Abstract
- Twenty-six self-defined physically disabled professionals’ open-ended personal narratives from a performance perspective highlight the cultural struggle over physically disabled professional identity. Physically disabled professional identity materializes through the performance of four ‘hero’ characters engaging in ongoing social ‘battles’ that reference American and Judeo-Christian myths. The heroes re-emerge across narratives as a means to negotiate the anxiety surrounding the physically disabled body performing within a cultural space that seeks to render the body irrelevant in its pursuit of cerebral reasoning and intellect. Physically disabled professional ‘heroes,’ allow cultural members to reduce complex people into basic characters that avoid facing human mortality. Acknowledging culturally constituted heroes provides a means to potentially dismantle the stigma surrounding the physically disabled body in daily performance.