Becoming Disabled

Abstract

This thesis examines the becoming of disabled people’s identities, illustrating the multiple and complex temporalities that shift and move in flux as disabilities, health conditions and illnesses change over time. Understanding disability as an unfolding process of continuous change, the thesis forwards the concept of ‘becoming disabled’ as tying together disabled people’s lived and embodied experiences. An unfolding participatory qualitative research methodology was developed with eight participants and their partners. Four methods were chosen by participants to explore their experiences: drawing participatory timelines, taking photographs through photovoice, talking in conversations and writing diary entries. The research process itself moved back and forth, overlapping and churning through cycles of participation, action and reflection, shaping the subsequent findings, which are arranged under four key themes. ‘Becoming emotional’ explores the gendered and emotional temporalities of events, such as diagnosis, accident and injury, to everyday acts that shape the future. ‘Becoming well’ illustrates the affective capacity of material items to facilitate day-to-day and lifelong recoveries. ‘Becoming mobile’ discusses the pace, speed and rhythm of walking and wheeling. ‘Memories’ of disability, health conditions and illnesses continue to unfold, shaping new possibilities and new futures. The thesis concludes that becoming disabled is an underlying, always present and unfolding process of continuous change, which differs to the fixed and categorical basis of ‘being disabled’ which has characterised much research. Becoming disabled is always reaching forward and never complete, emphasising the intricacies of time, the temporalities, the moments, the transitions and the trajectories of becoming, in everyday life and across the life course. The research sought to examine the everyday practices and processes that shape disabled people’s identities; and to explore the role of the past, the present, and the future in disabled people’s lives. Suggestions are made for future research.