In April I wrote about Andrea Begley's 'blind' audition for UK TV show The Voice : in that post I wondered how the judges - and the voting public - would deal with the presence of a partially blind singer in the competition. Would they reward her for her voice, or would they vote for her out of a misplaced sense of condescension and pity?
I have enjoyed watching Andrea's progress in the competition. Her folksy, melancholic, guitar-strumming, female-acoustic, singer-songwriter vibe is my favourite kind of music. But in a way I've been more interested in how the show's producers have dealt with her blindness. And I've been pleasantly surprised. In the clips which precede each singer's performance they have focused on Andrea's sense of humour, wit and independent spirit rather than her disability. They showed her at work, travelling with her white cane and chilling with friends and family. There was absolutely no talk of triumph or tragedy. The judges have been less careful in their choice of words. Their repeated use of adjectives like 'inspirational' and 'brave' verge on the patronising and speak more of their own disabling attitudes than of Andrea herself.
Last night I had mixed feelings when Andrea unexpectedly beat favourite Leah McFall to win the show. On the one hand I was of course delighted for her. Not only because this might be her way in to a notoriously shallow and judgemental business, but also because we are desperately in need of positive disabled role models. But even as I type those words I worry that by giving Andrea the responsibility of being a role-model for the visually impaired, I am celebrating her not for her voice, but for her disability. And this is exactly the opposite of what she wanted to achieve by being on the show in the first place.
I hope that Andrea's unexpected win was down to the fact that all those who love her voice voted for her. And also, perhaps, that Leah's fans were lulled into a false sense of security and thought her victory was so guaranteed that they didn't need to bother. But I worry, despite the production team's brilliant handling of Andrea's disability, that there were some people who voted for her out of pity, some people who felt sorry for the poor blind girl. If this is the case, and I fear it is, then attitudes to blindness, indeed to disability in general, have not changed as much as the success of the Paralympics led us to believe. As I prepare to leave for Paris to speak at the International Colloquium on the History of Blindness and the Blind, I am glad that Andrea has earned herself a place in the history both of blindness and of popular culture. But I await the next chapter in her career in the hope that it will put my nagging doubts about the motives of the voting public to rest.
Sunday, 23 June 2013
Wednesday, 5 June 2013
The Taboo of Blindness
Taboo: Corporeal Secrets in Nineteenth Century France
(Oxford: Legenda, 2013)
(Cover image courtesy of the Wellcome Library, London)
When I was a child, blindness was a taboo subject in our house. We never mentioned the word if we could help it and I remember a feeling of icy awkwardness descending if we ever encountered references to blindness or the blind on television. With the exception of The Little House on the Prairie I don't remember being read any books with blind characters in them and I suspect that my mum would rather not have read me the blindness episodes in Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. When we had to talk about what I could and could not see, I referred simply to 'my eyes'. When asked, I might say that I was 'half-blind' or 'registered blind' (in fact I was quite proud of being 'different' or 'special' sometimes) but I did not see myself as 'blind'. This was why I would not carry a white cane and hated 'mobility training' with a vengeance.
It was this refusal, both by me and by those around me, to address my blindness directly which led to my ferocious desire to 'pass' as a sighted person and deny my blind identity. The taboo status of 'blindness' made it a negative notion which I could not relate to my own reality. But it was also this negativity which surrounded 'blindness', a negativity learnt from prevailing societal attitudes to it, which rendered it taboo in the first place. Rather than admitting that I was blind, it felt easier to ignore it and hope others would do the same. It is only in the last eighteen months or so that I have been able to happily embrace my blind identity, an identity which now sits in a sometimes easy, sometimes conflictual, but always interesting relationship with my sighted self.
When I started thinking about how taboo aspects of bodily reality such as female sexual desire, illness, sado-masochism, disability, impotence and incest are represented in nineteenth-century French texts, I had no idea that this project would lead to my own personal interrogation of the taboo on blindness. But in my book, Taboo: Corporeal Secrets in Nineteenth-Century France, published this month, I demonstrate that it is only by engaging with potentially difficult subjects that we can rid them of the negativity which surrounds them. As I argue in my Conclusion:
'The taboo bodies which this study has uncovered are crucially important because they invite us to look again at our own misconceptions of what makes the body normal, beautiful, or perfect. Like the social model of disability, they urge us to rethink our understanding of how bodies relate to the world. [...] Exposure to the taboo is a necessary, though not always a comfortable, part of becoming an engaged and insightful reader. By discovering the form and function of the taboo bodies hidden at the text's heart, the reader is finally free to question his or her own misconceptions and thus begin to relate to bodies of any kind in new and enlightened ways.'
Monday, 27 May 2013
Blindness in Fiction 5: blueeyedboy
I have always loved Joanne Harris's fiction. She is best known for her Vianne Rocher trilogy (Chocolat, The Lollipop Shoes, Peaches for Monsieur le Cure) which hides its dark centre beneath a sugary coating. blueeyedboy, on the other hand, is a thoroughly bleak novel of deceit, danger and death. It is confusing and beguiling in equal measure and even after two readings I am not sure I know exactly who is who and what precisely is what in its world of internet posts where no-one knows what is real and what is fiction.
It is hard to write about this astonishing novel without giving aspects of its complicated plot away, but I can say that it is a novel narrated by two people, both of whom take on more than one persona. At some points, one of the narrators describes the (perhaps imaginary) thoughts of a blind girl or woman. This is one of the most convincing depictions of what it is like to be blind I have come across. It is convincing not through discussions of darkness, tragedy and obstacles to be overcome, but because it describes actions, thoughts and feelings with no mention of vision whatsoever. The descriptions are, instead, full of lavish evocations of sounds, smells, tastes and touches. It is as if the sense of sight has been completely erased from this particular consciousness. But this is done, at first, without alerting the reader to this character's blindness. So it is only much later on in the narrative that it occurs to us that these descriptions have been written by someone who does not see. And the most exciting thing about this is that it is not until we begin to suspect the character's blindness that we notice the absence of the visual. Before this point, there is no sense that anything is missing from this character's interactions with the world. And this is precisely how the blind experience the world: not as a place of absence or lack from which the most important sense has been removed, but as an all encompassing sound-, smell-, touch- and taste-scape.
Harris can pull off this trick of writing blindness without lack because her writing has always been extraordinarily sensual. Sighted characters throughout her books revel in the tastes and smells which surround them in a way which calls into question the traditional hierarchy of the senses. In her best-known book Chocolat, this is epitomised in the magical smells, tastes and textures creates by Vianne in her shop in the south of France. In blueeyedboy Harris gives us a blind character whose interactions with the world are rooted in her non-visual senses. But she also shows us sighted characters who relate to all their senses in extremely powerful ways.
I love this book because as well as providing a gratifyingly positive representation of blindness, it also challenges the perceived primacy of sight by suggesting that vision is not as all-powerful as people tend to believe. Through the world of the internet we learn that nothing is as it seems and that the words which we glimpse on a computer screen might trick us in a way that smell, taste and sound do not. Indeed of all the characters in the book, it is perhaps the blind girl who is most perceptive about the world around her and the people in it.
It is hard to write about this astonishing novel without giving aspects of its complicated plot away, but I can say that it is a novel narrated by two people, both of whom take on more than one persona. At some points, one of the narrators describes the (perhaps imaginary) thoughts of a blind girl or woman. This is one of the most convincing depictions of what it is like to be blind I have come across. It is convincing not through discussions of darkness, tragedy and obstacles to be overcome, but because it describes actions, thoughts and feelings with no mention of vision whatsoever. The descriptions are, instead, full of lavish evocations of sounds, smells, tastes and touches. It is as if the sense of sight has been completely erased from this particular consciousness. But this is done, at first, without alerting the reader to this character's blindness. So it is only much later on in the narrative that it occurs to us that these descriptions have been written by someone who does not see. And the most exciting thing about this is that it is not until we begin to suspect the character's blindness that we notice the absence of the visual. Before this point, there is no sense that anything is missing from this character's interactions with the world. And this is precisely how the blind experience the world: not as a place of absence or lack from which the most important sense has been removed, but as an all encompassing sound-, smell-, touch- and taste-scape.
Harris can pull off this trick of writing blindness without lack because her writing has always been extraordinarily sensual. Sighted characters throughout her books revel in the tastes and smells which surround them in a way which calls into question the traditional hierarchy of the senses. In her best-known book Chocolat, this is epitomised in the magical smells, tastes and textures creates by Vianne in her shop in the south of France. In blueeyedboy Harris gives us a blind character whose interactions with the world are rooted in her non-visual senses. But she also shows us sighted characters who relate to all their senses in extremely powerful ways.
I love this book because as well as providing a gratifyingly positive representation of blindness, it also challenges the perceived primacy of sight by suggesting that vision is not as all-powerful as people tend to believe. Through the world of the internet we learn that nothing is as it seems and that the words which we glimpse on a computer screen might trick us in a way that smell, taste and sound do not. Indeed of all the characters in the book, it is perhaps the blind girl who is most perceptive about the world around her and the people in it.
Saturday, 18 May 2013
International Conference: The History of Blindness and the Blind
UPDATE: Read my account of the conference's impact here.
I have only recently realised that blindness is a subject worthy of academic research. My previous academic work focuses on the body first in the novels of Emile Zola, and then in the nineteenth-century novel more widely, but I have only 'come out' as a disabled scholar - and a scholar of disability - in the last 18 months.
My work on blindness is both personal and professional. The wonderful writings of Cathy Kudlick and Georgina Kleege have inspired me to see my own blindness in a positive way, whilst the crucially important history of blindness in France, Vivre Sans Voir (The Blind in French Society) by the majestic Zina Weygand demonstrates how crucial it is that the blind are able to both write and read a history of our own. Thanks to Cathy, Georgina and Zina I can feel an urgency behind my own research into how blindness and the blind are represented in French culture which comes from both a need to change the way blindness is perceived and a desire to finally speak a history which has been neglected for far too long.
I hope that the International Colloquium on the History of Blindness and the Blind which takes place in Paris next month will change both public and academic perceptions of blindness. As a member of the organising committee I have been able to put my new-found belief in the importance of blindness into practice by helping to organise a major historical and cultural event which pushes blindness to the forefront of the academic agenda. As a speaker at the conference I will have the chance to meet and talk with leading historians of blindness from around the world. Now all I have to do is write my paper.
Attendance at the conference, which takes place in Paris from 27-29 June is free but advance registration is essential by emailing: histoire.cecite@singer-polignac.org
I have only recently realised that blindness is a subject worthy of academic research. My previous academic work focuses on the body first in the novels of Emile Zola, and then in the nineteenth-century novel more widely, but I have only 'come out' as a disabled scholar - and a scholar of disability - in the last 18 months.
My work on blindness is both personal and professional. The wonderful writings of Cathy Kudlick and Georgina Kleege have inspired me to see my own blindness in a positive way, whilst the crucially important history of blindness in France, Vivre Sans Voir (The Blind in French Society) by the majestic Zina Weygand demonstrates how crucial it is that the blind are able to both write and read a history of our own. Thanks to Cathy, Georgina and Zina I can feel an urgency behind my own research into how blindness and the blind are represented in French culture which comes from both a need to change the way blindness is perceived and a desire to finally speak a history which has been neglected for far too long.
I hope that the International Colloquium on the History of Blindness and the Blind which takes place in Paris next month will change both public and academic perceptions of blindness. As a member of the organising committee I have been able to put my new-found belief in the importance of blindness into practice by helping to organise a major historical and cultural event which pushes blindness to the forefront of the academic agenda. As a speaker at the conference I will have the chance to meet and talk with leading historians of blindness from around the world. Now all I have to do is write my paper.
Attendance at the conference, which takes place in Paris from 27-29 June is free but advance registration is essential by emailing: histoire.cecite@singer-polignac.org
Monday, 13 May 2013
On Giving Directions to the Blind
Last week I visited the RNIB to use their research library. I had found a couple of promising nineteenth-century texts through their online catalogue and as I had to be in London on Friday anyway, I made an appointment and requested the materials.
As this was my first visit to Judd Street I was looking forward to seeing how visiting an overtly blind-friendly environment differed from my usual experiences. I find going to unfamiliar places challenging and disorienting and usually need some help to find my way around at first. But surely the RNIB would be different?
I planned my route from King's Cross using the excellent map I found on the RNIB website. As well as giving street names in large print, it has useful landmarks like shops, traffic lights and post boxes marked on it too. Even though I'd never been there before I easily found my way to the well-signed entrance.
But once I was inside things were less clear. At a desk which I took to be Reception I gave my name and asked directions to the research library. The response I received was not quite what I was expecting: 'Just through there' said the receptionist, pointing vaguely. As I don't find visual gestures very enlightening, I asked for a bit more detail: 'It's just down there' wasn't quite the response I was hoping for.
Nonplussed by this less-than-helpful welcome, I headed into what I now know is the shop and asked the next person I came across for directions. He didn't appear to know that the RNIB had a research library, but his colleague helpfully told me to walk round to my left until I came to a low desk. Finally a set of directions that I could relate to! I collected my documents and spent a happy couple of hours reading about Victorian visitors to the Institute for the Blind in Paris.
But my mind kept wandering back to my disappointing welcome. How was it that the UK's leading charity for blind people was so resolutely reliant on the visual? I had been expecting tactile floor guides, Braille notices and an abundance of aural clues. Instead I was given a welcome that compared pretty unfavourably with the help I get in most 'sighted' environments.
At first I was shocked and upset that the RNIB of all people weren't doing more to challenge the hierarchy of the senses. But then I had a thought. One of the main aims of the RNIB is to help those with sight loss come to terms with their condition. They believe in 'rehabilitation' 'adaptation' and 'quality of life'. So perhaps their unhelpful welcome was not a result of ignorance or lack of imagination. Maybe it was a rather abrupt way of reminding me that it is my responsibility to adjust to the resolutely visual world in which I find myself.
As this was my first visit to Judd Street I was looking forward to seeing how visiting an overtly blind-friendly environment differed from my usual experiences. I find going to unfamiliar places challenging and disorienting and usually need some help to find my way around at first. But surely the RNIB would be different?
I planned my route from King's Cross using the excellent map I found on the RNIB website. As well as giving street names in large print, it has useful landmarks like shops, traffic lights and post boxes marked on it too. Even though I'd never been there before I easily found my way to the well-signed entrance.
But once I was inside things were less clear. At a desk which I took to be Reception I gave my name and asked directions to the research library. The response I received was not quite what I was expecting: 'Just through there' said the receptionist, pointing vaguely. As I don't find visual gestures very enlightening, I asked for a bit more detail: 'It's just down there' wasn't quite the response I was hoping for.
Nonplussed by this less-than-helpful welcome, I headed into what I now know is the shop and asked the next person I came across for directions. He didn't appear to know that the RNIB had a research library, but his colleague helpfully told me to walk round to my left until I came to a low desk. Finally a set of directions that I could relate to! I collected my documents and spent a happy couple of hours reading about Victorian visitors to the Institute for the Blind in Paris.
But my mind kept wandering back to my disappointing welcome. How was it that the UK's leading charity for blind people was so resolutely reliant on the visual? I had been expecting tactile floor guides, Braille notices and an abundance of aural clues. Instead I was given a welcome that compared pretty unfavourably with the help I get in most 'sighted' environments.
At first I was shocked and upset that the RNIB of all people weren't doing more to challenge the hierarchy of the senses. But then I had a thought. One of the main aims of the RNIB is to help those with sight loss come to terms with their condition. They believe in 'rehabilitation' 'adaptation' and 'quality of life'. So perhaps their unhelpful welcome was not a result of ignorance or lack of imagination. Maybe it was a rather abrupt way of reminding me that it is my responsibility to adjust to the resolutely visual world in which I find myself.
Friday, 26 April 2013
In Praise of Public Transport
Waiting for the bus in Nimes, April 2013
The same people who feel sorry for me because I will never drive, tend to overlook the main advantage of not driving: public transport. I love public transport. True, it is generally slower than going from A to B by car but once you've accepted that speed is not necessarily as important as Jeremy Clarkson would have us believe, and got used to a little bit of forward planning, public transport is a lot of fun.
This year I managed to convince my (driver) husband to put this theory to the test by travelling round France exclusively on buses, trains (both under and overground) and trams. French public transport is cheap, plentiful and well-organised and we managed to do everything we wanted (including a trip to the remote Pont du Gard) without a car. Public transport is a great way of feeling part of the country you are visiting. Conversations spring up easily with fellow passengers (especially when you have two chatterbox children with you) and it gives much more interesting insights into the minutiae of everyday life than a cocoon-like car. Studying train timetables and eavesdropping are two of my favourite pastimes so I am particularly well-suited to the combination of co-ordination and communality which makes public transport such a pleasure. And listening to people's conversations (especially in France) always makes me feel more at home.
Above the Pont du Gard, April 2013
Recent eco-initiatives have made public transport more popular but it is still vastly underrated. For most people is it is a second-choice or worst-case scenario. But my blindness allows me to experience the fun, adventure and camaraderie of communal travel which car drivers unwittingly miss out on.
Sunday, 14 April 2013
The Voice: Blind Auditions
Andrea Begley during her 'blind' audition
(from bbc.co.uk)
At first glance BBC One's The Voice appears to be just another Saturday teatime talent show. Yet what sets this particular programme apart is its intriguing format, a format which has the potential to make the Great British Public think differently about blindness (and the blind).
In the early stages of the competition - the so-called 'blind auditions' - the four celebrity judges must decide whether or not they want to back each singer purely by the sound of their voice: they sit with their backs turned and focus only on what they can hear. Once they commit to supporting a performer, their chair turns round and they are allowed to watch the remainder of the audition.
When I came across the first series of the show last year I was very taken with its early stages. I liked the way these 'blind' auditions create a level playing field for the performers where age, size and shape no longer matter. I also liked the way that the judges' 'blindness' became a virtue: it seemed to make them more discerning, more focused, more 'real' in their choices.
I don't remember last year's episodes addressing the concept of 'blindness' head on: the term 'blind auditions' was nothing more than a phrase coined to help market the show. But this year, the presence of partially blind singer Andrea Begley at the auditions gave the first episode a whole new dimension.
Public perception that blindness is a tragedy is so pervasive that it is almost impossible to find stories of blindness in the media which do not talk of bravery or courage, struggle or overcoming. But this is not Begley's story. On her website and in her performances Begley is first and foremost a singer. Her blindness is secondary to her career; it is an inconvenience, not a limiting or defining feature. If Begley is disabled, it is not by her lack of sight, but by society's attitude to it. Begley wanted to appear on The Voice because she wanted to be judged for who she is, not for who people think she is. And the fact that two judges turned proves that her blindness is neither here not there.
But however much The Voice claims to value 'blindness', this sightlessness is only temporary. Once the audition is over, the appearance of the performer is revealed. And it is no coincidence that as soon as the judges knew about Begley's blindness, their comments became tinged with that mixture of pity and awe which is so often found in discussions of the disabled. As with press reports of her performance (which found her 'heartwarming') it was hard to tell whether the judges and the audience were applauding Begley's singing, or the fact that they thought she had succeeded despite her blindness. It is a dismal reflection of society's persistently negative attitude towards blindness that Begley felt she needed to use a 'blind' audition in order to be judged on her own merits. But it is an even more dismal irony that the very show which has the potential to recast 'blindness' positively, appears to have done the precise opposite.
I am delighted that Begley has made it through to the next stage of the competition. It is hugely important for society to see images of happy, talented and successful blind people. But I worry that public reactions to Begley's blindness will undermine her own positivity by constantly assuming that she deserves pity rather than respect.
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