Walking Through a Wavering With-itness: An Exploration of Disability Pride and Shame

This is a thesis about disability pride and shame. Here, I explore how these two characters appear in theoretical texts, personal stories and my experience of disability on the streets as an identity which connects me to others and the world as an interpretative being. This project begins by demonstrating how the popular imagination of disability pride describes the prideful person as one who relates to their embodiment with constant satisfaction. I trouble this version of pride, a version that requires one to turn away from shame, for being exclusive of disabled people who, like me, experience their disability through a wavering bodily relation. I conclude by crafting out a pride that remains with us in troubling times rather than in the abandonment of shame. This pride is accessible to us all and the never-steady stories of disability we tell.MAS