Troubling narratives about dis/ability and the social encounter through conversations between narrative inquiry, critical disability studies, and geographies of disability.

Abstract \nPoints of interest This article explores written narratives produced by two ‘abled’ people about a social encounter, or event, with a ‘disabled’ person in an inland Chinese city. To interpret these, I draw upon principles and approaches associated with narrative inquiry, critical disability studies and geographies of disability. I identify the structural elements, sequentiality, and themes (e.g. fear, pity and especially anxiety, or perplexity) permeating these narratives as well as their lack of resolution, or closure. Later, I situate these narratives within wider discursive contexts albeit while emphasising how perplexity emerges through a lack of identity, or rupture, between words and the world. These troubling and perplexing narratives register the fragility of symbolic systems and the troubled subject positions these enable/disable. Nevertheless, and crucially, these narratives also trouble the taken-for-grantedness of ostensibly stable <bold>abled</bold>/<italic>disabled</italic> categories, persons, and objects, in ways which may permit realisation of things outside reductive hierarchical binaries. This article presents insights into how ‘abled’ people reflect upon, and narrate, social encounters with ‘disabled’ people. To do so, I draw upon two written accounts referring to events in and around two inland Chinese cities. Powerful yet simplistic ways of thinking about ability and disability which are grounded in language, society and culture shaped how participants saw and made sense of the disabled people they encountered. Participants also felt a mismatch between the ways they had been taught to think about ability and disability and how these ‘things’ appeared through the social encounter. Consequently, participants seemed to experience symptoms resembling definitions of anxiety. These anxieties are productive. They emerge when people begin to perceive the imprecision, and limits, of categories like self and other and ‘abled’ and ‘disabled’. In this article, I try to show potential for conversation, and dialogue, between not only narrative inquiry, critical disability studies and geographies of disability but also ‘ability’ and ‘disability’. This article presents insights into how ‘abled’ people reflect upon, and narrate, social encounters with ‘disabled’ people. To do so, I draw upon two written accounts referring to events in and around two inland Chinese cities.Powerful yet simplistic ways of thinking about ability and disability which are grounded in language, society and culture shaped how participants saw and made sense of the disabled people they encountered.Participants also felt a mismatch between the ways they had been taught to think about ability and disability and how these ‘things’ appeared through the social encounter. Consequently, participants seemed to experience symptoms resembling definitions of anxiety.These anxieties are productive. They emerge when people begin to perceive the imprecision, and limits, of categories like self and other and ‘abled’ and ‘disabled’.In this article, I try to show potential for conversation, and dialogue, between not only narrative inquiry, critical disability studies and geographies of disability but also ‘ability’ and ‘disability’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]