Abstract
This paper explores the experiences of disabled sailors on board a tall sailing ship, adapted for accessibility. Eight disabled sailors kept audio diaries and created artwork during the voyages, as well as taking part in interviews afterwards. In reporting their accounts, we explored what it meant for participants to go to sea. We became particularly interested in embodied activities on board ship, the ways in which sailing created and highlighted new identities, and the social aspects of sailing in a team. Our account brings together some of the central concerns in Disability Studies with the perspectives of social practice theorists, and seeks to add layers of meaning to both approaches. Since this is a nautical project, the paper is structured by following the stages of going to sea, and in the words of one participant, we seek to ‘join the dots between medical, academic and anecdotal knowledge’.
Highlights
The aim of this paper is to reflect on the embodied experiences of disabled sailors on voyages aboard an adapted sailing ship, with a view to understanding better the ways in which adjustments to social practices such as sailing can affect their sense of identity as it is played out in their day-to-day lives
The Tenacious and Lord Nelson travel to a variety of destinations varying in distance and length of voyage, and on every voyage, disabled sailors benefit from a variety of specific adaptations in order to ensure that they can be maximally independent and active on board ship
This matrix of inclusive practices contrasted with the everyday experience of many of the disabled sailors who suggested that their lives on land were often structured by society’s limited perceptions around disability
Summary
The aim of this paper is to reflect on the embodied experiences of disabled sailors on voyages aboard an adapted sailing ship, with a view to understanding better the ways in which adjustments to social practices such as sailing can affect their sense of identity as it is played out in their day-to-day lives. In order to develop more nuanced accounts which reflect the complexity of disabled people’s lived experience, we draw on the ideas of Garland-Thomson (2011, 594), who offers the notion of ‘misfitting’ as a way to imagine disability as arising from and residing in material arrangements She is interested in: ‘how the particularities of embodiment interact with their environment in its broadest sense, to include both its spatial and temporal aspects’. In other words, when we do something in the world, we draw on preexisting patterns of action, but at the same time, we transform a social practice as we reproduce it (Riniken, Jalas and Shove 2015, 878) As these authors comment, in their study of domestic arrangements for heating the home, we can Lamont-Robinson et al: Pitching Perspectives on Disability catch a glimpse in participants’ diaries of how objects are significant in shaping the decisions of the participants. Robillard provides a moving account of the micro-exclusions he experienced routinely when he acquired motor neurone disease, with an acute awareness of how his own contributions matter; by ‘protesting vigorously’ when treated as incompetent, his communicative actions can affect the ongoing, sequential interaction (Robillard, cited p. 6 Antelius, 2009)
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