Mad World by Frazer-Carroll Micha;

Author:Frazer-Carroll, Micha;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pluto Press

When I first left my GP’s office with a diagnosis of depression and anxiety, I would have never thought of myself as a disabled person. In fact, I suspect that the notion would have seemed ludicrous or even offensive; I had an image of what disability was, and I was not that. Much of my understanding of the concept had likely been shaped by my childhood – I had spent the weekends going with my mum to look after my grandmother, who was blind, had had multiple strokes, was an amputee, and had very limited mobility. As a result, when I thought of disability, I think I would have thought of someone who had mobility aids, full-time care, and physical, permanent barriers to leaving bed or the house. While this is the case for many, I had no idea that at least 70% of disability is considered to be ‘invisible’.1,2

Disability is rarely afforded depth, breadth or richness as a human experience. In the media, disabled people scarcely seem to exist, except to serve the interests of non-disabled characters and non-disabled audiences. They manifest as moral lessons, strange curiosities, morbid monstrosities, objects of sympathy, or noble artistic challenges that might win actors an Oscar. Off-screen, disability is largely understood as something abject – a thing not to be. It is a thing we are told to avoid becoming all our lives, and we are supposed to be grateful if we are not it. Even the word ‘disabled’ is often seen as a sort of slur, or at least a serious allegation, conjuring up words like ‘broken’ or ‘lacking’. It is seen as a shutting down of possibility and opportunity. When people turn over the idea that they might be disabled for the first time, it’s not uncommon to have a knee jerk reaction, which says: ‘I’m not disabled – there’s nothing wrong with me!’ But of course, the implication here is that there is something irredeemable about disability.

That day that I got my diagnoses, aged 20, I was at a point in my life where I had already started to untangle concepts like racism, sexism and homophobia; but these ideas about disability remained mostly untouched. In fact, it wasn’t until I started to study the politics of mental health in depth that I started to think about the role of disability in my own life, and in my mental health. Looking back, I realise that this was a reflection of the student politics that surrounded me. Disability justice had not been popularised or even co-opted in the way that feminism, in particular, had been. Few of my friends had become politicised after learning about the disabled people’s movement in history lessons, seeing disability justice slogans printed on t-shirts, or having seen Hollywood films about the disabled people’s struggle.

This problem persists on the British left more broadly: disability is often framed as something fragmentary, obscure and issue-based, rather than fundamental to broader anti-capitalist thought. Individual diagnostic categories are discussed more than disabled movements.

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