Can a blind person play dodge ball? Enacting body and cognition with a group of youths with visual disabilities

Abstract

This paper presents some results of research carried out with a group of blind and partially sighted youths who are enrolled in a school for people with visual disabilities in Brazil. This research aims to promote different articulations between the body and cognition. Based on actor–network theory, it considers that having a body means learning to be affected by widely differing actors. The field research was carried out through body expression activities, which seek to promote connections between the body and heterogeneous materials, such as a ball, a rattle or a colleague. The paper indicates that cognition is the effect of these collective body experiences. It also underlines that these body experiences have produced new ways of knowing amongst the blind and partially sighted youths. In the conclusion it is stressed that psychology research on disability must be done with (and not about) people with visual disability. ¹

Keywords:

• body
• cognition
• blindness
• visual disability
• affecting

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank to Brazilian government institutions, the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Capes) and the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Faperj), for the financial support to this research. The author has to thank the CNPq for the scholarship that made this research possible.

Notes

1. A previous version of this paper was presented as a part of the Symposium ‘Understanding the Psychological in Latin America’ that was held at the Subjectivity: International Conference, Cardiff University, UK, 27–29 June 2008.

2. Actants can be anything endowed with the ability to act, including people and material objects: statements, inscriptions (anything written), technical artifacts, a human being, entities being studied (see Callon 1991, 135–142; Law 1992, 381–384).