
body is one that complies with the system which controls it because it has been
persuaded that its benefits are greater than its costs, that what it includes is better
than what is excluded (Fiske, 1993:17).
There is no doubt that Ash gets much from attending Bonnybank Day Centre, including
many friendships:
when I go to my centre at Bonnybank I mix with a chap… I play Scrabble with him