Scroungers and Superhumans: Images of Disability from the Summer of 2012: A Visual Inquiry

Abstract

Through the summer of 2012, two opposing sets of images dominated the British press. Welfare benefits reform met the Paralympics, the former casting disabled people as scroungers, the latter as superhumans. Seemingly independent yet intertwined, the images create a collective picture in the mind of what it is to be disabled. This collective imagining shapes and reinforces government policy on austerity cuts and benefits reform, with profound influence upon the everyday lives of disabled people. Caught between the two conflicting image sets, disabled people’s real lives are rendered invisible, even as they feel the full force of the images. This visual inquiry examines how the dominance of such images might practically be contested by creating counter images which reveal a very different and more truthful imagining of what it might be to be disabled.

Keywords

austerity benefits reform disabled disability London 2012 Paralympics representation visual activism welfare benefits

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