Paper Short Abstract:

An argument for the storying of personal experiences of disability through contemporary performance storytelling as an effective ethnographic methodology for unwriting ableism within folk narratives. An autoethnographic comparative analysis of creative process and outcomes of disabled storytellers.

Paper Abstract:

As a disabled traditional storyteller and folklorist, much of my academic and creative practice centres around unwriting ableist folklore through scholarly research and experimental storytelling performance. In written form, folk narrative is divorced from oral context, static, rather than a fluid element of the carrying stream. Similarly, within the textbook, doctors report and written ethnography disability experiences are medicalised and depersonalised, separated from the holistic perception of the disabled individual within their cultural context. Storying disability experiences makes context indivisible, and content accessible to scholarly, disabled and general audiences alike.

This paper argues storying personal experiences of disability is an effective ethnographic mythology for unwriting ableism in folk narratives. Using autoethnographical and fieldwork evidence, this paper will demonstrate performance-based ethnography allows for dialectical thinking, the centring of lived experience and the retention of the inherent orality of traditional narrative, creating a site of radical unwriting.

My methodology will utilise the theoretical frameworks of intersectional disability scholarship such as Radner and Lasers theories of encodement and the work of Rosemarie Garland Thomson and Elizabeth Donaldson to analyse creative experiences of disabled traditional storytellers working with ableist narratives. My autoethnographical approach is based on reflexive interrogation of my process creating Cassandra, a storytelling show which became a site for unwriting ableism within witchcraft folklore and storying my experiences of seizure and neurodiversity. Additional fieldwork evidence is drawn from interviews with fellow disabled creatives working with personal narratives of disability, ill health and neurodiversity and folkloric elements, including selkie, changeling and heroic tales.