Dwarfism, Spatiality and Disabling Experiences

Pritchard, Erin

doi:10.4324/9781003026051

Cited by 10 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…Pre-COVID-19, I needed to talk louder than usual when standing and communicating with average height people-my voice needed to travel the upward distance. The requirement of wearing a mask has restricted my communication, and I experience others as not being able to sufficiently hear me-ableism, and more specifically heightism, leaves me experiencing discrimination (Pritchard, 2021). Historically, reading the other's lips in noisy environments has helped me "hear" them; yet lips are no longer visible in COVID-19 times.…”

Section: Short and Locked Downmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I feel exposed, vulnerable, and more disabled in these complex interactions of spatiality, embodiment, boundaries, and abilities. This unwanted social attention highlights the intertwining of the social-spatial (Pritchard, 2021). I am disabled and othered by the physical restrictions because of the pandemic, thus the social model of disability is also applicable to these experiences (Barnes, 2012).…”

Section: Short and Locked Downmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Society must acknowledge and appreciate the "plurality of beings" (Kristeva, 2003, p. 31). Spatial barriers can lead to social barriers (Pritchard, 2021), and thus if the built environment was more disability-friendly, society would be educated and encouraged to be more inclusionary in their attitudes and interactions with disabled people. Hence, I may not feel so alienated when encountering those around me, lessening the need to perform.…”

Section: In Closingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The immaterial challenges of disability (the lived experiences, emotional engagements, social encounters) can be confounded by the material, physical restrictions of space, creating a complex multilayered interaction (Heylighen & Strickfaden, 2012). The pre-existing discriminatory, unaccommodating public physical spaces and spatial barriers that people with dwarfism endure (Pritchard, 2021) can be more disabling because of the pandemic. Perspex screens and barrier tape to ensure physical distance aggravates prevailing disability-related communication and accessibility difficulties.…”

Section: Short and Locked Downmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Short and Locked Down: The Impact of COVID-19 on a Person With Dwarfism

Harvey

2023

Space and Culture

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Living with a visible physical disability—specifically dwarfism—brings situational, psychosocial, and cultural challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic, and its restrictions, amplifies these dwarfism-related complexities, exposing the politics of visibility and exclusion, as well as spatial injustices. This autoethnographic paper deliberates these heightened disabling encounters in their various contextual layers—physical, social, and psychological. Fundamentally, people with dwarfism have become further disabled and disadvantaged because of the pandemic’s psychosocial stresses, contextual traumas, and physical exclusions. The paper intimately addresses the embodied, psychological, cultural, and spatial inequalities short-statured individuals endure because of the pandemic. Drawing on theoretical models of disability, critical disability literature, geographies of disability, as well as the conceptual paradigm of biopolitical power, the paper begins to make sense of these experiences so that shifts may occur in different spaces. Arguably, the experiences of COVID-19 that are shared here are also applicable to people with other disabilities.

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Section: Short and Locked Downmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Short and Locked Downmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: In Closingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Short and Locked Downmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Short and Locked Down: The Impact of COVID-19 on a Person With Dwarfism

Harvey

2023

Space and Culture

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“…The comic uses a combination of visual metaphors and bold texts to demonstrate the social barriers experienced by someone with dwarfism. Pritchard (2021a) points out that it is not uncommon for people with dwarfism to receive unwanted social attention, including staring and name calling from strangers. Before venturing out, Alisa's anxiety is made apparent when she counts down how many steps it will take to reach her destination.…”

Section: Social Experiencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Intersection of Dwarfism and Gender in Alisa’s Tale: Raising Awareness through Graphic Narrative

Pritchard

2022

The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship

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This note explores how experiences of people with dwarfism are explored in the graphic narrative Alisa’s Tale (A short story) by Al Davison. The purpose of Alisa’s tale is for young people to emphasise the lived experiences of people with dwarfism. This demonstrates how the graphic narrative uses imagery to convey the everyday social and spatial encounters experienced by people with dwarfism and subsequently Alisa’s experiences of psycho-emotional disablism. Unlike conventional forms of awareness raising, the graphic narrative forces the reader to stare at the dwarf body and witness the common reactions towards it through multimodal forms of representations. Graphic narratives provide expressive possibilities for vivid meaning-making through multimodal forms of representations (Garland-Thomson, 2016). Unlike conventional stories, the use of graphics within Alisa’s tale aids in situating the reader within Alisa’s perspective. This helps to demonstrate the world seen through the gaze of a young woman with dwarfism and position the average sized person as problematic. In the narrative, the average sized people who react negatively towards Alisa are depicted as monsters. According to Garland-Thomson (2016), the most distinct representational opportunity comics offer is hyperbole. Presenting average sized people as monsters helps to situate them as villains. How the narrative uses imagery to construct other people, who react negatively to Alisa’s presence, as monsters do two things. Firstly, as a reader with dwarfism, I can relate to the story. For average sized readers, it helps them to question their ableist beliefs and reactions towards people with dwarfism. According to Foss, Gray and Whalen (2016), graphic narratives offer the unique potential for transforming our understanding of disability in truly profound ways. This note will demonstrate how graphic narratives are beneficial in raising awareness about dwarfism. 

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Tiny human geographies: babies and toddlers as non-representational and barely human life?

Holt

Philo²

2022

Children's Geographies

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Dwarfism, Spatiality and Disabling Experiences

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Short and Locked Down: The Impact of COVID-19 on a Person With Dwarfism

Short and Locked Down: The Impact of COVID-19 on a Person With Dwarfism

The Intersection of Dwarfism and Gender in Alisa’s Tale: Raising Awareness through Graphic Narrative

Tiny human geographies: babies and toddlers as non-representational and barely human life?

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