Abstract
This is an article about the Paralympic Games of summer 2012 and the experience of watching them. It rehearses the use of disability as political and cultural identity in relation to theatre and performance studies. Disability identity is not an identity based on similitude, but is a complex and nuanced relationship between singularity of embodied social experience and glimmers of common ground. Taking the works of Rod Michalko and Petra Kuppers as a representative foundation of disability studies, the article offers disability as an epistemological standpoint, a way of thinking, and not an object of thought. The argument works through close readings of three examples to introduce the theatre and performance studies reader to the notion of disability as a paradigm for the consideration of ideas of difference, similitude and identity. The process of reading the Paralympics from the perspective of a disabled person, bike riding sports fan and disability performance scholar gestures to the scope and potential of disability performance studies. The article accumulates three examples of one disabled person navigating a complex set of positions, all of which are iterations of disability. Whilst this critical approach might imply solipsism, the article also considers disability as community.
Highlights
This is an article about the Paralympic Games of summer 2012 and the experience of watching them
Rod Michalko writes about disability as an epistemological standpoint, ‘“[t]hinking with” disability instead of “about it” recommends that we “[t]hink through” those places ready-made – usually by nondisabled others – for disabled people.’[3]. My article accepts disability as a way of thinking, and not an object of thought
Disability identity is not an identity based on similitude, but is a complex and nuanced relationship between the singularity of embodied social experience and glimmers of common ground
Summary
This is an article about the Paralympic Games of summer 2012 and the experience of watching them. This anecdotal encounter is replicated in the findings of a Bournemouth University study of attitudinal shifts that showed that interviewees believed that the Paralympics had changed attitudes to disability, including their own.[11] It feels like a mythic moment of making community with disabled people.
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