‘Half a man? Still a human’: Photo-stories to dismantle unsettling representations and re-define the self-identities of men living with paraplagia

Abstract

Disability in anglophone media, film and culture is often depicted in ways that rarely recognise people with disabilities as whole human beings. This creates deficit perceptions on what it means to live with a disability. Through the use of photo-voice, fifteen working-class coloured men living with paraplegia in the townships of Cape Town–South Africa, created photo-stories depicting the ways in which they think main-stream society sees them and the ways in which they see themselves. The analysis of their photo-stories was used to contribute to a discourse on photo-voice as activism. The photo-stories raise social awareness on the ways in which disability is socially (mis)understood and (mis)represented in their communities. This work contributes to the development of the affirmative model (Swain & French. 2000 Towards an affirmation model of disability. Disability & Society, 15(4), 569–582. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687590050058189) and the active model of disability (Levitt. 2017. Developing a model of disability that focuses on the actions of disabled people. Disability & Society, 32(5), 735–747. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2017.1324764). The thought-provoking photo-stories tell a narrative on reclaiming self-identity and redefining deficit meanings of disability. Ultimately, this work illustrates how powerful and radical the use of photo-voice can be as an epistemological tool for social change, representation and transformation.