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

As someone with adult experience of being both non-disabled and disabled, Surinder refutes
the assumption that impairment is to be pitied. Her words expose the ideological function of
the disabled role as myth. Her own experience as a non-disabled woman was preoccupied
with what she now considers to have been the mundane trappings of normality:
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I can‟t say for sure cos I don‟t have the evidence, but I suspect that if I didn‟t have a
disability I wouldn‟t have gone through all these experiences which have made me
the strong personality that I am today… (l.1:831ff.)
Herbert Read commented that:
The whole of our capitalist culture is one immense veneer: a surface refinement
hiding the cheapness and shoddiness at the heart of things (Read, 2002:29).
Being positioned on the margins can provide an opportunity to gaze and reflect critically on
the mainstream. It can afford an opportunity to perceive things about the world that others
miss. While the interests of the dominant classes have no requirement for people who think
too deeply, my hope is that the affirmative model will be used as a tool for the development
of a critical self-awareness which will become a spur to transformative action.