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

seeming to. It is rapid, fleeting and unnoticeable, and takes place within the minutiae of
everyday life even as what appears is an illusion of sameness. If public attitudes towards
disabled people do change, they do so imperceptibly and between the cracks of obviousness,
held back by dull resistance.
It is in the gestures, glances and tones of address experienced by disabled people that
dominant social relations are shored up, for the words and internal conversations of the non-
disabled with whom they interact are also informed by the same conventional narratives.
While it may be far from their conscious intention, in making assumptions and judgements
based on their cultural learning, the strangers, shop assistants, and waiters encountered by
disabled people play a part in the ongoing production of unequal social relations, for,
simultaneously, they project onto disabled people an understanding of what is perceived as
their unfortunate difference and remind themselves of their own normality.
Themes
In this chapter I consider three themes emerging from the situations I observed and the
discussions I held with participants about these situations. The first of these relates to the
imposition of the disabled role. Initially I shall contrast two situations, both involving
encounters with sales assistants. In the first situation the disabled role is imposed and in the
second it is not. My intention here is not only to illustrate the way in which the role is
imposed in everyday life situations, but also, by showing that it is not imposed within every
encounter, to demonstrate the arbitrary and relational nature of disability. I follow this by
discussing other illustrative examples.
My second theme relates to alienation. Here I discuss the situations of other people around
participants in these everyday settings, illustrating that alienation is a part of human
experience generally. My intention is to highlight the way in which, as a signifier of
alienation, disability is a role imposed among other alienated roles.
I return to Markell‟s argument that:
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human relationships based upon the subordination and denigration of certain social
groups involve closing off some people‟s practical possibilities for the sake of other
people‟s sense of mastery or invulnerability (Markell, 2003:23).
Within contexts of everyday life and of the politics of ordinary effect, the disabled role is
imposed on people identified as having impairments by those considering themselves normal
in order to reassure themselves that their own lives are tolerable. The sentiment that „there is