RationaleFollowing the completion of my PhD (Perselli, 2001) I was astonished to discover that although this research was ostensibly about 'disability', I had never once reflected on, or even referred back to personal experience of disability within my own family; centering the work entirely on my present-day role as a mainstream teacher in Special Educational Needs in the United Kingdom, striving to achieve an 'inclusive' school environment. This unconscious distancing of the world of lived experience from my professional persona was both disarming and intriguing; not least since the dissertation text resulted in an impassioned call for recognition of memory, affect and imaginative conjecture as important elements of the study. The fact that at the time of researching and writing I had apparently forgotten such an important aspect of a formative period of my life continued to fascinate me. Data The primary content of my paper is therefore an autobiographical story (Perselli, 2004a), in which a woman uses a stimulus from her everyday life - driving - as a means towards recollection of her early childhood and adolescence; growing up on the forecourt of the garage owned by her (disabled) grandfather. This enables her to recognise various emotional and intellectual influences on who she is becoming as she matures, and indeed as she writes her narrative, since the narrative itself effects changes in her self-understanding. Although the story unfolds within a distinct geographical and historical locality, with close attention to the detail of these, there are strong suggestions that more recent events are motivating the speaker - in this instance the transition from school teacher to teacher educator (Stronach and MacLure 1997: 116-130), which for the narrator are 'points of grieving and celebration'. The story ranges across past and present in its quest to recognise the self within the social, the political in relations and in tension with the personal and the desire to understand and challenge current notions of 'disability' and 'inclusion'. SignificanceThe story text is then deconstructed via the author's reading of Barthes (also Foucault et al), which enables the author to identify the subjects of the story - as distinct from its 'subjectivities'. This particular technique of layering text upon text is a method I have evolved through previous projects (Perselli, 2002, 2004b; 2004c). It has proved useful towards obtaining diverse perspectives (Perselli, 2003) on aspects of identity and selfhood: 'the cumulative cultural text of teacher' (Weber & Mitchell 1995: 1-19). It derives from feminist critical pedagogy such as Haug et al (1983), Spivak (1993), hooks (1994), looking backwards to the theatre of Brecht and forward to feminist film-making; seeking to be both affective: 'biography becomes... an act of love, by being all there, in the ether' and provocative: 'it was private property, you could do what you like'; and to Barthes' (1968) surrealist 'jolt' of the unexpected: 'And that's what I like most these days, saying something unexpected... which makes somebody smile' that deliberately shifts the emphasis from writer/narrator to reader/audience. I contend that reconsideration of Bathes' ideas on literature: 'Today, writing is not 'telling' but saying that one is telling... contemporary literature is no longer descriptive but transitive' (Barthes, 1966) has particular significance for the understanding of our work as teachers and actors, and the function of a story towards the creation of a critical community which can take our thinking forward; an autobiographical text having always an aim in view beyond the object itself.