Embodied Narratives: Control, Regulation and Bodily Resistance in the Life Course of Older Women with Learning Difficulties

Abstract

This essay is based on a research project which involved interviewing twenty-four women labelled as having ‘learning difficulties’, of different ages, in different environments and in three different UK locations. A common theme emerging from the study was the ways in which the participants interpret their generational bodily experiences as an integral part of their self, as well as their collective identities. The narratives illustrate how, on a day-to-day level, the body is a site of policing, abuse and conflict as well as a platform for resistance and transgression of imposed norms. Indeed, the boundaries of labelling become distinctly blurred and unstable as the body is identified as an ‘active agent’ with the capacity to signify times, places and events. The structure of power relations and regimes of care and welfare provision further identify the body in a culturally and historically situated position. However, the sociocultural construction of the label and the assumed lack of competence inherent in the definition ‘learning difficulty’ actually set out diverse paths of traditional life courses.

résumé Cet article est basé sur un projet de recherche d'histoire orale sur 24 femmes diagnostiquées comme ayant des problèmes d'apprentissage, de différents âges et de différentes origines dans le Royaume-Uni. Un thème commun était l'importance du corps pour leur identité personnelle et collective. Ces récits montrent bien comment le corps est sujet à des abus de discipline et à des conflits tout en étant un site important de transgression et de résistance. De ce fait le corps devient un agent en soi capable de signifier dans le temps, l'espace et les évènements. Suivant Foucault les régimes de soin et d'assistanat identifient le corps de façon culturellement déterminé. Cependant la construction du handicap et le fait que cette définition implique une supposition d'incompétence rendent le cours de ces existences plus diverse.

Notes

 [1] ‘Learning Difficulty’ is an umbrella term used to define a multiple range of impairments and behaviours—all of which can change during the life course. The term will be used throughout this essay as opposed to ‘learning disability’ or ‘intellectual disabilities’. This is in line with the self-advocacy movement and British People First who prefer this definition. It also underpins the assertion that the label is socially constructed and changes over time and in different cultures.

 [2] Barnes and Mercer, The Politics of Disability and the Struggle for Change. Barton, ed., Disability Politics and the Struggle for Change.

 [3] Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice; Language and Symbolic Power.

 [4] Oliver, The Politics of Disablement, 46–54.

 [5] Marks, Disability: Controversial Debates and Psychosocial Perspectives, 80.

 [6] Garland‐Thompson, Extraordinary Bodies, 39.

 [7] Barnes, Disabled People in Britain, 203.

 [8] Hughes, The Construction of Impairment.

 [9] Barnes, Mercer and Shakespeare, eds, Exploring Disability.

[10] Morris, Pride Against Prejudice, 105.

[11] Goffman, Stigma.

[12] Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

[13] Goffman, Stigma, 26.

[14] Corker, Deaf and Disabled, 21.

[15] Woodward, ed., Identity and Difference, 65–103.

[16] Turner, The Body and Society, 1.

[17] Abberley, The Concept of Oppression, 5.

[18] This debate has been taken up by Thomas, Female Forms, 70–74.

[19] For example, see Hughes and Patterson, The Social Model of Disability and the Disappearing Body.

[20] Goodley, Self Advocacy in the Lives of People with Learning Difficulties, 43.

[21] See Shilling, The Body and Social Theory; Shildrick and Price, Breaking the Boundaries of the Broken Body; Turner, Disability and the Sociology of the Body.

[22] Jenkins, Questions of Competence.

[23] Morris, Pride Against Prejudice.

[24] See Williams, Women with Learning Difficulties are Women Too; Brown, Ordinary Women; McCarthy, Whose Body is it Anyway? This dichotomy of being perceived as ‘vulnerable’ but also ‘dangerous’ is reflected in later discussions on the impact of the Mental Deficiency Acts (1913, 1927).

[25] In line with ethical guidelines all names of participants and places have been replaced with pseudonyms.

[26] Shakespeare, Disability, Identity, Difference; Thomas, Female Forms.

[27] For example, see Booth and Booth, Sounds of Silence; Goodley, Tales of Hidden Lives; Atkinson et al. , Good Times, Bad Times; Phillips, Women, Learning Difficulties and Identity.

[28] The narratives utilised in this essay are part of a wider database generated for an Economic and Social Research (ESRC) postgraduate studentship (PhD), conducted at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. Completed October 2002.

[29] The project involved collecting personal narratives. Part of the process, or often the very grounds which made this acceptable to the participants, was that it would be their stories that were being relayed and not those of others (carers, parents, professionals). Additionally, accessing personal records was not considered ethical unless participants granted permission. However, this was not an issue as records were often incomplete or missing. In order to obtain factual information regarding names of institutions and the pathways of community care provisions, interviews with local social service managers were also conducted. Regarding the accounts of life and conditions in the institutions, I was able to compare these stories with the factual evidence emerging from other recent research. A colleague was simultaneously collating materials at the institution in which Valerie and Sylvia had lived. It made an interesting comparison relating the narrative accounts to her documentation. These findings (as yet unpublished or in press, 2007) reflected the participants' accounts of the wards, the housework and laundry rooms and particularly the ‘side rooms’ used for punishment. Similarly, a newspaper article (Observer, 7 April 2000, Mental Health Media) exploring the oral histories of former asylum patients who lived in the same hospital as ‘Betty’ underpinned her experiences and descriptions of the environment and conditions.

[30] Phillips, Women, Learning Difficulties and Identity, 32–38.

[31] See Barnes, Disabled People in Britain; Williams, Race, Welfare and Community Care; Cox, Girls' Deficiency and Delinquency.

[32] Thompson, Family, Community and State, 210.

[33] This is reinforced by research conducted by Mental Health Media (2000) that recorded oral histories of fifty former asylum patients. Despite no obvious gender imbalance in this small sample, gender differences occurred in the reasons for certification. Women tended to be admitted on the grounds of ‘moral judgements’, while a large influx of servicemen into the asylums resulted from the First World War casualties (links to post-trauma syndrome, although not recognised at that particular time).

[34] Bland, Guardians of the Race, 375.

[35] Rowbotham, Hidden From History, 32.

[36] Borsay, Disability and Social Policy in Britain since 1750, 71, 101–05.

[37] Jones, Social Hygiene in Twentieth Century Britain.

[38] Williams, Race, Welfare and Community Care, 22.

[39] The question of legal sterilisation was widely debated in the 1920s. The outcome was that compulsory sterilisation for ‘mental defectives’ would not reduce costs of institutionalised care or have little impact on the ‘social evils’ inherent in society. Instead a scheme of ‘voluntary sterilisation’ was recommended whereby ‘mental defectives’ could choose this option as opposed to compulsory segregation for life in an institution. See Walmsley et al., Community Care and Mental Deficiency 1913–1945, 191–94.

[40] Ryan and Thomas, The Politics of Mental Handicap, 109.

[41] Oliver, The Politics of Disablement.

[42] Williams, Social Policy.

[43] For further discussion see Ryan and Thomas, The Politics of Mental Handicap.

[44] Both Walmsley et al., Community Care and Mental Health Deficiency 1913–1945, 202 and Borsay, Disability and Social Policy in Britain since 1750, 179, highlight the central role of the family in providing care for people with ‘learning difficulties’ alongside voluntary organisations and local authority provision for mental deficiency. If the family home was deemed adequate then statutory supervision in the home was provided by social workers. However, in the case of poor families a dichotomy existed whereby they were needed, and relied upon, to be carers in the community but were also subjected to criticism from the eugenicists. Poor families were thus in the ‘invidious position of being essential to the grand scheme of things but, at the same time, as the objects of suspicion and surveillance’; Walmsley et al., 202.

[45] Stuart, Mothers, Sisters and Daughters, 28.

[46] Wendell, The Rejected Body.

[47] Frost, Young Women and the Body.

[48] Medical interventions over a long period, plus the continued use of medication, affected not only memory but speech and energy levels for some individuals. This made the interview process taxing for some women although the practice of ‘group interviewing’ alleviated this and allowed women to take time out when required.

[49] Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice; Language and Symbolic Power.

[50] Bourdieu cited in Burkitt, Bodies of Knowledge, 79.

[51] ‘Poly-eyed’ is a slang term used by the women to describe the drug paraldehyde.

[52] These narrative experiences are underpinned by inmates similar accounts published in Borsay, Disability and Social Policy in Britain Since 1750, Chapter 4.

[53] The removal of inmates' clothes and the issue of compulsory uniforms were part of the gendered and regulatory regimes evident in the institutions. For further in-depth analysis of disabled people's dress and identity during this era see Linthicum, “Disabled People's Dress and Dressing, 1904–2004”.

[54] Foucault, The History of Sexuality.

[55] Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice.

[56] Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice

[57] Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 123.

[58] Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice.

[59] Williams, Social Policy, 54.

[60] Pascall, Social Policy, 8.

[61] Williams, “Race Welfare and Community Care”, 24.

[62] For further discussion see Bland, Guardians of the Race or Vampires of the Nation, 377.

[63] Rowbotham, A Century of Women, 291–307.

[64] Priestley, Adults Only, 424.

[65] Shildrick and Price, Breaking the Boundaries of the Broken Body, 433.

[66] Featherstone, The Body in Consumer Culture.

[67] Csordas, Embodiment and Experience, 2.

[68] Stanley, Writing Out Your Life.