By: Tara Brar.
I’m a research assistant for the Disability Archives Lab, working on The Labour of Belonging: Disabled Archivists & Archival Work.
Before joining the project, my views on disability were essentially the societal “defaults,” where disability is inherently negative, a lack, or something to keep private. I had an underlying feeling that being disabled was something to be at least a little embarrassed about, but I hadn’t thought critically about where that embarrassment was coming from–or identified it. One short year later—after working on a project led by and focused on disabled people—that underlying feeling started to fade. For the first time, I feel (reasonably) comfortable with openly identifying as disabled, which is no small thing.
Using in-depth interviews with disabled archivists, The Labour of Belonging investigates some of the existing barriers for disabled people in the archival field. In total, 12 archivists were interviewed from across North America, with backgrounds in various types of archives (e.g. government, community, corporate). Through these interviews I had conversations with disabled people working in archives. Despite the geographical differences and diverse work histories, common themes emerged around disclosure, accommodations, and workplace culture, suggesting that disabled archivists encounter obstacles—external and internal—at all points in the employment cycle.
During the interviews, we asked participants, more generally, about their relationship to disability, and whether being disabled was a core part of their identity. And I found myself asking that same question about my own identity; it was clear that, for me, it definitely was not. I realized how, previous to this research, I rarely thought about disability except when confronted with bureaucratic barriers. The word had certainly popped up in my life, but always just as a brief necessary declaration on a form (i.e. I was disabled because I met whatever definition of disability the student funding application had listed, not because it had anything to do with who I am as a person).
My definition of disability became a little less bureaucratic and more personal as I reviewed the interview transcripts, and I started noticing similarities between the participants’ experiences and my own. Well, in actuality, my unexpectedly emotional responses were an unsubtle hint that something was hitting a bit close to home. Hearing one of the participants talk about their depression, for example, and workplace pressure to be more outgoing, to smile more, to be friendlier … I was right back there, feeling all that judgment with them.
Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking about why I’d compartmentalized disability and kept it separate from my concept of self. Of course, social stigma around disability is one of the contributing factors, as is the prominent view of mental illness being not entirely ”real.” And I’ve also been reading a lot about internalized ableism, where ableist norms and prejudices about disability are internalized, resulting in many disabled people trying to “pass” as able-bodied or to minimize their disability. Questioning the “validity” of mental illness and internalized ableism came up in several of the interviews, and this, too, resonated deeply with my own experiences. Growing up, mental illness—or mental health, or mental anything—was not part of my world’s vocabulary, and it was only after high school that I began to acknowledge the extent to which my mental illnesses impact, complicate, and even somewhat shape my existence.
But a third, more significant, contributing factor to the disconnect between living with vs identifying with my disabilities is the ways my other identities have taken precedence over being disabled. As is pretty commonly the case, my mental illnesses were coupled to various addictions, and there was a period of time where substance use was always the most immediate crisis in my life. A consequence of this period was that, of all the axes of my identity, the “addict” part was (or is?) the one I identified with most. More than being a female or a Canadian or Punjabi or a student or a vegetarian or whatever else, I was an addict first and foremost. And addicts aren’t disabled; they’re just, you know, addict-y.
Given the general attitudes around disability and addiction, I doubt one has much advantage over the other, in terms of social status and treatment. But for me, considering the relationship between disability and addiction has definitely made an important conceptual difference. Recognizing disability as a large facet of my identity has been an unexpectedly healing process in terms of letting go of some of the shame that accompanies addiction, and the conditioning that it was always me that was the “problem.” Through this research process I’ve developed more compassion towards myself all around, thinking of all the accommodations and help I did not (or do not) receive.
My next task for the project is to keep digging into the literature about “internalized ableism,” so I expect there’s some upcoming self-reflection there as well. It is frustrating, in a way, and tiring, to have to recognize and then undo all the ways I’ve been unwittingly shaped by my environment—and by ableism. But since the alternative is remaining unaware and continuing to indiscriminately internalize negative beliefs about disability, self-reflection seems worth the effort.
About the Author
Tara Brar is a Research Assistant for the Disability Archives Lab working on The Labor of Belonging: Disabled Archivists & Archival Work. She is a disabled, neurodiverse, senior-year undergraduate at McGill University, pursuing a major in physics and a minor in math. She’s interested in internalized ableism and the systemic and internal barriers faced by disabled people. She is the Founder and President of McGill Students for Science-based Addiction Treatment (MSSAT) Tara is brown, queer, and Canadian.
For more on The Labor of Belonging for Disabled Archivists, visit our Projects page.