Brain Injury Survivors: Impairment, Identity and Neoliberalism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v8i4.524Abstract
This paper reflects on my decades of activism and scholarly work with brain injury survivors, highlighting some of the challenges that survivors experience, and exploring the power dynamics associated with the ‘survivor’ identity. It explores the ‘survivor’ discourse/identity which has been widely adopted by people who have sustained a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) in the context of embodied cognitive changes, the dominant view of disability as a personal tragedy, and the wider political context of neoliberalism. The key argument is that the survivor identity adopted by many people with brain injuries simultaneously supports and challenges neoliberalism. The paper involves both autobiographical reflections and the results of my political involvement and research with other survivors.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
There are no article processing or submission charges for CJDS authors.
Author(s) are not required to assign their copyright in and to their article to the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies. Instead, The CJDS asks for one-time rights to print this original work.
All articles in the journal are assigned a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
Authors are asked to contact the journal Editor if they wish to post the article on any website; translate or authorize a translation of the article; copy or otherwise reproduce the article, in any format, beyond what is permitted under Canadian copyright law, or authorize others to do so; copy or otherwise reproduce portions of the article, including tables and figures, beyond what is permitted under Canadian copyright law, or authorize others to do so.
Contacting the Editor will simply allow us to track the use and distribution of your article. We encourage use for non-commercial, educational purposes.
Authors must provide proof of permission clearance prior to the publication of their work if they are including images or other materials that are not their own. Keep in mind that such clearance can at times be costly, and often takes time. The journal editor can often work with you to seek permissions if you need information, advice or assistance.
