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Ref D. Allen's enquiry on blindness, identity and poststructuralism; before
taking the reclamation project on a salvage tour through the rubbish dumps
of cultural theory and French cod philosophy, it may be useful to look at
some studies across the world where meanings of blindness have changed,
where anyway they differed significantly from male euro-american textual
interpretations, and where meanings were concocted by blind women and men
rather than their sighted mentors.
Items listed below report on changing ways in which blind people were
portrayed in Japanese theatre, the influence of early political
correctness, and how blind people put strategic spin on their legendary
identities (Golay; Scholz-Cionca; Matisoff); blind female mediums or
shamans in Japan (Blacker; Fritsch); the 'state within a state' where
Japanese blind men earned their living and ran their own affairs according
to their own rules (Groemer); how a 16th century Chinese governor's blind
mother gave him a different viewpoint (Handlin); a change period in China
when the traditional destiny of blind women as prostitutes was giving way
to other ideas and a few blind young women took charge of their lives
(Ching; Miles); some alternative meanings of blindness in the high period
of Islamic civilisation in the Middle East, and the many centuries during
which blind Muslim men had their own university college at Cairo (Malti-
Douglas; Ibn Khallikan; Dodge).
Blind identities are here painted on a wider canvas, across half the world
and a thousand years, oblivious to the binary oppositions, capitalist
contradictions and rumsfeldian rumblings of what euro-americans like to
believe is their 'civilisation' in recent centuries. The listed items are
obtainable via academic libraries.
****
BLACKER, Carmen (1975) The Catalpa Bow. London: Allen & Unwin.
pp. 140-163 (+ notes, pp. 337-339, + Plate 7) is a study of blind female
mediums, known as itako, including their painful initiation, their training
and practice, from the first half of the 20th century to the 1960s.
CHING, Lucy (1980) One of the Lucky Ones. Hong Kong: Gulliver.
Autobiog of a blind woman, early childhood in 1940s southern China, to
training in Hong Kong and USA, and adult life and work in Hong Kong. Many
`traditional' attitudes and expectations from earlier centuries were
experienced by Miss Ching between 1940 and 1980.
DODGE, Bayard (1974) Al-Azhar. A Millennium of Muslim Learning. Memorial
edn, Washington DC: Middle East Institute.
Mentions blind youths studying Qur'an at Al-Azhar from possibly the 12th
to the 20th century CE, on pp. 44, 86-87, 101, 165, 206. A special hostel
was built for them by Osman Katkhuda in the early 1730s. The sheikh in
charge was customarily a blind man.
FRITSCH, I. (1992) Blind female musicians on the road. The social
organisation of 'Goze' in Japan. CHIME No. 5, pp. 58-64. (Newsletter of the
European Foundation for Chinese Music Research. Leiden).
FRITSCH, I. (1996) Japans Blinde Sänger im Schutz der Gottheit Myoon-
Benzaiten. Munich: Iudicium verlag. 311 pp. isbn 3891293119.
GOLAY, Jacqueline (1973) Pathos and farce: Zat_ plays of the Ky_gen
repertoire. Monumenta Nipponica 28: 139-149.
Examines in detail the tragical-comical portrayal of blind people, and
others' reactions to them, in several Kyogen plays, with remarks on
blindness in Japanese history.
GROEMER, Gerald (2001) The Guild of the Blind in Tokugawa Japan. Monumenta
Nipponica 56: 349-380.
(Opens the whole extraordinary box of tricks, for interested westerners
who can't spare 15 years to do Japanese Studies.)
IBN KHALLIKAN. Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary translated from the
Arabic. 4 vols (1842-1871), transl. Baron Mac Guckin de Slane, Paris, for
Oriental Transl. Fund.
13th C. collection of 865 biogs of well-known Muslims through 600 years.
Some involve blindness, e.g. I: 633, academic fraud at the expense of a
blind scholar; II: 32-36, Sharaf ad-Din ibn Abi Usrun and debate over
whether a judge could continue in office after becoming blind; II: 513-14,
Katada ibn Diama as-Sadusi, a learned blind man who "used to go from one
end of Basra to the other without a guide"; III: 459, grief of Muwarrij as-
Sadusi on losing his sight; and many more.
HANDLIN, Joanna F. (1983) Action in Late Ming Thought. The reorientation of
Lü K'un and other scholar-officials. Berkeley: Univ. California Press.
pp. 103-218 focus on Lü K'un, who refers to his mother's blindness, his
efforts for training of disabled people for self-support (pp. 149, 161-63,
181-82), and other humanitarian activities, based on his diaries and other
writings.
MALTI-DOUGLAS F (1988) Blindness and Autobiography. Al-Ayyam of Taha
Husayn. Princeton UP.
Examining Husayn's autobiog, Malti-Douglas reviews aspects of blindness
in the Arab world.
MALTI-DOUGLAS F (1989) Mentalités and marginality: blindness and Mamluk
Civilisation. In: CE Bosworth et al (eds) The Islamic World from Classical
to Modern Times. pp. 211-237. Princeton NJ: Darwin Press.
With some discussion of historiographical approaches, Malti-Douglas
suggests "the identification of the principal roles of blindness and the
blind in Mamluk mentalities", based on Safadi's biog dictionary of 313
blind Arabs. The identified roles are compared favorably with some roles of
blind people in modern 'western' countries.
MATISOFF, Susan (1978) The Legend of Semimaru, blind musician of Japan. New
York: Columbia UP.
Follows development of the legend over centuries, giving insights into
the history of Asian people's concepts and portrayals of blindness. Main
refs to historical blindness are on pp. 19-22, 28-31, 39-46, interwoven
with development of musical instruments and heroic literature used by blind
mendicant friars (biwa hoshi), and linked with Indian legends of blind
prince Kunala. Lit. behind the legends is introduced critically (pp. 55-
79). The book gives detailed review and translated excerpts from dramatic
representations (pp. 79-272). Matisoff attributes the ambivalence of social
attitudes towards blind people to a combination of early and still current
beliefs in blind people's ability to communicate with the gods, and
Buddhist views of disability as retribution for misdeeds (p. 20).
MILES, M. (1998) Blind and Sighted Pioneer Teachers in 19th Century China
and India. ERIC ED414701. 43 pp. Also later version at website:
http://www.socsci.kun.nl/ped/whp/histeduc/mmiles/index.html.
MILES M. 'Blind people handling their own fate', at:
http://www.independentliving.org/LibArt/mmiles1.html
[reviews various China/Japan materials listed here]
SCHOLZ-CIONCA, Stanca (1992) What happened to the Zato Kyogen? Paradigm
shifts in the evolution of the blind man plays. Nachrichten der
Gesselschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens, 152: 39-58.
Suggests that early Japanese Zato plays involved frank ridicule of blind
men, on whom farcical tricks were practised for the amusement of the
sighted audience (as in comparable European productions). Later
interpreters could not face this "uninhibited derision", and made
moralising reinterpretations.
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