ABSTRACT
The two cultural stations of blindness discussed in our chapter are ethnography as a method and metaphors of nationalism. We dismantle the ocularnormative methodological biases inherent within ethnography and look critically at observation as a method of qualitative enquiries. The issues of anthropological gaze, ethnographer’s slack, and corporeal transgressions are discussed through an ethnographic account of sighted researchers in encounter with non-sighted respondents. Subsequently, the chapter tries to show the ways in which visually impaired persons imagine, articulate, and express the abstract idea of ‘Indianness’ through a cultural vocabulary specific to their ontology. This looks at alternate affordances of the category of imagination understood to be critical for the consolidation of a nationwide community without or with varied notions of an image or visual metaphors. Together with their respondents, the authors seek to co-create an honest and evocative narrative of blindness particular to Indian society.
