ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which narratives of disability organise Scottish studies by constituting the state of undesirability that critical discourse helps overcome through alternative, positive conceptualisations of culture and literature. It suggests that the perceived urgency of this task is rooted in the imbrication of the field with a nationalist context. The chapter considers how derogatory disability imagery and narratives of cure are deployed, first, on the level of the process whereby the essence of a Scottish literary tradition is defined and, second, on the level of the selection of representative themes in Scottish writing. It suggests the ways in which a disability studies perspective may enable a reconfiguration of the field. One of the major preoccupations in cultural disability studies concerns the ways in which cultural discourses harness the power of disability as a narrative device in order to shore up the values of the regime of the normal.
