The cultural phenomenon of blindness is comprised of a variety of labels, prejudices and attitudes which are typical for, so to speak, ‘normal’ people. Bolt’s study explores its metanarrative in twentieth-century English and American literature. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2016.1233658 The significance of personal experience in Disability Studies is impossible to underestimate. David Bolt, a widely known scholar (registered as blind in his teens), briefly sketches his own experience and starts The Metanarrative of Blindness with the definitions, which are crucial in Disability Studies. Among them the terms ocularnormativism and ocularcentrism – which mean personal or mass endorsement of visual necessity (5) – ‘normate’, and also certain perceptions and images of the blind.
Bolt considers disability as a cultural construct although this approach is sometimes criticized because it does not account for some realities of disabilities (e.g. pain, physical discomfort, emotional unease, etc.). In Chapter 1 Bolts explores definitions, models and approaches which have been widely debated within the disability community during the last four decades. Among these are the controversy of medical (biological) and social approaches to disability, the ‘ableist tradition’ (recently popular in Body Studies). Bolt especially focuses on the terminology of visual impairment (including the notion of ‘blind’). Following the tradition of lessening (instead of absence, i.e. visual impairment instead of blindness), Bolt emphasizes that the vision has always some limitations and nobody can see everything (33). Bolt develops this idea in Chapter 2, stressing out that some manifestations of ‘normate’ reductionism can be traced in literary writings of the twentieth century, especially when the writer reduces the description of characters to the images of ‘blind man’ or ‘blind girl’ (35). Therefore blindness is often perceived as a main (or even single) feature of a literary character in the story ‘They’ by R. Kipling in which the main protagonist, a beautiful young lady who lost her vision in her early childhood, was sure that ‘nobody marries a blind girl’ (37). Bolt also analyzes some other literary works of that period in which the blind girl is passive, helpless and sometimes infantile for the metanarrative of blindness. These notions derive from earlier image of the ‘helpless blind girl’ reflected in literary works (i.e. in ‘The last days of Pompeii’ by E. Bulwer-Lytton). A shift in perceptions of the blind girl took place during the twentieth century and Bolt demonstrates this with the example of the mysterious novella by S. King, ‘The Langoliers.’ There this label has another meaning because the blind girl – again helpless and infantile – is 10 years old (41). Moreover, this little blind girl is sometimes depicted in terms which are more typical for another label – the blind man –and Bolt compares these two labels, analyzing the short story by D.H. Lawrence ‘The blind man’ in which the main character (who was blinded during the war) is also described as passive but at the same time as a strong blind man (42). Therefore, the scholar elucidates functions and transformations of some terms and labels which have been discussed in the previous chapter. Chapter 3 considers blindness and related issues in the psychoanalytic context. Bolt claims that eye symbolism is often sexual because in cultural imagination eyes, especially women’s eyes, are sexy. Bolt considers such a perception a consequence of ocularcentric/ophthalmocentric castration or, using his own definition, ‘normate reductionism’ that is central for the metanarrative of blindness. A popular culture also contains image of blind as not being sexual or ‘sufficiently’ sexual. Chapter 4 focuses on very widespread images of the blind persons’ hands and haptic perception. These notions are very popular in many cultures and epochs, with one result being an assumption that blind people are good physiotherapists (68). Drawing on some texts (by J. Joyce, J. Kelman, and others) Bolt analyzes similar ophthalmocentric views. These notions are regularly reflected in expressions like ‘fingers that see’ (75). Chapter 5 draws mostly on notions of groping and gripping as something dangerous. An image of the blind as contagious prompts avoiding him or her. Bolt analyzes an ‘avoidance reaction’ as a consequence of psychosocial barriers (80–81). The scholar shows the mechanism of distancing from this stigmatized person through examining several texts of science fiction. A fear of blindness is a fear of the Other who poses a threat to the ocularcentric position and hence should be avoided. Chapter 6 concentrates mainly on concepts of ‘look,’ ‘stare,’ and/or ‘gaze’ as ocularnormative definitions. Bolt considers them as most important means of communicating (the language of gazes) and also highlights the related prejudices – the danger of a gaze or stare, especially the Other’s gaze. In this respect we can remember the notion of an evil eye in many popular cultures. Bolt follows Sartre in exploring feelings of vulnerability for both the sighted and the blind, as the unseen gaze may mean a hidden and unescapable danger (e.g. the effect of the Orwellian panoptical screen) (97). Bolt analyzes some literary works dealing with the so-called ‘spectacles of the blind’ (which conceal his ‘unseen gaze’) – and some other ophthalmocentric notions. In Chapter 7 the author turns to popular literature in which much advice is given about the means of overcoming diseases and disabilities. Bolt agrees that this ‘self-help’ attempts to oppose lives worth living and those that are not. These recommendations provoke debates about ‘assisted suicide’ for disabled people, and Bolt defines this position as a culturally assisted suicide (111–112). Further he explores two texts (by J. Conrad and J.M. Synge) as illustrations of this argument. Some aspects of these problems have been also depicted in the novel by Vladimir Nabokov Camera Obscura (1932 Nabokov, V. 1932. Kamera Obscura. New York: Boobs-Merrill Company.) in which the protagonist suddenly lost his eyesight. His tragic story may be perceived as life not worth living. This novel reflects other notions mentioned by Bolt – related to helplessness and uselessness of the blind. These qualities of stigmatized persons are the reasons not only for suicide but for murder (the main character was murdered by his young wife and her lover). Concluding his fascinating book, Bolt claims that the Anglophone literature of the twentieth century reflects essential features of the metanarrative of blindness. His brilliant examination of literary texts succeeds in dismantling long-lived concepts and deconstructing some stereotypes which are so widespread in our ophthalmocentric world. Elena Katz School of Geography, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK elena.k...@ouce.ox.ac.uk -- Avinash Shahi Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list..
