Looking back at literature: a critical reading of the unseen stare in depictions of people with impaired vision

Abstract

Considering the Unseen Starer and Unseeing Victim in a sample of Anglophone literature, the paper focuses on the privileging of a perspective that is dominated by vision, the ocularcentrism that defines people with impaired vision as epistemologically and even ontologically inferior to people with unimpaired vision. The underpinning assumption of authority is explained in terms of panopticism, whereby the presence or even the notion of an Unseen Starer affects control over the Unseeing Victim. This scenario is problematical due to the hegemonic capacity of literary representation, because, if not considered critically, literature itself becomes something of a panopticon, influencing attitudes both of and towards people with impaired vision.

Acknowledgements

The paper is based on research that was carried out at the University of Staffordshire and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board. The author thanks Jane Goetzee for making a multitude of printed material accessible.