'My existence is resistance': an analysis of disabled peoples everyday lives as an enduring form of resistance

Disabled people continuously find themselves in situations where they must justify their existence and presence within society. This has been seen most recently in the context of COVID-19 with a number of disabled people having ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ orders applied to them with little consultation (BIHR, 2020). Alongside this, the past ten years have seen disabled people face an onslaught of cuts to social care and personal income under austerity, challenging disabled people’s right to independence and participation in society. The above raise the poignant question of ‘whose life counts?’ or is of more value. For some disabled people, remaining alive in spite of such challenges to one’s existence, is itself a form of resistance. This chapter will therefore challenge conventional and idealised notions of resistance by drawing upon disabled peoples’ direct narratives of how their everyday lives and bodies may constitute material forms of resistance, refusing to be ignored or left behind throughout time. These biographical narratives are drawn from a geographical doctoral study focusing on the lives disabled people involved in activism in response to austerity. The chapter will draw upon both feminist scholarship and critical disability studies in order to illuminate the often unrecognised everyday acts of resistance and the liminal spaces in which they take place.