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

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dealings with the world is when I feel it… it is not when I go to bed at night…
(l.1.366)
Ben‟s statement expresses my meaning in describing disability as a role. My intention is that
the affirmative model will be used by disabled people to make sense of this role as it is
imposed within the minutiae of everyday life. If, as Neil Thompson (1998) suggests, our
understanding of our own personal situations is indelibly shaped by cultural arrangements
reflecting the structural base of society, there is a need for tools which equip us to engage
with cultural as well as structural oppression. Having subjected the affirmative model to
sustained critical analysis, I suggest it can be described as adequate for this purpose.
Is the affirmative model an adequate explanatory tool to account for both
recognition and redistribution issues in relation to the experiences of disabled
people?
The affirmative model definitions proposed here allow us to regard impairment as a valid
human characteristic among other human characteristics. This does not involve a denial of
the sometimes painful aspects of impairment, but neither does it regard these as marks of
inferiority. The affirmative model provides the basis for a self-respectful stance to be taken
in the face of cultural assumptions of personal tragedy. It contextualises the experience of
impairment within current discourse on diversity and establishes the rights of people with
impairments to be recognised and valued as who they are.
While my definition of impairment addresses recognition issues, my definition of disability
as role addresses issues of redistribution. I have described the disabled role as an alienated
role among other alienated roles in a culture which actively produces and requires alienated
human beings. The disabled role is imposed on people with impairments to remind non-
disabled and disabled people alike of the value of conformity. Pre-occupation with
conformity as individuals diverts collective focus from wider structural issues of inequality.
As a framework which throws new light on processes which legitimise inequality in
contemporary society, the affirmative model can be used as a tool to address the unequal life
opportunities experienced by disabled people.
While I conclude that the affirmative model is an adequate explanatory tool to account for
both recognition and redistribution issues in relation to the experiences of disabled people, I
suggest also that it is a model which opens up debate in new terms. In requiring