Whose Life Is It Anyway? Disabled Life Stories in Post-reform China

Abstract

The representation of disabled people in all forms of cultural production has been shown in the Western context to have a history that closely reflects ideological changes in the perception of not just the body, but also of individuality and social relations. 1 This chapter turns our attention to the production of life stories of and by disabled people in China to demonstrate how such ideological shifts, particularly with regard to the latter two notions of individuality and social relations, are revealed and experienced in a very different cultural context. I consider here the role and motives of the Chinese state in both compiling biographical narratives about disabled people and publicising certain autobiographies written by disabled people, and demonstrate the often more creative and authoritative ways in which disabled people have begun to tell the stories of their lives and experiences as they explore the possibilities of new genres and develop new ways of engaging with their audiences. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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