ABSTRACT
This edited volume explores blindness as a construct with which we the contributors engage as part of our social existence and/or academic research. Irrespective of eye conditions, or the lack thereof, blindness is an understanding at which we have all come to arrive. On the way to this conceptual point, which is in any case unlikely ever to be fixed, we have passed or visited many formative cultural stations.
In the terms of autocritical disability studies (i.e. an explicitly embodied development of critical disability studies), these cultural stations include key moments in education and training; the reflective pursuits of philosophy, aesthetics, and cultural theory; literary works such as autobiography, novels, short stories, drama, and poetry; visual texts ranging from photography to postage stamps; technological developments like television, computer applications, and social media; value systems defined by family and/or religion; and the social phenomenon of hate and war. Each chapter in this volume engages with two of these cultural stations; some ostensibly if not profoundly positive or indeed negative and some that contradict each other within and across chapters.
This book will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, sociology, education, and health.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|56 pages
The Directions and Redirections of Education
chapter 2|9 pages
From PowerPoint to Zoom
chapter 3|12 pages
Blindness as a Social Construct in Cyprus
chapter 4|12 pages
The Flag, a Rap, and the Ethnographer
chapter 5|11 pages
Blind Student as a Bypassed Reader
part II|64 pages
The Blind Reading the Blind
chapter 6|9 pages
From World War to Social Integration and Beyond
chapter 7|9 pages
A State of Spiritual Derangement
chapter 8|10 pages
Faith Healing and Blindness Across Cultures
chapter 10|10 pages
Encountering the Myth, Transforming Utopian Realities of Blindness
chapter 11|11 pages
Crip Gazes
part III|59 pages
Stage and the Page