BLINDNESS, VISUALITY AND THE ETHICAL TURN

Abstract

This paper explores the epistemic and ethical questions posed by cinematic representations of blindness. How do experiences of the blind challenge and extend the notion of visuality? At stake is an understanding of blindness not simply as a negation of vision but as a fundamentally different mode of being—an understanding that puts pressure on, and decenters, standard paradigms of perception, cognition and human subjectivity. Drawing on the Australian film Proof (1992), I argue for a politics of representation that acknowledges and accommodates the irreducible difference that constitutes the experience of blindness.