Metanarratives of visual impairment rehabilitation: the discursive positioning of disabled service users in South Africa

Abstract

This paper presents findings from a study on blindness discourses found in South African non-profit organisations that provide rehabilitation services to visually impaired adults. The paper investigates what the public relations materials of these organisations communicate about blindness. It also considers the ideological assumptions that blindness discourses reinforce and embed in rehabilitation practice. The primary focus is a discourse analytic review conducted on a sample of organisation public facing material. The findings comprise three clusters of assumptions, with concomitant enactments in practice. These are i) third-person alliances around the blind subject and a resulting objectification of service users ii) ‘journey discourse’ which prohibits the expression of complex disability experiences and iii) polarised blindness fantasies which promote othering and prescribe acceptable ways of being for blind subjects. This paper questions what might be imparted to blind persons at a symbolic level through rehabilitative practices.

Points of interest

• This article explores the ways that blindness and blind persons are represented on the websites of organisations that provide visual impairment rehabilitation services in South Africa.

• These representations affect the way that society views visually impaired people, and the way that visually impaired people feel about themselves.

• Organisation websites describe visually impaired people in ways that make it seem as though they play little active role in the rehabilitation process.

• The idea that rehabilitation is a journey from dependence and depression to independence and self-acceptance might make it difficult for rehabilitation service users to express ongoing feelings of grief and loss.

• There is a need for more focus on interdependence in rehabilitation services.

• Rehabilitation organisations must think carefully about what their public relations materials communicate to society about blindness and blind persons.

Keywords:

• Visual impairment
• rehabilitation
• discourse
• non-profit organisations
• self-perception
• power

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF)