ABSTRACT

Recipe knowledge provides both precept for action and a scheme of interpretation for situations and procedures which are so typical as to be virtually invisible, unremarked, anonymous. Marginality is the breakdown of typicality. This chapter examines the nature of the boundary between the sighted and the blind and the way in which it is kept open or closed. It describes the way in which the blind give their world the ‘accent of reality’ through a remarkable array of ‘achievements’ which legitimate their claim to normality and a place in the world of the sighted. The chapter illustrates the uselessness of old recipe knowledge and the way new recipes are used not to subserve an alternative reality but to reaffirm the old. It also describes a sub-universe or enclave within the paramount reality, for which spiritualism provides a meaning and brackets a world of extraordinary sensation, nightmare and pain with the ordinary relationships and predicaments of everyday life.