Pretending to be a normal human being:Peep Show, sitcom, and the momentary invocation of disability

‘You are a parasite on the productive classes’: online disablist hate speech in austere times

“…Specifically, the way in which disablist language is used as a means of showcasing and performing one's own aspiration to, and evidence of, being normal (Bolt 2016). Much like gender, 'ableness' becomes performed by individuals, demonstrating 'the repeated stylization of the body' in order to aspire to 'a natural sort of being' (Bulter 1990, 33).…”

“…This objectification has been cultivated through and by a metanarrative of disability that serves a purpose of validation for non-disabled people. Aiming to reveal this metanarrative, this article follows the work of David Bolt (2014), who in his exploration of blindness in twentieth-century Anglophone writing, shows how a metanarrative of disability is constructed by, and for, non-disabled people. This metanarrative, it is suggested, is taken up by perpetrators of disablist hate speech as a means of comparing their sense of identity, worth, and value to disabled people.…”