PORTRAYING DISABILITY IN THE MODERN NOVEL: IDENTITY,

SUBJECTIVITY, AND POWER

By

JOHN BOTHWELL

Integrated Studies Project

submitted to

DR. GLORIA FILAX

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts – Integrated Studies

Athabasca, Alberta
JUNE, 2011
 Table of Contents

Introduction 3

What I Will Do 4

Critical Disability Theory 4

Novel Synopsis 7

Analysis 7

Subjectivity 13

Power 19

Conclusion 22

2
Abstract: For most of my life, I felt different because of a physical disability. This project is part
of a journey of self discovery. Traditionally, disabled people have felt they exist on the margins
of society due to discrimination and oppression. My research is to understand the dimensions of
the problem of disability with the ultimate goal of achieving disability pride by giving meaning
to the disability experience. My project took form through a discourse analysis of disability as it
was portrayed in a modern piece of fiction. The novel spoke to me of the disability experience in
terms of what I have encountered and continue to encounter as I go about my daily routines.
While this project was a personal journey, there were many examples in the novel of how
disabled people are seen in society. It is my hope that other disabled individuals will find this
research to be instructive and contribute to a body of knowledge that will investigate the rich
lives of disabled people.

3
Portraying Disability in the Modern Novel: Identity, Subjectivity, and Power
John Bothwell

Introduction
This project began as a vehicle of self-discovery about what it means to be disabled. Living
inside a disabled body, I always felt was a unique experience, but giving it definition seemed
problematic as several questions arose in coming to terms with the ontology of disability. For
example is my experience really a unique expression of reality? Did my experience have
commonality with others who were disabled? Finally, what is the context of the disability
experience in relation to the able-bodied experience?
For me there are many questions, perhaps more questions than answers. There is as well a large
body of scholarly research written from a theoretical point of view. Some of this research is
written by the disabled themselves and other research is written by able-bodied people who have
an interest in the issues and questions of disability studies. Reading academic literature however,
took me only so far. I was interested to do “fieldwork” as social scientists would say to explore
my own research questions. In this way, I decided to analyze a work of modern fiction as a way
to explore some of the questions that troubled me.
I soon discovered there are many writers out there talking about disability issues through their
writing. Some work is written by disabled people themselves and other works are written by
keenly aware able-bodied writers. I eventually chose to read J.M. Coetzee, a South African
author who I am familiar with and quite enjoy. My reason for choosing Coetzee is that even
though he is able-bodied, he portrays quite elegantly some of the feelings and experiences I have
as a disabled man. On my first reading, I thought that I would find another able-bodied person
who “got it all wrong”. I know there are enough of these writings and people around. However,
Coetzee gets disabled experiences right almost all the time. Thus my research will not be a
critique of the ways the genre of disability literature goes off track.
My reading of Coetzee‟s novel Slow Man reveals a positive affirmation of experiences of
disability that is too often lacking in our society. Affirming the experiences of disability allows
for disability pride. Pride comes when others in one‟s social world, whether voiced through
literature or actual relationships, affirm one's experience. This legitimizes and enables the
disabled to come to terms such that we no longer feel shame when we see our reflection in the
mirror or elsewhere. As the disabled explore literature, we come to view our humanity in varied
forms and to experience different ways of being. Literature reveals to us new realities about
ourselves, others, and other possibilities of how to negotiate the world around us.

4
What I Will Do
I seek to show how authors and readers, Coetzee as author and myself as reader in this case, take
up the realities of disability through experiencing various life worlds as these are represented in
novels. In reading Slow Man alongside critical disability studies theory I will analyze how
Coetzee represents disability and how I relate my own experience to what he has written. A part
of my analysis will include interweaving my own experience along with social theory and text
from the novel. Knowing about disability comes to be articulated through perceptions readers
create while responding to the novel (Garrison 4). Prior knowledge and experiences figure
largely as the reader interacts with the characters while referencing past events in their lives.
As I read and interrogated Coetzee‟s novel Slow Man, I asked questions about how the disabled
subject is represented through the text and how normalizing discourses about what counts as a
normal human being shape representations. In a strong sense I wanted to know how the novel
Slow Man takes up or resists discourse that presents a unified way of thinking and social
practices as well as rigid and normal subject positions. How then does the novel, as an important
cultural form, embed values, beliefs, and ideas about who and what counts as normal. As I read
the novel I looked for textual evidence that I was affirmed or rejected as fully human. For me,
novels and all other forms of representation, are important cultural products that shape how we
feel about ourselves. Therefore it becomes crucial that novels take up disability in ways that are
respectful and honest - this is important for everyone whether disabled or not.

Critical Disability Theory

According to Garrison, “disability studies conceptualizes the concept of disability as a category
for critical analysis that crosses social, cultural, moral, political, economic, sexual, historical, and
literary boundaries” (Garrison 9). Disability studies theorize that disability is a social and cultural
construction where societal barriers within society present disabling conditions rather than an
embodied deficiency residing within the person (Garrison 9). Disability studies abandon the
„medical model‟ that takes up the idea of pathology and “medical diagnosis” as a way of dealing
with impairments. Instead the emphasis is on the need for the restructuring of society away from
negative beliefs and harmful social barriers. Disability studies emerged in the 1960's along with
other liberationist movements such as women's liberation and the civil rights freedom.
Disability studies have been in the academy for the past thirty to forty years, yet a good working
definition of disability has been illusive. My understanding of disability comes from my
perspective and experience as a wheelchair user. The visually impaired experience the world
through the loss of sight, a main sense through which most humans know the world. The hearing
impaired turn the concept of disability upside down by refusing, in some cases, to use hearing
aids and instead using sign language as a way of communicating. For the Deaf community who
perceive themselves as a distinct cultural group, the only difference is in how to communicate. In
fact, in the lexicon of disability the term differently abled is sometimes used. Context defines
who is disabled, but becomes problematic as disability as a category is recognized and produced
through the normalizing of social relations in society.

5
Who is counted as disabled has profound effects on the people who are labeled disabled.
Alternately laying a claim to being disabled may be as simple as “you are disabled if you say you
are” according to Linton even if those claiming this identity are unaware of the social
consequences. Either way, discourses of disability influence social policy, identity, and how
others view us. As Titchkosky notes disability is constituted from disability identity, relations to
the disabled body that occur between people, and how disability identity and inter-subjective
relations to the disabled body are interpreted.
Disability does not become a problem until it prevents people from accessing structures and
resources that make our lives possible. Defining disability is a social practice with political and
social implications. At times identifying as disabled accrues social status and privilege. For
example, the obsequious use of disabled parking permits makes it possible for large numbers of
people to avail themselves of a privilege that was originally meant for a few deserving
individuals. But mostly identifying as disabled has less desirable effects. Further identification of
disability is used as a form of social control to classify and determine who is eligible to receive
goods and services that impinge on people in difficult ways (Fitzgerald).
Classification of people into regimes of normality is a symbolic or semiotic practice that makes it
easier for others to determine who we are. This poses a societal problem where definitions of
disability rest on the idea that impaired bodies are deviant and in need of remediation or cure.
Stigmatization occurs as a result of a normalizing practice that objectifies our experience of the
world where disability determines humanity. Normalization denotes a value of the person in
terms of the capacity to function in society. Foucault challenged this concept and framed it in
terms of power relations and social control (Devlieger 346-354). Power relations produce social
hierarchies in which able-bodied human subjects are dominant and therefore their experience
functions as the normal. Disabled human subjects, in relation to the normal or able-bodied
human subject and experience, have less social power and are subordinate in the social hierarchy.
Disabled human subjects have less social power.
Foucault explained that large institutions such as prisons and hospitals exert control over
individuals and become a social practice with far reaching implications for human subjects. The
rise of these institutions came about through historical changes in Europe in the 17th and 18th
centuries as a way of managing growing populations (Foucault). Individuals were classified
according to how they functioned within a system defined by bureaucracies. This has
implications for disabled people as our lack of normalcy is framed within the context of various
social and institutional regimes of power. Disabled people became objects to be judged and
manipulated by those able to exercise power. Disability was viewed as a problem to be erased by
means of rehabilitation with the eventual goal of mainstreaming the disabled into normal societal
functions (Hall 72-80).
Following Foucault‟s notion of governmentality, in which the purview of the government and
state is care of populations of people to maintain a healthy work force to support the economy,
disabled people were identified as a population of people with specific needs and identities
(Foucault, Tremain). Care was predicated on the idea that disability was a medical issue or
problem in need of a cure or fix including fixing through eugenics policy (Snyder & Mitchell,
Park & Radford). This is the „medical model‟ of disability.

6
The medicalization of disability was challenged by disability theorists to reframe the idea of
disability where a physical impairment was interpreted as a problem only in terms of the societal
reaction to disability and other social realities that disable people, for example the built
environment premised on the needs of the able-bodied. Thus impairment became disability
where the social structures or attitudes impinge on the freedom of the disabled, that is the
disabled are an oppressed group. This became known as the „social model‟ of disability with a
focus on the relationship of impairment to a larger social force where one could be impaired, but
not disabled according to dominant social practices (Oliver, Shakespeare). It is possible to
remove disability from the person by means of adapting social structures for the benefit of
disabled people, for example through accessible building environments. The social construction
of disability is useful to analyze oppressive and marginalizing practices, yet theorists have
argued that it is impossible to remove all barriers to people with impairments. The physicality or
corporeality of disability instead becomes recognizable in terms of defining difference so that
disability theorists advocate for a society based on equality but recognizing difference (Oliver).
The „social model‟ is useful in the way that disability is recognized as a site of oppression that
requires political activism. Activism is rooted in concepts of identity and the subjectification of
disabled people translates from a philosophical stance to challenging social structures that inhibit
participation by disabled people in civil society. Disability is a form of oppression and yet there
is no homogenous group identity as the range of disabilities and illnesses that are disabling is
huge. In fact there is a hierarchy of disability within the community (Beresford) based on type
of disability and gender, sexuality, race, class, nationality and age. There is no single solution to
discrimination against people with disabilities. Legislation and education must work together to
change attitudes and to eradicate this discrimination.
The idea of impairment is sometimes neglected as part of the disability experience because it
presents a conflict between body and culture (Titchkosky). Disabled people do not experience
impairment and disability separately. Disability is living in an impaired body, but it also has
cultural meanings. The social consequences of impairment present stigma and prejudice. Yet
within the cultural model of disability, disability is a performance and one that is difficult to
engage because disabled people do not interpret the world the same as the able-bodied person.
Theorizing disability as performance holds the possibility of uncovering assumptions that are
made by all people although cultural discourses about disability are varied and unique. The
„cultural model‟ of disability resists dominant paradigms and can provide agency to people who
desire social change (Hughes & Paterson).
Culture indicates values, beliefs, and social norms as to how we view self and others. Disability
reconfigures what it means to be human and how our humanity is expressed. Cultural norms can
be taken for granted, however in disability discourses we can create a space for new and
innovative ways to be. Normalcy is questioned surrounding the ideas of race, gender, and
sexuality as each of these also intersect with disability. Disability is often seen as tragic and
limiting until we come to understand that there are many ways of being in the world. Life is a
performance and recognition that we act within the norms of our culture, allows us to transgress
these artificial boundaries and experience new possibilities (Jaeger 2011).
For Titchkosky disability is place of possibilities, a cultural space in which normalcy can be
questioned and therefore culture can be diagnosed. Disability is recast as a „way of being in the
world from which we can learn‟ (Titchkosky). As a site from which to learn, disability for

7
Titchkosky is the important in-between-space of alterity or otherness and this space makes it
possible to do disability differently that is to shift the context of disability from tragedy to a
context of possibility.

Novel Synopsis
Slow Man takes place in an Australian suburb as the main character Rayment is knocked off his
bicycle. His last memories of the accident are of flying through the air in contrast to his new life
waking up in time to have his leg amputated. The rest of the story is a contrast of his old life to a
new life minus a leg.
Rayment has enjoyed a middle class life as a divorced photographer spending his free time
cycling around Adelaide. Waking up in the hospital the doctor tells him he is lucky to have only
lost a leg. This is Rayment‟s introduction to the world of rehabilitation and caregivers who try to
cheer him on even as they misunderstand and misinterpret the feelings of one who becomes
disabled. Rayment has trouble adjusting to the caregiver world of his nurse who is patronizing
and dehumanizing, for example, in referring to his manhood as his Willie. Rayment tires of this
treatment and hires a woman who is more sympathetic to his condition and he soon finds he is in
love with her. Marijana is an unfulfilled woman and Rayment feels that she is the only kind of
woman who would love him as he feels undeserving of someone is is „whole‟. Marijana treats
him like a whole man and had she stayed she would have contributed positively to his emotional
well-being. There never is an authentic love affair between Rayment and Marijana and this
destabilizes his life even more as Marijana becomes afraid when he declares his love for her and
she flees. As well Rayment fantasizes about his former lover who he hopes will still be able to
love him even without a leg.
A woman named Costello enters his life and provides a sort of guide for him and a guide for the
reader to interpret his new life. Costello is an intrusion into Rayment‟s life and she interprets
Rayment‟s life for him in much the same way disabled people find their lives being interpreted
by well meaning but unhelpful people. She inserts herself into his love life by introducing him to
a blind lady. Apparently the blind lady will not observe his affliction and thus is enabled to love
him as she would a „whole‟ man. The novel continues with the theme of his rehabilitation
amongst patronizing people and ends rather unsatisfactorily as Rayment completes the process
and is once again able to ride his bicycle.

Analysis
Definition Difficulties/Identity
Slow Man raises many questions including the possibility of a precise definition of disability. If
we were to attempt a definition of disability, it would seem easy and reasonable to assume that
we could arrive at a place where disability is described fully and completely. This is true because
we do not question the existence of a thing called disability; it is there because we perceive it.
Yet are we really sure as to what we perceive? Disability to a hearing impaired person is
different than to a visually impaired person even though both would commonly be identified as
disabled. If we take it one step further, and inquire as to the nature of disability in its relational

8
aspect to ability, then things get problematic because we need to describe and identify something
through the lens of a “double consciousness” (Chandler 250).
The lens of double consciousness presents a challenge to readers because it exposes the
assumption that we can set a universal definition for ability.

Ability is always contingent. Ability receives a qualification depending on the

capacity to contribute to societal norms, therefore any element that deviates will
come under the rubric of disability (Bothwell).
We are no more certain of a definition of ability than we are of disability. This leaves us at an in-
between place that is impossible to define because we are not able to say at what point a person
can be identified as disabled, that is when does one lose ability (Chandler 252)?
This double consciousness, ability and disability, is the world we live in and one
that prevents full participation for impaired people. We are constantly trying to
adapt to the world of ability with impaired bodies. This double consciousness is
imposed on us and reconfigures how we interpret the world and how the world
is presented to us (Bothwell).
We are never fully able to describe disability because it is irreducible to any one definition and
because it does not call for a descriptive quality. More accurately „disability‟ calls for an
interpretation of the relation of disability to ability. The interpretive configuration of disability
always is dependent on the norm of ability. Without the norm for comparison we have little on
which to base our interpretation of what counts as counter normative. What counts as disabled is
materialized in terms of difference whereby we – the disabled - are termed “other” or often times
termed marginal, that is to say less than. Disabled people are thus made and categorized in terms
of a norm, that is to say are constructed and represented by a process of systemic alienation.

Rayment begins to feel alienation and is unsure of his new world, as we hear him
speak that “limbs have memories” (Coetzee 60).
Rayment is realizing that his body has changed but that he is still part of the old world where he
considered himself whole even as he realizes he is no longer whole. Remembering a different
body, a normal body that has limbs or ability different from the present, is an important theme
for the disabled whose physicality has changed during their lifetime. Remembering what was
involves a grieving process or longing for what is now gone.
I related to this part of the novel where embodied memory is based on a former
physicality. At one time, I walked with two canes, but several years ago my life
changed and I began using a wheelchair that in the past year I use constantly.
My body has memories of the way it used to work and I feel. I go through a
grieving process as I lose ability to do things that were at one time done with
ease (Bothwell).
The idea of the Other is part of a body of theory used to describe identity as “half of a Self/Other
dichotomy distinguishing one person from another” (Van Pelt 6). In this discourse, the Other
becomes a politicized group so it can reinforce the idea that identification of classes of people
places them in subordinate positions. There are problems as evidenced by Judith Butler in this

9
line of argument as it leads to what she calls “exclusionary logic” where the Other is still
dependant on the identification of an entity of hegemony (8). Butler argues there is always “a
Privileged signifier in the symbolic register and this [for gender discourse] is the phallus” (31).
Extending Butler‟s logic to disability discourse the privileged signifier is the able-bodied.

This is what she calls it: our new body, not our truncated old body (Coetzee 61).
Likewise, in disability studies the disabled body is subservient to the able-bodied. Butler of
course would say that there is no discrete being called ability since, it relies on its relational
reference to disability. Yet, hardened definitions of disability and their relationships to the body
are found in dominant discourse when analyzed by disability studies and sociology of the body.
All hardened definitions speak “to the need to disrupt the normative, modern ideal of the body...”
(Hughes 407). Impairment is not enough to characterize who qualifies as disabled. Only if we
qualify disability in terms of the definition of normalcy can we come to view both as a fantasy
and a construct. The tropes we use to describe the body are only symbolic ways to interrogate
corporeality and they lead far away from a materiality that describes our everyday life (Hughes
408).
Rayment, the protagonist finds himself in a body that is not his own. The first
indication of this occurs as he is introduced to his new prosthetic limb. He recoils
as he views this foreign object (Coetzee 52).
The prosthesis is a reminder of what he has lost and what he must accept in his new life (Coetzee
4). This alien piece of equipment makes him feel odd and ill at ease and challenges his concept
of normality. He does not know how he will ever come to terms with using it and he remarks to
himself that he feels quite alone (9). This new limb is an imposition on him. He hates it and it
contributes to his feelings of incompetence (22) and that he is now a diminished man (32).
I also have a prosthesis but my relationship is quite different in that I do not feel
alienation or imposition - this is foreign to me. I have an intimate relationship
to my wheelchair and canes. This is demonstrated when I am out of my chair
and someone sits in it. I feel uncomfortable that someone has invaded my
personal space (Bothwell).
In seeking to define and classify disability we risk essentializing how we perceive disability.
Biological classifications have separated us from the non-disabled and social approaches rely on
exclusionary social factors. If we want inclusion we should not focus on what makes us different
(Shakespeare 100) but rather we should refocus on difference as a place of possibility.
Difference must be recognized as a place of fulfillment and empowerment where people are free
to create their own narratives that describe our individual lives. Disabled people respond
viscerally to their world because there is a “psycho-emotional dimension of disability” (Reeve
495). Oppression becomes “internalized” (496) and needs to be recognized as part of the
disability experience. The body has become a site of knowledge and representation where we
feel vulnerable as we encounter injustices inflicted by society or institutions.
My experience of disability changes from day to day as it is dependent on how
tired I am and more importantly it is reconfigured according to various social
encounters that are part of my routine (Bothwell).

10
 Rayment feels injustice and alienated from his surroundings, but is made to feel
badly if he complains about his situation (Coetzee 36).
Frequently the disabled are thought to be bitter about their lives if they comment on the
oppression they encounter, Reeve (499) reinforces this idea stating that “having an impairment
that is immediately visible presents the observer with privileged information and therefore power
about that body.” The disabled are also subject to “self-surveillance” (500) whereby we judge
ourselves if we do not adequately attempt to be as „normal‟ as possible in presenting a happy or
grateful face to the world. This in turn is dangerous because we internalize how we think we
should respond to the world.

This sense of injustice makes me angry as I write this passage. It seems to be

necessary to experience disability in a positive way for if we really tell people
how awful we feel on a particular day or how something has hurt us, then I see
people become detached from this concept as if they do not want to confront it.
We eventually respond in self-sacrificing ways that reinforce our marginality as
we respond to the way we think the world expects us to. Disabled identity is
made and re-made daily in the world that we must confront (Bothwell).
“The implication of being single, solitary and alone are brought home to him most
pointedly at the end of the second week of his stay in the land of whiteness”
(Coetzee, 13).
For me, the worst thing about disability is the aloneness and not being
understood. I do not feel comfortable explaining my feelings to people as I feel it
might be perceived as an imposition or that people just will not understand
(Bothwell).
Confrontation often takes form in identity politics where something like disability is attached to a
politics that stresses the commonality of human beings and claims that difference operate only at
the individual level (Nicholson 45). Differences are not denied but are valorized as a way to
combat negative stereotyping, consequently becoming part of the public discourse. Theorists
recognized this classification of people was problematic as it led to an essentialization of people
and the human experience around a group identity. Activists who used a social constructionist
model as the social model of disability claim that environmental factors account for oppression
while other activists claim that labels are arbitrary.
Appealing to individuality and similarity is part of a large debate within the disabled community
as we attempt to define ourselves. While this invocation of environmentalism theoretically is
only about the attribution of group characteristics, it also has political implications. If differences
among social groups are the understandable responses of differentially situated groups to
different types of environmental influences and challenges, then it becomes harder to label such
differences as necessarily inferior or superior to one another, thus widening the definition of
what counts as normal. (Nicholson 55.)
“He has no interest in fixing it up, returning to some ideal efficiency. The man he
used to be is just a memory” (Coetzee 32).

11
While there is a problem with social construction as it essentializes; at the same time there is a
need to address oppression as a result of physical difference, and then it becomes necessary to
ascribe “social meaning” (Nicholson 70). Disability, like gender, is a performance, that is an
action, which recognizes “embedded” (71) meanings in our institutions and social relations.
Meanings of disability must become contextualized and contingent based upon individual
differences. But if meaning and identity are contingent is there no future for discourses of
identity if we reject the notion of identity politics?
It appears, with the heated debate prior to the 2008 election of a bi-racial president and a high-
ranking female candidate that race and gender do matter (Davis 2). Traditionally, identity politics
addressed the grievances caused by discrimination. Now identity too often assumes a position of
valorization where minorities are given recognition but as well a hardened identity that leaves
little space for variations between disabled community members (4). Despite human rights
legislation, there remains much marginalization and no substantive enrichment of qualitative
factors that would promote the interests of minority groups. The idea of identity politics is
rejected, yet there is still dialogue describing the need for coalitions based on minority group
affiliation. Social movements must come to terms with that which constitutes cultural
recognition and political power through political recognition (Bernstein 533).

Identity politics is something I have an uneasy relation with. I have no close

friends who are disabled and I feel part of mainstream society most days. On a
particular bad day I might feel bitter and alienated by the world but I do not
feel part of a social group just because I am disabled. If I were to address
identity politics in any way, I think it would be in terms of my disgust at any
type of oppression. This relates to my oppression as a disabled person. Quite
often I wonder if I would have this affinity to marginalized people had I not
been born disabled. It is a tough idea to ponder (Bothwell).
Activists are faced with the problem of whether culture can be a marker for politics in seeking
changes in rights and benefits as “...resources, social networks, and external political conditions
are better able to explain a movement's “emphasis on political or cultural strategies and goals
than is a reliance on a fixed notion of identity” (Bernstein 536). Identity must be seen as a
“strategy” where it is constructed for the purpose of empowerment. Identity politics need not be
a fixed category but one that is fluid and adapts to the needs of many minority groups rather than
just one (539).
Diverse constructions of identity are needed where no particular group is more important than
another. Rights seeking groups need to be aware of cultural changes in order to influence
institutions. Social movements will not become apolitical; they will need to deconstruct societal
influences as they move toward mechanisms that help them to attain their goals.
Social movements extend from the individual to the group to form a group identity with an
emphasis on “belonging and action” (Holland, Fox, Daro 96). Identities are constructed as
individuals engage in dialogue with others through a common interest as well as with larger
institutions they encounter. Identity constructions develop outside a group political movement as
individuals encounter opposition from adversaries thus demanding an organic approach to
politicization in which individuals seek out affirmation from others with similar experiences of
oppression.

12
Collective identity must not be assumed to comprise a homogenous group as some individuals
have “alter versions” of events (Holland, Fox, Daro 112). There may be a lack of “cultural
literacy” (116) on the part of some members of the group. Groups make meaning through
“cultural artefacts” such as narratives and symbols that aid in creating agency (118).
A man not wholly a man, then: a half-man, an after man, like an after-
image...(Coetzee 34).
Movements are situated in areas most relevant to members as they construct common values and
goals in a unified way. A great deal of social movement dynamic originates in an unconscious or
even collective unconsciousness (Schechtman 28). Members of a group look for “coherence” in
their experiences and often find internal conflict in what they think they perceive and how it is
actually represented. In some cases, what is perceived has more of a fictive quality than a
realistic interpretation and in other cases some events remain hidden from view. (28). Literary
studies, while telling of certain events may also explore possibilities of what might have
happened or of more desirous outcomes from a personal narrative.
Social movements operate within national cultures that are reflected in the literature of the
dominant class and how they represent disability. Key texts produce knowledge and are
foundational in creating knowledge (Arac 207). History is written with a view to coherence
rather than a mere description of past events. Theorists now talk about “the body, the self and
society, and therefore in relation to three different scientific disciplines- biology, psychology,
and the social sciences” (208).
Identity was subject to prevailing discourses that developed as social sciences melded with
literary studies. The author becomes narrator-more than a narration of a particular story, but one
where it is contextualized within a larger view. Authors were called upon to mediate “among
divergent identities, voices, histories, and desires” (Adams 2). The self in its desire for autonomy
performs in a discourse that is “multiple, simultaneous, and overlapping [in context] (3).
Narratives describing relationality “destabilize the absolutes of difference and sameness within
coalitions” (3). In describing disability and other forms of oppression, there is a need to
recognize the complexity of the situation and to target multiple forms of oppression around
multiple and diverse identities.

As I was reading Slow Man, I felt that Rayment never developed any sense of
agency about his condition. He seemed to let life happen to him and this in
turned made me reflect on my own life. Over-identifying with disability has the
potential of creating a space that reifies itself in a negative way because one will
lose the ability to become part of the larger world. Disability theorists have
never really articulated what a disabled place could look like even though they
advocate for the development of a place of uniqueness and empowerment
(Bothwell).
Rayment interrogates his new body during his rehabilitation program as he desires
to show improvement in his physical capabilities. He understands he is now
different but he needs to return his body to what it once was and he terms this as

13
 graduating to “higher forms of mobility” where he is not confined to wheelchair
but will walk with the use of a prosthesis (Coetzee 35).
Disability scholars warn that formulating discourses of identity need not be overly symbolic or
theoretical, as this will lessen the aspect of materiality of the body. The discussion of
corporeality will assume the nature of the “performing body and the literal body (Adams 6). This
body will be contested between the “poles of materiality and discourse, difference and
sameness,...” (Adams 7). The interrogation of corporeality needs to be fluid and unencumbered
by notions of fixed categories that would endanger human growth. In my quote below I reveal
my understanding of Rayment as he tries to rehabilitate successfully.

Jokingly, I refer to myself as a socially acceptable cripple. I am married, have

three children and live in a middle-class neighbourhood. I fully understand how
this status makes me acceptable to the world and it annoys me. It separates me
from the cripples who live in poverty, the ones who drool when they speak. It
also fills me with a fair amount of guilt because I could have been in those
terrible places (Bothwell).
Rayment has become demoralized as he understands that his life is centred in and
around the clinic and that there is no cure for him, only the care he gets from his
nurse and the various visits he makes to other health professionals (Coetzee 63).
Privilege and oppression are not abstract ideas. Rather they are demonstrated by location and
determined by social constructs where identities are valued on positive or negative social and
physical configurations. These categories are often aligned with race, class, and gender.
Whiteness for a disabled person affords a privileged social status that a disabled person of colour
will never experience. Likewise, gender determines that being a disabled woman means poverty
is more commonplace. Therefore, varying factors need to be considered in determining the
causes of oppression. While disability is an oppressive social problem, eradication of poverty
and sexism are ways to counter the oppression of disability (Hulko 51).
Rayment never fully develops as a person in this novel. He is trapped in a
between place that feminists describe as becoming. The performance of
disability is something we do every day, yet it is contingent on hegemonic
structures and language that define us as Other. I fear it will be a long while
before disability is clearly articulated and understood (Bothwell).

Subjectivity
Human experience is the basis from which agency takes place and gives order and meaning to
our lives. It is a quality that only a particular person knows and feels. Understanding how
experience and power/knowledge work, by interrogating experience, makes for “the distinction
between mere opinion and true belief” (Shweder 504). In disability studies, the subjective nature
of the world is unique to a disabled person and this makes it problematic because it invites a
particular person to live in a world that has meaning for her, but without meaning to others.

14
 Agency never “becomes fulfilled for Rayment as his nurse encourages him to
“accept fate” (Coetzee 15) thereby limiting his hope for rehabilitation.
Subjectivity is at once there and present as all humans are subject of and subject to already
existing discourse about who and what counts as normal. The disabled person is thus challenged
frequently by the dominant and normalizing discourses that continually thwart any sort of agency
for the disabled. Disabled people are judged by how they accept their disabilities, but at the same
time are made to feel inferior if they do not try to measure up to a certain societal standard.

At one time I was working on a grant concerning disability issues in a poor

community, with four other individuals, all able-bodied. Often the discourse was
about who is disabled and whether they accepted their disability. I never really
understood what it was to accept a disability. Accepting all the negative things
that happen to a person when they are disabled seems defeatist. On the other
hand fighting oppression is a difficult and lonely task. Another time my family
doctor said he thought I would have accepted my disability by now. These
examples demonstrate that the experience of disability is a changing event
where the meanings of others affect how a person negotiates the world. This is a
process or a performance that is never stable over time and place (Bothwell).
Hall (126) argues that “interpersonal situations by an individual [generate] the sense of self, but
these are significantly supplemented and informed by cultural materials [including] all kinds of
discourse, texts, drama, art and now film” (127).
In the novel, Slow Man, the author is creating an alternative narrative of an
experience of life that represents the emerging social construction of a disabled
body (Bothwell).
Traditionally, the novel portrayed “the conventional Hegelian opposition of subject and object,
which virtually defined consciousness as the incisive, masterful knowing subject's experience of
the passive, known object ((Hall 138). The self has assumed a subjectivity that is “plural and
relational” (140) so that agency is controlled by a narrator in a specific context. As in other
genres, there is the development of a post racial and a post-colonial literature likewise disability
tropes reflect an acknowledgement of differing corporealities that describe alternate ways of
living.
Agency is grounded in narrative but for it to have meaning, it must be oriented to the real world
therefore it needs to assume a political significance (Harwood 117). Following Foucault, we may
look to truth telling strategies that will enable a perception of what is real from the perspective of
a non-dominant subject position. This is difficult because truth for a disabled person is quite
different from that of other people. It is particularly difficult to articulate because to surface
beyond dominant discursive practices requires a strong, resisting subject who is persistent and
who will too often anyway, be marginalized and ignored.
Disability discourses play a subtle, yet significant role in the lives of people as they continue to
enact meanings and give qualitative reference to people with impairments (O'Malley346). For
disabled persons, the world is experiential where representations are contextually based.
Institutional spaces figure largely in the lives of the disabled, for example hospitals and medical

15
clinics, and contribute to and reinforce discursive practices. Language becomes specific to
various social situations and becomes more than relaying of information as it inscribes meanings
to events that originate in the body. In some cases meanings are created through a disabled body
but as well through injured body parts. Both body and body part becomes alien to the psyche of
the individual (Muller 38). In these cases, the alienation of the entire body or body part acquires
a physiological state as well as a psychological one. Alienation of the body both physically and
psychologically is a problem for disabled people as we are acutely aware of our differences
mediated through physical pain. Theology, it is argued (Creamer 127) can create a space where
pain becomes naturalized and less threatening to our being. Yet pain is often physical and
emotional, it is difficult to separate these.
As I read that last sentence, I am not sure I agree with Creamer. I really feel
that pain is not natural and yet is a part of my experience but one that I do not
want to become used to. More likely physical pain wears me down, but it is not
nearly as bad as emotional pain that I have experienced (Bothwell).
Cultural competency is necessary for identity seeking groups such as the disabled in order to
make meaning of life situations (Johnson and McIntosh 67). Cultural pluralism is a sign of
cultural development and is considered relevant to a democratic society. However, disability
discourses “were typically presented without critical examination of the assumptions underlying
these perspectives...” (68). The disabled have not been able to establish a “unique synthesis of all
the characteristics and experiences that shape how one views the world and how the world views
and interacts with the individual” (69).
Literature, particularly fiction, enables a descriptive quality of lifeworlds that are often
unexplored. As a disability culture develops, there is recognition that “geo-politics then draws
upon identifications of shared predicaments of exclusion and isolation while also allowing ways
of revaluing the demographics of disability as counterinsurgent opportunities to resist the dictates
of able nationalism” (Snyder and Mitchell 114).
Critical disability discourse challenges the normalized view of the acceptable body. Embodiment
represents the most basic form of citizenship and too often disability is perceived as human
failing and in turn a social failing. Counter to this is the prominence given to the discourse of
“super crips”. The disability aesthetic of super crip is driven by a neoliberal “capitalistic
commodity culture” in which body sculpting and consuming products promise to make one over
into a super crip (117). This valorization increases the marginalization of the average disabled
person who is found wanting in relation to the super crip. This creates two classes of disabled;
the socially acceptable crip and the one that has failed to live up to the standards of the dominant
class. Geo-politics automatically dissects and constructs social positionality such that one is
valorized while the other is forgotten or ignored.
Nor does he care to expose to the gaze of an outsider, even is she is a friend from
the old days, even if she does claim to find an amputee romantic, this unlovely new
body of his...” (Coetzee 38).
When Rayment‟s nurse tells him that nobody dies of an amputated limb (Coetzee 58), she
demonstrates her truth is unlike his through a discourse nullifying his experience of fearing he
will lose his life. Explaining the need for disability rights to an able-bodied person can often

16
augment differences in bodily characteristics such that it lessens the human qualities of disabled
people and thereby makes it impossible for meaningful discourse to take place.
Yet, talking about disability rights without addressing oppression makes agency impossible.
Truth telling about disability must encompass real life situations that can be explained in real
world terms rather than in meaningless but politicized labels. For example, the word lame was
used in the previous century to describe people who had ambulatory impairments. Most often
these people would be marked by this physical characteristic that would put them on the margins
of society, including that they were often poor. Today the word „lame‟ has been reconstituted as
a pejorative that means something or someone is lesser than or defective. The term lame needs to
be rehabilitated and deconstructed to explain a physical characteristic but without the demeaning
quality it now ascribes to certain events or people. This need not require a new dialogue to
describe disability, as it can be articulated in the language of equality that is understandable to
all. It must be framed in the idea that everyone should be treated fairly and have access to lead a
good life (Ville 69).
Social inclusion defines an important characteristic of modern democracy and citizenship
(Campbell 5). However, within the liberal state, disability is seen as an aberration where full
inclusion is a mythological entity. The mythology is that the disabled assume the mantle of being
monstrous or as part of a freak show, commonly known by its members under the rubric of crip
culture (12). We call it so, but for the normal world crip culture is a spectacle. This spectacle is
performative where we are liminal and strangers, even to ourselves. We are limited or unable to
define ourselves because we inhabit a body alienized to us by the incomprehensible demands of
appearing normal.
Self-definition depends on the constraints of contemporary societies that demand we act normal,
or in medical terminology, be rehabilitated. Inclusion is always the decision of someone else. It
is an illusion that we disabled cannot attain on our own. Subjectivity for us means assuming
positionality of difference not as subservient but in order to be regarded as citizens.
I mention crip culture because part of our way of being depends upon the capacity to engage
those around us through our disabled bodies. In a liberal democracy, with its focus on
individuality, there is the assumption that everyone participates equally, that everyone has the
potential to be a winner. This is evident in the phenomena of the super crip as the disabled
person who has essentially mainstreamed into what society views as acceptable and normal. For
the rest of the disabled this is an insult and impossibility. It is a distinct reminder that we occupy
bodies that are defined as impaired and abnormal (Miceli 3).
Discourses of rights may claim our right to an accessible building, but do little to claim normalcy
for a body that engages the world differently. There is a need to transgress boundaries between
impaired and non-impaired and come to terms that all bodies do matter (Conroy and Conroy
1276). For Rayment, this is a performance and he is under the tutelage of his instructor. He feels
that he is being judged or participating in some sort of contest where his ability to progress as a
disabled man towards rehabilitation becomes a marker of social competence.

In his rehabilitation programme he [Rayment] is encouraged to forget old

memories of his body and begin to think in new ways (Coetzee 60).

17
A body in pain is relational as it describes an ability or lack of ability due to the constraints of a
specific corporeality. There is a need to integrate epistemologies of positivism and
constructionism recognizing unique social situations that require various ways of knowing
(Wang 432). It is necessary to view the body in materialistic terms of physicality that recognize
physical limitations inform constructionist discourses of disabled embodiment. The novel,
including Slow Man, has the capacity to give an aesthetic to life events of disabled embodiment
that otherwise would not be explored (Erdinast-Vulcan180). Imaginative, psychological,
emotional and physical freedom is created in other possibilities in which we can re-imagine
ourselves.
Metaphors are used commonly in literature to represent beings, yet in disability fiction they often
portray events in an ableist fashion (Vidali 42). For example, the metaphor to know is to see does
not attribute knowledge acquisition for the visually impaired. They are automatically excluded
from a world where only the seeing can have access. Expressions like falling on deaf ears
assumes that hearing impaired people can only experience through hearing and this leads to
expressions like deaf and dumb that question cognitive ability in relation to hearing ability.
Metaphors need to be positioned and re-evaluated in ways that describe and represent, not in
oppressive ways, but in new ways so that literature can transgress. Rayment struggles to know
his new body even as others are defining what his body should be doing contrary to his own
struggles. The corporeality of a disabled body is set by standards of an able-bodied society that
requires the body to perform useful measures of ability.
The metaphor of the border is used in gender studies to describe difference that is fluid that is
subject to time and place. In disability studies the border is seen as utopian, a place never
occupied by marginalized subjectivities.

Rayment does not enjoy being institutionalized and he feels that he occupies a
foreign place similar to others who live in places where they are outcasts (Coetzee
17).
Moreover, if borderland is used as a metaphor for disability, there is still a problem of
misrepresentation of the actual lives of the disabled (Minich 38). On the other hand, the
metaphor of the borderland provides an opportunity to experience commonalities between the
disability experience and the experience of normal or the able-bodied. Colonization is frequently
used as a metaphor for disability by employing the slave narrative as a trope to explain
subservient and dominant cultures. Disability culture is one of relational qualities of one class
having functional ability while the other remains dependant (Flaugh 294). The disabled, like the
slave, is not free. She exists only in as much as the able-bodied world allows and frequently feels
the threat of what might happen in a world where her body is made abject.
In Slow Man, Rayment is de-sexualized as a fully functioning man as he is
forced to rely on the kindness of his female caregiver (Bothwell).
He wants only “to be loved and to give love” (Coetzee 86).
Further to these feelings, his nurse finds a companion for him who she thinks would be suitable
because she is blind and unable to see his disfigurement. The assumption is made that two
disfigured bodies are the only ones that can be together (Coetzee113). This reminded me of times

18
when I meet someone new, the conversation demands that we talk about family. Many people
are surprised to know that I have four children and a wife. They are more surprised to learn that
my wife is not disabled as they make simple assumptions about who would want to marry me.
Rayment‟s experience is similar in that not only is his body denigrated in regards to his physical
incapacity, but his social status and relationship to the world is immediately broken. Rayment is
dehumanized while participating in a rehabilitative process that restores his ability to walk but it
is more like enforced rehabilitation or enforced normalcy. In many ways the physical damage is
secondary to the psychological damage inflicted. Rayment is aware that he has become
„uncivilized‟, losing his former social status. Loss of social status becomes a marker of disability
as the body becomes a semiotic indicator of inequality and ruin. Rayment now occupies a world
that is foreign to him as he is an outcast from normalcy into a place he does not want to belong
(Ewart 149).
His caregiver treats him like a child (Coetzee 60) and her professional derision
contributes to his feelings of disablement.
He is in a world where boundaries are shifting and the imposition of hegemonic structures
further alienates and confuses. In this diasporic existence he ceases to be a citizen and has no
culture except the ableist, normative discourse that dominates in his newly acquired world
(Ewart 152).
Rayment not only feels alien to his body, but alien to the society he transgresses
with every faltering move he makes. Through rehabilitation he will be made
over so that he will return in some diminished capacity to his former life
(Mitchell and Snyder 180).
But for the time being, Rayment is a subject of what Foucault terms bio-power. His body is
deemed practically useless within a neo-liberal, capitalist society where capacity to contribute, as
in productive labour in full time service to the economy, is the norm. Rayment makes no
contribution to a corporate world, nor does he have consumer power so necessary to engender
political and social agency.
This calls for the creation of a counter culture that exposes the artificial nature of capitalism that
mandates a normal and able-bodied consumer (188). This is the “lethal and brutal social
context” in which “ . . . rather than identifying different bodies as the appropriate locus of
intervention . . . [that the] target is for social action against uncomprehending social systems
(180). Disability requires that bodily incapacity does not mean social and economic oppression
and subjectification, but that unfamiliar forms of corporeality can and do stand alongside the
familiar and normal.

Power

19
The concept of social power is prevalent in the world of disability, mainly because the disabled
do not exercise social power due to lack of resources and a decline in social status and privilege.
Rayment, immediately after his accident knows this as he asks, “what is this that is
being done to me” (Coetzee 4).
He feels violated by the accident and further violated by hospital staff he
encounters (Coetzee 8).
He freely admits that his spirits are not under his control (Coetzee 209).
Power is ubiquitous and disabled people encounter it, as does Rayment, with his
caregiver. Along with the impact of the accident, the effects of his caregiver’s
exercise of social power diminish his spirit as well (Bothwell).
As noted by Foucault earlier in this text, the rise of institutions to care for population/s included
education, prisons and hospitals along with state organized health-care. The health-care industry
is often impersonal and undignified (Arana and Jones 248) as most disabled people are aware.
Arana and Jones contend that a loss of dignity arises from liberal moral theories that do not
respond to a pluralistic society with competing political demands. Often there is a conflict
between consensual power relationships and imposed power relationships (252) that leads to
unfair and dehumanizing practices.
Attendant care is similar to the health care discourse as it provides a relational encounter
between independent living and dependant living. The melding of two bodies, that of the
attendant and the patient-consumer, builds on the concept of power and how it configures social
relationships. There is a unique blending of corporealities that creates a symbiotic relationship
where the body is not autonomous but a fluid and less static entity. Autonomy is attained,
mediated, and regulated through this practice but does not necessarily inscribe equality for the
subject. For the most part, unequal social relations between the disabled to the able-bodied are
reflected everywhere the disabled subject is not recognized as valuable. Valuing can take many
forms including love.

This transpires to Rayment realizing that care is not love (Coetzee 154).
I have spent a fair amount of time in institutions and my experience is that the care ranges from
poor to good. In one sense I understand Rayment but sometimes I have experienced the care I
received as love because there is ample opportunity for close contact between patient and
caregivers. In some cases there have been romantic encounters that have developed as a result of
these encounters.
Embodied identities often are subjected to neo-liberal practices that value effectiveness and
rationality over human needs. The material contexts and political practices that reproduce
oppression in certain groups must be framed in moral as well as administrative practices.
Rayment encounters institutional care that lacks love and care and that reinforces his sense of
being devalued. He puts up with a social worker exemplifying this.
Mrs. Putts, his social worker, arranges for his nursing and other care so that he
must get along with her even though he does not like her (Coetzee 22).

20
As a disabled person, I am aware that social workers act as the gatekeepers in deciding what
resources I have access to. I am subjected and classified according the institutional culture of
care that assesses, labels and therefore determines my need/s. For example managed health care
dictates the number of weeks a person can access resources in a rehabilitation institute because
there is a rationing of resources and one is powerless to challenge the power/knowledge of this
authority.
When a body is situated in a position of weakness subject to practices influenced by socio-
political and ethical meanings that are generated by an ableist culture, then a disability ethic is
subject to a hegemonic culture that results in practices and representations that are flawed and
uncharacteristic of the disability experience (Gruson-Wood 5). Historically the body is viewed in
utopian terms of perfectability such that the disabled body appears monstrous and uncontrollable.

Rayment now understands that he must count on caregivers for even the smallest
of things (Coetzee 69).
Even the control of his bladder, which he has now lost, dehumanizes him (Coetzee
214).
Freakery, another form of dehumanization is part of representing the counter-normative body as
for example in the photography of Diane Arbus. Disability is fetishized into a symbol of
disorder, chaos, and alienation that disrupts the normative view of life. Normalcy is part of an
aesthetic formulated by an ableist society that desires articulations of subjectivity that conform to
idealized formations. The commodification of the Other reduces disability aesthetic to spectacle
and miscasts true disabled embodiment. The fetishization of disability has its roots going back to
biblical time (Olyan 3). The disabled body was an iconic symbol that represents devaluation of
humanness because it is incapable of performing a normative social function. Not only are the
disabled unable to perform social functions, they are also imbued with a sense of power to harm,
requiring prayer to remove the uncleanliness of the disability. In this we see that the power to
name became a mechanism to separate the normal people from those labelled as abject. This
power of labels results in the creation of a class of people who are blamed for their infirmities
that were/are, in turn, seen as an aberration.
While normative discourse denigrates the disabled body, Singer (176) sees the power to re-write
disability as an extension of human experience. The transhuman narrative is able to recuperate
the body from a receptacle of all that is unwanted into a spiritual body that recreates humanity
regardless of corporeality (Chester 102). The spiritual nature of an unfit body collides with a
modern capitalist notion of a body‟s capacity to contribute materially.

Welfare means caring for people who cannot care for themselves (Coetzee 22).
In literature, the portrayal of disability is a portrayal of weakness, whereas the caregiver is
portrayed as powerful and therefore strong. The narrative reveals dependency as one half of a
social relation that confers social power and sympathy to the caregiver, while reducing the
disabled person to an object (Garden 235).
In Slow Man, the male patient becomes subservient to a female caregiver, reframing traditional
ideas of gendered power enactment. The discourse between patient and caregiver encompasses
ideas of hope and rehabilitation, often effacing the experience of Rayment and therefore

21
minimizing his emotional pain. The rehabilitative process becomes a social redemption of the
body. In other words, wholeness can be reclaimed, but it is through the diligence and will of the
patient that denies his experience.
Bringing humanity into line with modern political structures calls for a moral interrogation of
normalizing society in the realm of disability studies. Martha Nussbaum in Frontiers of Justice,
questions notions of social power in questioning the basis of justice and contractual obligations
of a civilized world by framing this in terms of two questions: who is responsible for designing
the principles of society and for whom are they designed. She fashions the capabilities approach
where people are assessed on what they can actually have in society based on their physicality.
For example when I use my wheelchair I have greater capacity to participate in society than I
would without it (Robyens 5). Nussbaum argues that the caregiver need to talk of the social
model of disability reduces the concept of disability to a normative level (Hanisch 135).
Nussbaum would have us reject compensatory methods to reduce injustice in favour of concepts
based on self worth of the individual (134). Similarly, Hughes and Patterson argue that in the
social model, the body is embraced in terms of its impairment without any attention to meaning
or agency. The biological and cultural become separate and rely on a disembodied subject (329).
For a return to bodily discourse they argue for sociology of the body that would challenge the
biological nature of the body rather than rely on it as the social model does. Radical social theory
employs corporeal strategies by enabling a politics focused on disability knowledge. Foucault
recognized the body as a constitution of enforced ideologies practiced on docile bodies through
bio-power where genealogies of impairment might act as a form of resistance. Following
Nussbaum and Foucault, there must be a capacity to exercise power. That is there must be power
to influence the environment through social power over oppressive and authoritarian institutions,
and the power to act as a cohesive group to enact benefits for a particular group (Block,
Balcazar, and Keys 24).

Am I alive or am I dead (Coetzee 232).

Rayment has lost the capacity to be human when he makes such statements. He has become a
disembodied, disempowered subject where the biological capacity of his body is so diminished
as to appear useless. The social is impacted at once by being contingent on the physical. Re-
imagining humaneness is a struggle for disabled people when we occupy bodies that are rendered
abject through discursive practices. Once the capacity to be human is challenged then daily
living becomes stultifying and without context.
Mercieca and Mercieca suggest that research paradigms become static and reinforce prevailing
doxa rather than develop new concepts. Following Deleuze they are critical of research that
follows an agenda that reinforces given knowledge. They call for research that empowers the
subject in the development of new ideas. The social model remains fixed in a mode of inquiry
that fails to understand that it is already understood that knowledge is a construction. Research
must engage and be generative to affect social inequality. Presently it is fixed within modernist
social theory that follows linear thinking leading nowhere (Zarb 127).
There is a problem in defining the body in binary terms such as ability and disability because we
will always return to the notion that social barriers account for social exclusion (Inahara 52).
Once we accept that disabled bodies lack certain functions we will move away from the need to

22
exercise power. Power to act always implies that the disabled body negotiates from a position of
powerlessness instead of recognition that disability can be negotiated through the discourse of
difference.
Yet a discourse of difference is something I find difficult to embrace because I still see
difference as something that calls into question my place in the world. I do not see it coming
from a position of strength but one of powerlessness. Perhaps it is an idea that gains cultural
capital as disabled people develop a consciousness of who we are. The construction of disability
always is suggestive of power imbalances where one segment of the population competes against
another for social status and power. This creates a classification and separation of disabled
people from the mainstream, impairing useful dialogue (Silvers 472).
Disability is viewed in negative terms such that there is a constant need for remediation.
Unfortunately, remediation is always framed in ableist discourses that do not recognize
disability. Inclusive societies will allow disability to function within the normative social
framework where individuals are accorded social rights in a pluralistic society. In other words,
entering a building through the disabled entrance will equate with entering the building through
any means, therefore reframing the rights of everyone so that bodily classification does not
matter.
Human rights discourses need to be instrumental rather than based on identity, in that rights
express the recognition that a disabled body requires different yet equal recognition. This will
happen as existing sites of power realign to accommodate different values and norms (Stammers
987). Cultural hegemony and institutional practices must be framed in the context of equality
that recognizes the features of economic, social, psychological, and political oppression that
result from ideological ideas that reinforce and reproduce social inequality (Abberley17). This
will happen as a consciousness is developed that recognizes societal discourse is dependent on
societal values that allow for full participation of every member whether abled or disabled
(Devlieger 353, Priestly 86).
The novel, like so many novels has a happy ending where Rayment completes his
rehabilitation and buys himself a new bike to ride (Coetzee 262).
For most disabled people, life is a continual struggle with some consolations to be followed by
huge losses. The character Rayment in Slow Man is portrayed in dominant discourses or tropes
that every disabled person encounters revealing that equality has not yet been achieved.

Conclusion
Disability Studies provides a useful social theory to interpret how disability is presented,
represented, and lived. I have interwoven my own experiences and my analysis of a
contemporary novel, Slow Man, with theory from critical disability studies. The medical model
of disability is evident in describing the life of Rayment as he begins his new life as a disabled
person. Readers of this work will immediately recognize oppressive social practices and
institutions as these are imposed on the protagonist from various sources, institutional and
personal. The character of Rayment never really transcends the medical model. Rayment is
rehabilitated successfully, within the medical model, by the end of the novel as we see him ride

23
off on his new bike. However this ending is a fiction incompatible with the reality of most
disabled people.
This novel is a good source material for a course on Disability Studies as it demonstrates
oppressive social practices. The text provides a rich background for a thesis developing a theme
surrounding the medical model. The cultural model of disability is largely unexplored in Slow
Man. For the most part, Rayment is acted upon by forces outside his control revealing the nexus
of power/knowledge that informs his subjectivity as a disabled man. He is seen as a victim more
than a hero. However the hero trope of overcoming impairments is a common one-dimensional
depiction of disabled people and is tiresome. Contrary to the hero trope Rayment never
completely achieves agency: he is subject of as often subject to normalizing discourse. Perhaps
this is a true reflection of the disability experience. Personally, I struggle with the cultural model
of disability in that it seems to force a performance of disability on the person that calls for
unusual strength or creativity. I prefer to live a life that engenders normalcy where sometimes we
do disability well and other times not so well. This is the story of Rayment as well.

Bibliography

Abberley, P. 1987. “ The Concept of Oppression and the Development of a Social Theory of
Disability.” Disability, Handicap, and Society 2.1 5-19.

24
“How to manipulate a man.” 18 September 2005. Web 30 October 2010.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/sep/18/fiction.jmcoetzee.

Adams, K. 2002.At The Table With Arendt:Toward A Self-Interested Practice Of Coalition

Discourse. MA: Hypatia.

Aaron, J. 2009. “An Awkward Companion: Disability and the Semantic Landscape of English
Lame.” Journal of English Linguistics 38.1 London: Sage. 25-55.

Here
Aranda, K. and Jones A. 2010. “Dignity in health-care: a critical exploration using feminism and
theories of recognition.” Nursing Inquiry 17.3 U.K.: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.248-256.

Barker, C. And Murray, S.2010. “Democratic Criticism. Disabling Postcolonialism: Global

Disability and Democracy.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 4.3 Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press. 219-236.

Bernstein, M. 2002. Identities and Politics: Toward Historical Understanding of the Lesbian and
Gay Movement. NC: Duke University Press.

Betcher, S. 2010. “Becoming of My Flesh: Feminist and Disability Theologies on the Edge of
Posthumanist Discourse.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 26.2Indiana: Indiana
University Press. 107-118.

Block, P. and Balcazar, Keys, C. 2001. “From pathology to power: Rethinking Race, Poverty,
and Disability. Journal of Disability Policy Studies 12.18 Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Bolt, D. 2009. Introduction: Literary Disability Studies in the UK. Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press.

Brettell, C. 1998. Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and Life Writing. Hawaii: University of
Hawaii Press.

Caldwell, Gail. Bystander:In his tale of an accident victim, J.M. Coetzee steps back for a
examination of time, death, and the human journey. 2 October 2005. Web 30 October 2010.
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2005/10/02/bystander/

Campbell, F. 2010. "Crippin' the Flaneur: Cosmopolitanism, and Landscapes of Tolerance."

Australia: Griffith University. Web 20 May 2011.

Cartwright, Justin. Slow Man J.M. Coetzee: It's time to review your contract with life.28August
2005. Web 30 October 2010.http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-
entertainment/books/reviews/slow-man-by-j-m-coetzee-504611.html

Chandler, N. 2000. “Originary Displacement.” Boundary 2 N.C. : Duke University Press.

25
Chester, M. 2009. Receiving the Gift of Friendship:Profound Disability, Theologial
Antthropology, and Ethics. New York: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Coetzee, J. M. 2006. Slow Man. London: Vintage Books.

Conroy, V. and Hayes-Conroy, A. 2010. “Visceral Geographies: Mattering, Relating, and

Defying.” Geography Compass 4.9 U.K.: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 1273-1283.

Creamer, D. 2010. “Embracing Limits, Queering Embodiment: Creating/Creative Possibilities

for Disability Theology.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 26.2 Indiana: Indiana
University Press. 123-127.

Davis, A. 2010. “The Politics of Identity After Identity Politics.”

Devlieger, Patrick ``From handicap to disability: language use and cultural meaning in the
United States Web1 April 2011 http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/096382899297594
Erdman-Vulcan, D. 2010. “Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas.”
Borderline Subjectivity 8.1 Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1565-3668.

Ewart, C. 2010. “Terms of Disappropriation: Disability, Diaspora and Dionne Brand's What We
All Long For.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 4.2 Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press. 147-161.

Flaugh, C. 2010. “Of Colonized Mind and Matter: The Dis/Abilities of Negritude in Aime
Cesaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disabilities Studies
4.3 Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 291-308.

Foucault, M. 2000. “The Punitive Society.” In Power: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954 –
1984, ed. Paul Rabinow, 23-38. New York: New Press.

Foucault, M. 1991. “Governmentality”. In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality,

trans. Rosi Braidotti and revised by Colin Gordon, in eds. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and
Peter Miller, 87-104. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Frey, H. Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee. October 1 2005. Web 30 October 2010.
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2005/10/01/coetzee/index.html

http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/cdd/article/viewFile/23854/28098
Fritsch, K. 2010. “Intimate Assemblanges: Disability, Intercorpreality, And The Labour Of
Attendant Care.” Web 20 May 2011.

Garden, R. 2010. “Sympathy, Disability, And the Nurse: Female Power in Edith Wharton's The
Fruit of the Tree.” Journal of Medical Humanities 31 Netherlands: Springer. 223-242.

26
Garrison, H. Adolescent Perceptions of the Sociocultural Construct of Disability When
Responding To Literature Of Mice and Men. Dissertation, Fordham University. Ann Arbor
ProQuest/UMI 2007. (Publication No. AAT 3302114.)

Gibbs, P. 2000. “The Limits of Subjectivity: A Response to the Commentary.” Philosophy,

Psychiatry, and Psychology 7.3 Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. 207-208.

Gruson-Wood, J. 2010. “Ableism Kitsch: The Aesthetics Of Disability-Related Ethics.”

Hall, E. 2007. “Subjects, Selves, and Survivors.” Helios 34.2 Texas: Texas Tech University
Press. 125-159.

Hall, Stuart. “Foucault: Power, Knowledge, and Discourse” in Discourse Practice and Theory:
A Reader Web 1 April 2011
http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Vg4q5hRamFsC&oi=fnd&pg=PA72&dq=instituti
onal+regimes+of+power&ots=omr1ZIZdjR&sig=Q14WzAbKq5zGb_xYEnUMw7OBibg#v=on
epage&q=institutional%20regimes%20of%20power&f=false Web
Hanisch, H. 2007. Frontiers of Justice, Disability, Nationality, Species 20 May 2011
http://patten.indiana.edu/index.php?nodeID=speakerbio&profilesID=6

Holland, D. and Fox, G. and Daro, V. 2008. “Social Movements and Collective Identity: A
Decentered, Dialogic View.” Washington: Institute for Ethnographic Research.

Hosey, S. 2009. “One of Us: Identity in Contemporary Fiction.” Journal of Literary and Cultural
Disability Studies 3.1 Liverrpool: Liverpool University Press. 35-50.

Howell, R. “Subjectivityy and the Elusiveness of the Self.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy
40.3Texas: Southern Methodist University. 0045-5091.

Hughes, B. 1997. “The social model of disability and the disappearing body: towards a sociology
of impairment.” London: Routledge.

Hughes, B. 2009. Wounded/monstrous/abject: a critique of the disabled body in the sociological

imaginary. London: Taylor and Francis.

Hulko. W. 2009. “The Time-and Context-Contingent Nature of Intersectionality and

InterlockingOppressions.” Affilia 24.4 London: Sage.44-55.

Inahara, M. 2009. This Body Which is Not One: The Body, Feminity and Disability. London:
Sage.

Jaeger, Paul Disability in Culture, Disability as Culture Web1 April 2011

http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=DTa6Eo49jWYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA28&dq=disabilit

27
y+as+culture&ots=k5vF2RbCSE&sig=ojo7fPadde1Ks2ieznISd7gtcM0#v=onepage&q=disabilit
y%20as%20culture&f=false
Johnson, J. and McIntosh, A. 2009. “Toward a Cultural Perspective and Understanding of the
Disability and Deaf Experience in Special and Multicultural Education.” Remedial and Special
Education 30.2 London: Sage. 67-83.

Knoll, K. 2009. “Feminist Disability Studies Pedagogy.” Feminist Teacher 19.2 Illinois: Illinois
University Press. 122-133.

Kuppers, P. and Overboe, J. 2009. Introduction: Deleuze, Disability, and Difference. Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press.

Lionnet, F. 2001. “A Politics of the We Autobiography, Race and Nation.” American Literary
History 13.2: Oxford University Press. 376-392.

MacFarlane, R. Fiction: Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee. 28 August 2005. Web 30 October 2011
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article558131.ece.

Marshall, P. 2010. The Notorious as Cultural Signposts. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press.

McDermott, R. and Varenne, H. 1995. Culture as Disability". Anthropology and Education

Quarterly 26:323-348, 1995.

Mercieca, D. and Mercieca, D. 2010. Opening Research to Intensities: Rethinking Disability

Research with Deleuze and Guattari. UK: Blackwell.

Miceli, M. 2008. “The Disavowal Of The Body As A Source Of Inquiry In Critical Disability
Studies: The Return Of Impairment.” Australia: The University of Wollongong. 1-14.

Milano, S. Slow Man by J. M. Coetzee. 3 September 2005. Web 30 October 2010.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article561476.ece

Minich, J. 2010. “Disabling La Frontera: Disability, Border Subjectivity, and Masculinity in Big
Jessie, Little Jessie by Oscar Casares.” Melus. 35.1 35-52.

Muller, S. 2009. “Body Integrity Identity Disorder(BID)-Is the Amputation of Healthy Limbs
Ethically Justified?” The American Journal of Bioethics 9.1 Germany: Aachen University. 36-43.

Nicholson, L. 2010. “Identity after Identity Politics.” accessed 20 May 2011

http://wustlpoliticaltheory.blogspot.com/2009/09/linda-nicholson-identity-after-identity.html

Online Dictionary of the Social Sciences Web 17 May 2011.

http://bitbucket.icaap.org/dict.pl?alpha=H

28
Olyan, S. “The Asription of Physical Disability As A Stigmatizing Strategy In Biblical Iconic
Polemics.” The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 9.14 Rhode Island: Brown University. 1203-1542.

O'Malley, M. 2009 “Falling between frames: Institutional discourse and disability in radio.”
Journal of Pragmatics 41 UK: Elsevier 346-356.

Peters, S. 1996. “The politics of disability identity.” London: Routledge.

Priestly, M. 1998. Constructions and creations: idealism, materialism and disability theory.
London: Routledge.

Reeve, D. 2002. Negotiating psycho-emotional dimensions of disability and their influence on

identity constructions. London: Routledge.

Samuelson, D. 2010. Utopian Studies. 21.1 Tennessee: Tennessee University of Tennessee Press.
1045-991X

Robeyens, Ingrid. 2003. The “The Capability Approach: An Interdisciplinary Introduction”

Amsterdam: The University of Amsterdam 1-57.

Schroder, K. 2007. Textual Cultures: Texts, Contexts, Interpretation. Denmark: Roskilde

University.

Schumm, D. 2010. “Reimaging Disability.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 26.2

Indianna: Indianna University Press. 132-137.

Shakespeare, T. 1996. Exploring the divide:Illness and disability. Leeds: The Disability Press

Shakespeare, T. and Watson, N. 2002 The social model of disability: an outdated ideology.
emeraldinsight.com

Shakespeare, T. 2006. The Social Model of Disability. In L. Davis (Ed.) The Disability Studies
Reader, 2nd Ed. New York: Routledge.

Shweder, R. 2008. “Common Knowledge.” Subjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations CA:

University of California Press. 1538-4578.

Silvers, A. 2003. “On The Possibility And Desirability Of Constructing A Neutral Conception of
Disability.” Theoretical Medicine 24 Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers 471-487.

Singer, J. 2010. Toward a transhuman model of medieval disability. New York:Macmillan

Publishers.

29
Snyder, S. and Mitchell, D. 2010. “Introduction: Ablenationalism and the Geo-Politics of
Disability.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 4.2 Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press. 113-125.

Stammers, N. 1999. “Social Movements and the Social Construction of Human Rights.” Human
Rights Quartrley 21.4 Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. 980-1008.

Strong, B. The Dismemberment Plan. 23 August 2005. Web 30 October 2010.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-08-23/books/the-dismemberment-plan/

Stubbings, J. 1997. Social and psychological aspects of disability. Baltimore: University Park
Press.

Taylor, D.J. “Slow Man, by J.M. Coetzee.” 2 September 2005. Web 30 October 2010.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/slow-man-by-j-m-coetzee-
505074.html

Thorne, M. Entertained by a Postmodern Joke. 11 September 2005. Web 30 October 2010.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3646293/Entertained-by-a-postmodern-joke.html

Tremain, S. 2006. “Foucault and the Government of Disability.” Scandinavian Journal Of

Disability Research” 8.1 London: Routledge. 75-77.

Van Pelt, T. 2000. Otherness. CA: Postmodern Culture.

Varadharajan, A. 1997. Exotic Parodies: Subjectivity in Adorno, Spivak, and Said. IN: Purdue
Research Foundation.

Vidali, A. 2010. “Seeing What We Know Disability and Theories of Metaphor.”Journal of

Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 4.1 Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 33-54.

Ville, Isabelle. 2010. “From Inaptitude for work to trial of the self. The vicissitudes of meanings
of disability.” European Journal of Disabilty Research 4 Pstis: Centre de recherche
medicine,sciences, sante et societe, Inserm. 59-71.

Walden, A. 2009. “The Pluralist.” Butler on Subjectivity and Authorship: Reflections on Doing
Philosophy in the First Person Drew University 1930-7365.

Wang, Ye. 2010. “Without Boundaries: An Inquiry Into Deaf Epistemologies Through a
Metaparadigm.” 154.5 Gallaudet University Press 428-434.

Zarb, G. 1992. On the road to Damascus:first steps towards changing the relations of disability
research production. London: Routledge.

30
31