Blindness/sightedness: disability studies and the defiance of di-vision

This chapter explores the potential for disability studies to counter the ongoing marginalisation of people living with vision impairment by interrogating ocular-centric and ocular-normative representations of blindness. Though a generally easy-to-define category of impairment, blindness, or vision impairment, is uniquely positioned socially, culturally, politically and theoretically. Ableist notions have a unique impact on concepts of vision, and thus on blindness, to which disability studies scholarship must respond. Both G. Kleege and M. Schillmeier insist that John Locke’s empirical project on blindness not only privileges visual perception, but also privileges sightedness as an authority to speak of blindness experiences. With specific regard to vision impairment, blindness features in the ancient Greek ‘culture of light’ at the limits of social and cultural boundaries, although paradoxically, vision-impaired people are also celebrated for having superior sight. Whether fully or partially sighted, congenitally or adventitiously blind, each person comes to know blindness in particular ways