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

ut is experienced in the terms of specific historical contexts and discourses which situate us.
Anthony Giddens argues that:
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social circumstances are not separate from personal life, nor are they just an external
environment to them. In struggling with intimate problems, individuals help actively
to reconstruct the universe of social activity around them (Giddens, 2003:12).
In a context where reflexivity is a social requirement of the individual – in which the
individual has no choice but to live „a biography reflexively organised in terms of flows of
social and psychological information about possible ways of life‟ (Giddens, 2003:14) – it is
little surprise that disabled people, even the majority of disabled people, should choose to
view themselves as individuals rather than as members of a stigmatised group. It is little
surprise that in a social world where impairment is regarded as a mark of inferiority, disabled
people should „downplay the significance of their impairments‟ (Shakespeare, 2006:74) and
seek to become integrated into the social mainstream without their impairments being
noticed. What I do find surprising is the suggestion that the discovery that people with
impairments answer the question “How shall I live?” with the answer “Not as a disabled
person if I can help it,” should be considered a new insight, and a valid response to the
experience of disabling oppression.
Conclusion
To be wholly or in part „out of place‟ everywhere, not to be completely anywhere
(that is without qualifications and caveats, without some aspects of oneself „sticking
out‟ and seen by others as looking odd) may be an upsetting, sometimes annoying
experience. There is always something to explain, to apologise for, to hide or on the
contrary to broadly display, to negotiate, to bid for and to bargain for; there are
differences to be smoothed or glossed over, or to be on the contrary made more
salient and legible (Bauman, 2006:13).
I would suggest that Zygmunt Bauman‟s statement above is a fairly accurate summation of
what happens as part of everyday experience for most disabled people, and explains why
identity reappears so frequently as a problematic theme in their lives.
Fundamentally, I would argue, a choice has to be made between whether to try to deflect
attention away from or unashamedly display those aspects of the self considered abnormal. I
would characterise the first position as one which rejects disability identity and seeks to