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

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increasingly becomes more important than more traditional forms of knowledge
(Taylor and Harris, 2008:119).
Giving to charities for disabled children through pseudo-events such as Children in Need
provides endless opportunities for individuals to validate themselves by demonstrating that,
along with millions of other big-hearted individuals they will never meet, they care.
Commenting on Children in Need, Ben told me that:
It sickens me to be honest… but it‟s very difficult to say anything against it in the
wider community… within the disability community it‟s despised and hated, but
when you‟re in the wider community… if you happen to be in a pub and someone
comes in raising money for it… with a large bucket… you just don‟t feel as if you
can say anything about it for fear of the consequences… so, yeah, socially
reinforcing in that sense… it‟s self-policed by majority consensus… (l.2:227)
The voices of disabled people who would offer a different perspective on the role of charity
go unheard amidst the clamour of generosity and pity as the wider community meets its own
needs to have its horizons reaffirmed. As Ben also observes, it is not as simple as saying that
disabled people object to pseudo-events like this, because there are plenty of disabled people
who are happy to endorse them:
...a certain college I used to go to, they‟d raise money for Children In Need and all
that… it‟s part of your moral education… reinforced in the schools… and in the
literature… it‟s not considered to be oppressive to do that… because it‟s never
considered from the other perspective… cos when you‟re in that perspective you‟re
not allowed to say it… it‟s just a hidden, suppressed perspective… (l.2:310ff.)
Ben draws attention to the recruitment of disabled children and young people as subjects
within this disability discourse. There is no other available narrative because the alternative
narrative is never listened to or has been watered down until it has become unthreatening and
is couched in terms of „people with disabilities‟. Those disabled people who regard disability
as oppression are dismissed either as irrelevant extremists or as heartless and uncaring. Ben‟s
comment is supported by Roshni, who recalls of her schooldays:
...we had a lot of visits, as many people did at that time, from Children in Need and
all these sort of charity– inspired telethons and game shows and all of that, and they
all came and filmed us … erm … and… and I remember that striking a lot of chords