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

Come-to-Bed Eyes: Ophthalmocentrism, Ocularcentrism, and Sumbolic Castration

51 Come-to-Bed Eyes Ophthalmocentrism, Ocularcentrism, and Symbolic Castration As we consider the mechanics of the way in which labels such as blind girl and blind man invoke the metanarrative of blindness, it becomes clear that blindness-castration synonymy is something of a cardinal motif. Though easily traced back to ancient times, the motif is used in many ways and afforded new significance by Modernism, especially in relation to eugenics and psychoanalysis. In fact, Charles Rycroft’s A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (1968) states that the word castration frequently denotes things other than anatomy, surgery, the removal of the testes, things such as masturbation, asexualization, and emasculation. That all three of these denotations accord with the metanarrative of blindness is the starting point for this chapter. The first thing to note about the trilogy of denotations is that masturbation and asexualization are often interrelated. Rather than anatomy, the word castration may pertain to the loss of the penis, as in “threats used to deter little boys caught masturbating” (Rycroft 15). This definition corresponds with an institutionalized anxiety, masturbation mania, that was experienced by many people who had visual impairments in early twentieth-century Britain.1 It has been documented, for instance, that at the Royal Manchester Road School for the Blind, one pupil was bemused by the severity of the punishment incurred when caught play fighting with another boy: he was given hundreds of lines about being rude to himself, was ignored for days, and had a reprimanding letter sent 52 • the metanarrative of blindness to his father (Humphries and Gordon 103). Such was the preoccupation with masturbation that any sign of dormitory activity was deemed suspicious. Hence, at the Birmingham Royal Institution for the Blind, another boy was not only falsely accused but also taught that masturbation would lead to the loss of his remaining vision (Humphries and Gordon 104).2 The underpinning assumption at the time was that people who had visual impairments would not have sexual partners, that masturbation was the only available means of expressing erotic desires. But despite this reductionism, while neither sterilization, marriage restriction , nor compulsory segregation became formal government policies in early twentieth-century Britain (Snyder and Mitchell 120–21), sex segregation was pursued with vigor in most of the institutions where disabled people lived (Humphries and Gordon 101). “We would go back to school in January,” recalls a former pupil at the Royal Manchester Road School for the Blind, “and we weren’t supposed to speak to any girl until we went on holiday in July” (Humphries and Gordon 102). This regime, in its endeavor to reduce the capacity for erotic pleasure, corresponds with the second of Rycroft’s definitions of the term castration. I say this because in effect, as with the numeric displacement of names considered in chapter 2, both sex segregation and masturbation mania keyed people to the metanarrative of blindness on an institutional scale.3 Like masturbation and asexualization, asexualization and emasculation are often interrelated. The “social role of men is to be starers,” observes Rosemarie Garland-Thomson in Staring (2009), and looking masculinizes (146, 42), from which it follows that the inability to look emasculates, an inference that invokes Rycroft’s definition of castration as demoralization in respect of the masculine role.4 In the second half of the twentieth century, according to Allan Dodds’s Rehabilitating Blind and Visually Impaired People (1993), some men suffered severe identity crises, wishing to be recognized as women when presenting for rehabilitation . Dodds’s explanation is that the profound and powerful emotions unleashed by visual impairment bring some men face to face with aspects of themselves that they have previously deemed too feminine and wished to develop, perceiving, as they do, that masculinity can no longer be easily expressed (3–4). But another explanation is that the emasculating castration motif has become part of the metanarrative of blindness to which men who have visual impairments are keyed, largely (though not solely) by others. Man’s social role is starer, woman’s social role is staree; looking masculinizes, being looked at feminizes; and we all internalize and identify with the requirements of the system (Garland- Come-to-Bed Eyes • 53 Thomson, Staring 146, 42). In accordance with this ocularnormative system , it is rendered crucial not only that a man can look, stare, and/or gaze but (given the seeing-knowing synonymy considered in chap. 1) also that a...