Abstract
This chapter explores how able-bodied people co-opt disabled identity to materialize a self-aggrieved status generally reserved for disabled people. The authors utilize articulation theory, an affective theory of thanatography, and a critical rhetorical approach to uncover the harm of these seemingly innocuous actions. Further, they use a process of distinguishing between victimization and victimhood and illustrate how discourses of disability enable people to embrace victimhood as an identity in service of aggrievement politics. The authors contextualize our analysis through examples of media representation, self-referential discourses in practice, and the actions individuals take to circumvent or reinscribe the power afforded disabled bodies through law and expectation. These examples illustrate ongoing, ableist cultural scripts that emerge from the medical model of disability.
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Notes
- 1.
A detailed accounting of the roots of the victimhood identity in Christianity can be found in Moss (2013).
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Grewe, B., Weathers, C.R. (2023). Disposable Masks, Disposable Lives: Aggrievement Politics and the Weaponization of Disabled Identity. In: Jeffress, M.S., Cypher, J.M., Ferris, J., Scott-Pollock, JA. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Disability and Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14447-9_12
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