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

otherwise. It also establishes their rights to have great days and ordinary days as well as crap
days, to enjoy being who they are as people with impairments rather than regarding
impairment as a cloud overshadowing every aspect of their existence. It demands a
recognition of impairment as an ordinary rather than an extraordinary characteristic of
human experience, and for inclusion within ordinary life on that basis. For me this is
succinctly summed up by Sarah P., a woman who has posted a comment on an interview
about my research on the website Disability Arts Online:
157
This reminds me how important it is to not apologizing for who you are in any way
(Hambrook, 2009: unpaged)
This affirmative model identifies disability as a productive as well as a restrictive
relationship. In identifying disability as a personal and social role, it involves a recognition
of the kind of actors people with impairments are required to become. Whether this involves
passive dependency or triumph over tragedy, either way negates the lived experience of
impairment and signifies the desirability of normality.
I don‟t blame the person, I think it‟s just all about self-awareness... it‟s all about the
individual... how you deal with yourself first... you know, it‟s all about looking at
yourself... most of it is about looking at yourself... (l.1:448)
Surinder‟s words return me to the argument I made at the beginning of my literature search.
Disability is a thoroughly exploitative relationship because simultaneously it disadvantages
people with impairments and those considered non-impaired. Just as being a disabled person
involves acting out an imposed role so does being a non-disabled person. While to an extent,
in Markell‟s terms, non-disabled people are insulated from having to address their own
temporality, this is distraction which avoids the necessity of facing personal existential
questions. The interests of the dominant social classes have no need of grounded human
beings but only of consumers. In Richard Schmitt‟s words, „the market economy advances
alienation by pushing us towards conformity‟ (Schmitt, 2003:107).
Surinder recalls herself before her diagnosis with MS as having been shallow in comparison
with the person she is now:
I think as me as a non-disabled person in the past, no I wasn‟t happy… I wasn‟t
happy… but then, I didn‟t know myself then… and didn‟t have that awareness that
I have now… (l.1:795ff.)