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Invisible to themselves or negotiating identity? The interactional management of 'being intellectually disabled'
- Authors:
- RAPLEY Mark, KIERNAN Patrick, ANTAKI Charles
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 13(5), November 1998, pp.807-827.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
Discusses how there seems to be a professional, and perhaps societal, consensus that the identity label of 'intellectual disabled' is an aversive even 'toxic' one. Parents' concerns over the toxicity of the label led them to bring up their children in ignorance of their disabilities, and thus produce people who are 'invisible to themselves'. Drawing on work in discursive psychology, the authors argue that the social identity of 'being intellectually disabled', and its management in talk, is considerably more fluid and dynamic than the static characteristic of self implied by the construct of an all-embracing, 'toxic', identity. A person with an intellectual disability can, like any other, avow or disavow such an identity according to the demands of the situation in which they find themselves.