障礙者以權利協商主體──在汙名下繪製「常與異」光譜的法意識

Revisualizing“Normal and Abnormal”as a Continuum: Rights, Stigma, and Legal Consciousness of People with Disability

障礙者遭受就業歧視時，經常面臨是否以及如何主張權利的困境。權利究竟對障礙者產生何種意義？「權利－－身分遞迴理論」著眼於障礙者主張權利與身分認同之間不斷相互建構的法意識，但仍需要深究在此過程中，障礙者在對抗社會汙名時與權利產生何種關聯，以及權利對於障礙者建構身分主體產生何種作用。本研究訪談11 位障礙者，分析在面臨工作歧視時，他們的法意識社會建構過程，包括如何回應他人對其障礙身分的感知，以及決定是否主張權利的關鍵。本研究發現，對障礙者而言，每一次權利與身分認同的具體情境都是在協商其汙名，透過重新詮釋「常與異」的過程，決定其是否現身、如何現身的主體建構。最後進一步指出，權利有助於障礙者發展協商主體，當在互動中得以將「常與異」的二分框架轉變為概念光譜時，他們藉由調整自己在光譜中的位置，繪製出各自感到適當的法意識軌跡圖像。

When people with disabilities suffer from employment discrimination, they are often faced with the dilemma of whether and how to claim their rights. What is the meaning of rights for people with disabilities? The recursive theory of rights and identity focuses on the legal consciousness and mutual construction of the identity and rights of a person with disabilities, however, less is known about how this process and subject construction are affected when people with disabilities struggle for combating social stigma and develop their way of relating to law. By interviewing 11 people with disabilities who experienced employment discrimination, this research analyzes the social process in which legal consciousness and identity are constructed, and explores further the decision-making process involved in choosing whether or not to claim one’s rights. The findings implicate that this choice often relies on a discriminated partie’s willingness to “appear” as different, which involves a stigma and the measurement of the boundary between normal and abnormal. For these people, each instance in which their rights and identity are questioned entails a process of reinterpreting the concepts of normal and abnormal, while they decide whether or not to “appear”, and to what extent to “appear”. This article further posits that by considering normal and abnormal as two ends of a continuum, as opposed to a binary concept, people with disabilities are better equipped to negotiate a position that suits their personhood.