The Metanarrative of Blindness: A Re-reading of Twentieth-Century Anglophone Writing

Community, Controversy, and Compromise: The Terminology of Visual Impairment

16 Community, Controversy, and Compromise The Terminology of Visual Impairment On the topic of terminology, as noted in David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder ’s introduction to The Body and Physical Difference (1997), there has been “much debate within the disability community” (25), from which we may infer a couple of things that are germane to this chapter: first, that there has also been much debate without the disability community and, second, that the community is not undermined by debate. Indeed, in part, it is because there has been so much debate without the disability community that the debate within is now inevitable.1 The language we use is institutionally ableist, from the etymology to the most sophisticated of metaphorical applications, meaning that our choice of terminology is inherently problematic. Explored at some length in this chapter, these are the conditions in which we work, and I, for one, must admit to arriving at nothing better than a terminological compromise, even while departing from my learned colleagues in literary and cultural disability studies—and, more specifically, from those in the field of representing visual impairment. The chapter considers a selection of concepts, models, and critical approaches that, for the past three or four decades, have informed various debates within the disability community about terminological typology . Attention is paid to dominant terms like blindness and the blind, the usage of which went largely unchallenged until the 1960s but was, and is, fundamentally troublesome. Consequently, several critical responses Community, Controversy, and Compromise • 17 were ventured as the disability movement gained momentum in the 1970s. Most important, as pointed out in Colin Barnes and Geof Mercer ’s Disability (2003), the radical social model of disability challenged the idea that disability was an “inescapable biological destiny” (12); it drew a line between biological impairment and social disability. Given this empowering shift it is perhaps ironic that many academics and activists have endeavored to strengthen the disability community by problematizing the radical model, that some have endorsed a move toward a diverse cultural model in which the use of language plays a no less important part. Indeed, the terms used in this book, people who have visual impairments and people who do not have visual impairments, assist the deconstruction of the metanarrative of blindness by ascribing lack to the normate subject position. Ableist Traditions When considering the terminological typology of visual impairment, not to mention the effect of ocularnormativism and the representation of people who have visual impairments in general, a concept with which we should be familiar is ocularcentrism. This term denotes a perspective— and, by extension, a subject position—that is dominated by vision, as is illustrated with reference to language and metaphor in Martin Jay’s Downcast Eyes (1994): Even a rapid glance at the language we commonly use will demonstrate the ubiquity of visual metaphors. If we actively focus our attention on them, vigilantly keeping an eye out for those deeply embedded as well as those on the surface, we can gain an illuminating insight into the complex mirroring of perception and language. Depending, of course, on one’s outlook or point of view, the prevalence of such metaphors will be accounted an obstacle or an aid to our knowledge of reality. It is, however, no idle speculation or figment of imagination to claim that if blinded to their importance, we will damage our ability to inspect the world outside and introspect the world within. And our prospects for escaping their thrall, if indeed that is even a foreseeable goal, will be greatly dimmed. In lieu of an exhaustive survey of such metaphors, whose scope is far too broad to allow an easy synopsis, this opening paragraph should suggest how ineluctable the modality of the visual actually is, at least in our linguistic practice. (1) 18 • the metanarrative of blindness The paragraph is steeped in explicitly and implicitly visual terms and phrases, unashamedly playful language that informs and is informed by the central figure. This metaphor uses sight as a vehicle, while the tenor of its meaning pertains to knowledge. The result is a positive perpetuation of ocularcentrism that I deem ocularnormative, for the use of visual terms to make epistemological points invokes the notion that seeing is synonymous with knowing, that visual perception is necessarily the normal way of gathering knowledge.2 A negative perpetuation of ocularnormativism is demonstrable, too, most obviously in Jay’s use of the word...