“Cripped” Heroes: An Analysis of Physically Disabled Professionals’ Personal Narratives of Performance of Identity

Abstract

Twenty-six self-defined physically disabled professionals’ open-ended personal narratives from a performance perspective highlight the cultural struggle over physically disabled professional identity. Physically disabled professional identity materializes through the performance of four “hero” characters engaging in ongoing social “battles” that reference American and Judeo-Christian myths. The heroes reemerge across narratives as a means to negotiate the anxiety surrounding the physically disabled body performing within a cultural space that seeks to render the body irrelevant in its pursuit of cerebral reasoning and intellect. Physically disabled professional “heroes” allow cultural members to reduce complex people into basic characters that avoid facing human mortality. Acknowledging culturally constituted heroes provides a means to potentially dismantle the stigma surrounding the physically disabled body in daily performance.

Notes

Cripping is a disability studies term that means to enter and alter a space from a disability-culture consciousness.

This study was approved by the institutional review board before I distributed the call for participants.

I sent the call for participants to list-serves at the Society for Disability Studies and the Disability Issues Caucus at the National Communication Association with instructions for recipients to feel free to pass the information along to anyone they thought may be interested.

See Mumby (1997) for a discussion of the discourses of understanding that maintains that “Truth emerges not out of the application of a methodological tool, but rather out of one's own enmeshment and grounding in a particular horizon of experience and sense community” (p. 6); the discourse of suspicion that analyzes “complex relationships among communication, power, identity, and society” (p. 12); and the discourse of vulnerability that focuses on communication as “discursive struggle” and “crises of representation” (p. 14).

This analysis process is also enacted in two other manuscripts from the larger study, Scott (2011) and Scott (in press).

For an alternative analysis of physically disabled hero characters and Bamberg's positioning in relation to narrative research methodology, see Scott (2011).

Some would argue against Eve's designation as a “Hero,” but Segal (2000) argues that “Heroes take many forms” and Eve's quest for deity status and her strong role in Judeo-Christian understanding of human's relationship with God warrant her Hero status.

Some of these heroes have variations that exist in other cultures (see Segal, 2000). Due to the situation of the participants within U.S. discourse, I chose the variations of the myths that stem from dominant U.S. cultural and religious ideologies.

Some narrators embraced National Hero status and their ability to inspire others by embodying physically disabled professional national hero success in their daily performances. While their love and esteem still arguably positions them as performing National Heroes within their personal narratives, I chose to feature Olivia as an exemplar because of her active resistance to this status because as Segal (2000) notes, while Washington would be a National Hero regardless of whether or not he accepted a third term as president, his desire to step down only increased his esteem. Three of the ten narrators re-performed this reluctance in their narratives.

The transcriptions of Alvin's speech include multiple periods between words to draw attention to the long, multiple pauses involved in the formation of each word.

For another exploration of exemplary minority-status professionals negotiated through the lens of the dominant culture, see Rushing's (2006) Erotic Mentoring: Women's Transformations in the University.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julie-Ann Scott

Julie-Ann Scott, Department of Communication Studies, University of North Carolina Wilmington. The author thanks Dr. James Ragsdale and an anonymous reviewer for their insights and feedback on previous drafts of this manuscript.