Austerity Fictions: Disability, Class and Resistance in Twenty-First Century British

我对紧缩时期英国残疾和阶级的当代表现的兴趣源于以前在文化残疾研究领域的研究。在我的本科论文《走向残疾的渐进式表征：挑战常态和能力主义》和研究硕士论文《通过当代文化叙事来探讨能力主义者对残疾的看法和治疗》中，我通过“残疾视觉”（Davidson，2006，第126页）分析了文本，探索了错误表征与嵌入的能力主义假设相互作用的方式，并绘制了走向残疾的渐进式表征的可能性。在此基础上，我认为文学和电影为抵抗能力主义创造了一个平台，并提供了替代性表征。正如米切尔和斯奈德在他们的基础文本《叙事假体》中所写的那样，文学可以是“一个独特的空间，用于思考身体和认知差异的复杂性，这是几乎所有其他话语空间所没有的”（2000年，第166页）。在2008年全球金融危机后实施了十年的紧缩政策之后，这项研究是对公共服务和福利改革系统性攻击的必要回应，这些攻击导致数百万生活在英国的残疾人贫困和死亡。在《跛脚时代：残疾、全球化和抵抗》（Crip Times：Disability，Globalisation，and Resistance）一书中，罗伯特·麦克鲁尔（Robert McRuer）写道，“大多数关于紧缩的研究（......）没有注意到残疾在全球紧缩政策中的中心地位，也没有注意到残疾人在全球紧缩政策中的微妙方式。这种残疾可能成为理解和抵制政治的场所”（2018年，第13页）。我希望在当前的理解中解决这一差距，特别关注英国，自21世纪初以来，英国一直是“紧缩的起点”（McRuer，2018，第24页）。

My interest in contemporary representations of disability and class in austerity Britainhas stemmed from previous research in the field of cultural disability studies. In myundergraduate dissertation Towards a progressive representation of disability:challenging normalcy and ableism, and research masters thesis Challenging ableistperceptions of disability and cure through contemporary cultural narratives, Ianalysed texts through a 'disability optic' (Davidson, 2006, p.126), exploring themyriad ways misrepresentation interacts with embedded ableist assumptions andcharting the possibilities of moving towards a progressive representation of disability.Building on this, I argued that literature and film creates a platform for resistingableism and providing alternative representations. As Mitchel and Snyder write intheir foundational text Narrative Prosthesis, literature can be 'a unique space forcontemplating the complexity of physical and cognitive differences that is absentfrom nearly every other discursive space' (2000, p.166).In line with my previous approach, I intend to analyse contemporaryrepresentations of disability whilst engaging with the social and political context inwhich disabled people live. After a decade of austerity, imposed in the wake of the2008 global financial crisis, this research is a necessary response to the systematicattack on public services and welfare reforms that has lead to poverty and death formillions of disabled people living in Britain. In Crip Times: Disability, Globalisation,and Resistance, Robert McRuer writes that 'most studies of austerity (...) have notedneither disability's centrality to a global austerity politics nor the nuanced ways (...)that disability might serve as a site from which to understand and resist that politics'(2018, p.13). I hope to address this gap in the current understanding with a particularfocus on the UK, which has been 'ground zero for austerity since the early 2000s'(McRuer, 2018, p.24).