(Critical) Blindness Studies : Current Debates and Future Directions

[The banner image is an out-of-focus photograph; it shows a portion of a large, tactile globe. Raised dots and texture indicate the earth’s topographical features; intersecting raised lines of burnished brass run both laterally and horizontally, dividing the black surface of the globe into sections. This globe was created by Antoine Werner-Hochstetter in the 1830s for students at the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris. It is currently held by the Musée Valentin Haüy.]

Presentation of Critical Blindness Studies

The international online symposium "(Critical) Blindness Studies: Current Debates and Future Directions" took place on June 30, July 1, 4 and 5, 2022.

The international conference “(Critical) Blindness Studies: Current Debates and Future Directions” lies at the crossroads of Anglo-American Disability Studies and Francophone studies of disability. Since the 2000s, scholars from both of these fields of study have been meeting, dialoguing and collaborating. In 2001, the historians Zina Weygand (France) and Catherine J. Kudlick (US) published what is probably the first text (1825) written by a blind woman about blindness (Reflections. The life and writings of a young blind woman in Post-revolutionary France. Thérèse-Adèle Husson, New York UP, 2001). In 2013, in Paris, the international conference "Histoire de la cécité et des aveugles. Institutions, representations, archives," led by Zina Weygand, established a network of international researchers working on blindness history. In 2015, Hannah Thompson (UK) and Vanessa Warne (Canada) organised a second international symposium on blindness, "Blind Creations," at the University of London, Royal Holloway. Following these influential gatherings, which allowed participants to historicise the representations of blindness and to explore its creative power, this conference sought to acknowledge the existence of a singular field of research that has gradually emerged within both Francophone and Anglophone disability studies, a field we propose to call "Blindness Studies".

Our approach to defining Blindness Studies included retrospective analyses. Is it advisable that work done primarily in the humanities and social sciences be considered Blindness Studies? Does distancing one’s methods from the "medical model" of disability serve as a common and meaningful denominator? Could an approach that prioritizes experiences of blindness paradoxically allow the separation between, on the one hand, the humanities and social sciences and, on the other, the so-called 'hard' sciences to be overcome, by authorising the inclusion of, for example, engineering sciences, within Blindness Studies? Furthermore, do these works conceive the persistent exclusion from social influence and culture of blind and visually impaired people today in the same ways? In particular, is modernity seen as emancipating or, as has been argued in relation to the development of special schools, as a cause of subjugation? It is all the more crucial to ask this question as we celebrated, in 2022, the bicentenary of the death of Valentin Haüy (1745-1822), widely described in France as the "first teacher of the blind". What is more, can very different approaches to the study of blindness be productively situated under the umbrella of Critical Disability Studies? Our approach was also attentive to emerging issues. What are the most recent directions taken by Blindness Studies, particularly in relation to Gender, Post-Colonial and Environmental Studies? What effect is the Covid 19 pandemic having on blind and visually impaired people and also on blindness research? What are the terra incognita of Blindness Studies?

With these questions guiding our shared work, our conference featured two plenary lectures (Georgina Kleege and Corinne Doria) and a series of roundtable discussions. Speakers (researchers at universities, associated with a research centre or independent, as well as doctoral students were invited to present the main lines of their research and to propose, based on their past work as well as their current and future projects, answers to three questions, which we explored throughout the conference’s sessions:

1) Where do you situate your work within Disability Studies?

2) How would you characterise or define Blindness Studies?

3) What definition(s) of blindness does your research and/or lived experience lead you to adopt?

We hope that the answers to these questions will form the basis of a collaboratively authored “Blindness Studies Manifesto”, a statement generated by this gathering to support and inspire future work in this field.

Speakers submitted a text in advance of the event. This was either an article, representative of the speaker's work, that has already been written and/or published or a text written specially for the occasion, which developed what was presented orally during the round tables.

All these texts are available online.

The entire event was also recorded and put online in the different languages indicated.

To contact us, please e-mail criticalblindnessconference@gmail.com