Disability, Human Rights and Vulnerability in Linda McLean’s Any Given Day

Abstract

Linda McLean’s Any Given Day (2010) delineates the act of violence inflicted on the characters with learning disability by touching on its physical, emotional, and psychological impacts. The violence directed at disabled characters is motivated by social alienation, which renders disabled characters vulnerable and fragile, as well as a lack of responsibility and care. The incidence of violence reveals the complex facets of the relationship between the abled and the disabled in a particular cultural arena where preconceived notions of the body operate to determine their social interactions, their experiences of their bodily impairment, and the distribution of health care and justice. This essay, therefore, aims to analyze McLean’s play in the context of debates concerning disability violence, human rights, and vulnerability, and what abuses of disability rights speak about the social and cultural margins that place disabled individuals in a vulnerable and powerless position. Furthermore, it examines the ways violations of disability rights reveal the insufficiency of care and lack of social responsibility which hugely affect how disabled characters experience an embodied life.