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There plant eyes : a personal and cultural history of blindness / M. Leona Godin.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Pantheon Books, [2021]Edition: First editionDescription: xviii, 331 pages ; 22 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781524748715
  • 1524748714
Subject(s):
Contents:
Introduction: Seeing & Not-Seeing -- Homer's Blind Bard -- The Tenacious Grip of the Blind Seer -- I Once Was Blind but Now I See -- Out, Vile Jelly! -- Telescopes, Microscopes, Spectacles, and Speculations -- Darkness Visible -- The Molyneux Man -- Performing Enlightenment -- Braille and His Invention -- The Tap Tapping of Blind Travelers -- Helen Keller In Vaudeville and In Love -- Sanctified by Affliction, or Not -- Portrait of the (Working) Writer as Blind -- The Secret Life of Art and Accessibility -- The Scylla and Charybdis of Stigma and Superpowers -- The Invisible Gorilla and Other Inattentions -- Constructing Blind Pride Out of Ancient and Evolutionary Blind Memes.
Summary: "A probing, witty, and deeply insightful history of blindness--in Western culture and literature, and in the author's own experience--that ranges from Homer to Milton to Braille to Stevie Wonder. M. Leona Godin begins her fascinating, wide-ranging study with an exploration of how the idea of sight is inextricably linked with knowledge and understanding; how "blindness" has, for millennia, been used as a metaphor for ignorance; and how, in metaphorical terms, blindness can also be made to suggest a door to artistic or spiritual transcendence. And she makes clear how all of this has obscured the reality of blindness, as a consequence of which many blind people have to deal not just with their disability but also with expectations of "specialness." Godin illuminates the often surprising history of both the physiological condition and of the ideas that have attached to it. She incorporates analysis of blindness in art and literature (from King Lear to Star Wars) and in culture (assumptions of the blind as pure and magically wise) with the science of blindness and key developments in accessibility (the white cane, seeing eye dogs, eBooks), and with her own experience of gradually losing sight over the course of three decades. Altogether, she gives us a revelation of the centrality of blindness and vision to humanity's understanding of itself and the world"--
List(s) this item appears in: Disability Pride Month
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Dr. James Carlson Library NonFiction 305.9081 G585 Available 33111010585319
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 305.9081 G585 Available 33111010527394
Adult Book Adult Book Northport Library NonFiction 305.9081 G585 Available 33111009846847
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From Homer to Helen Keller, from Dune to Stevie Wonder, from the invention of braille to the science of echolocation, M. Leona Godin explores the fascinating history of blindness, interweaving it with her own story of gradually losing her sight.

"[A] thought-provoking mixture of criticism, memoir, and advocacy." -- The New Yorker

There Plant Eyes probes the ways in which blindness has shaped our ocularcentric culture, challenging deeply ingrained ideas about what it means to be "blind." For millennia, blindness has been used to signify such things as thoughtlessness ("blind faith"), irrationality ("blind rage"), and unconsciousness ("blind evolution"). But at the same time, blind people have been othered as the recipients of special powers as compensation for lost sight (from the poetic gifts of John Milton to the heightened senses of the comic book hero Daredevil).

Godin--who began losing her vision at age ten--illuminates the often-surprising history of both the condition of blindness and the myths and ideas that have grown up around it over the course of generations. She combines an analysis of blindness in art and culture (from King Lear to Star Wars ) with a study of the science of blindness and key developments in accessibility (the white cane, embossed printing, digital technology) to paint a vivid personal and cultural history.

A genre-defying work, There Plant Eyes reveals just how essential blindness and vision are to humanity's understanding of itself and the world.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [307]-316) and index.

Introduction: Seeing & Not-Seeing -- Homer's Blind Bard -- The Tenacious Grip of the Blind Seer -- I Once Was Blind but Now I See -- Out, Vile Jelly! -- Telescopes, Microscopes, Spectacles, and Speculations -- Darkness Visible -- The Molyneux Man -- Performing Enlightenment -- Braille and His Invention -- The Tap Tapping of Blind Travelers -- Helen Keller In Vaudeville and In Love -- Sanctified by Affliction, or Not -- Portrait of the (Working) Writer as Blind -- The Secret Life of Art and Accessibility -- The Scylla and Charybdis of Stigma and Superpowers -- The Invisible Gorilla and Other Inattentions -- Constructing Blind Pride Out of Ancient and Evolutionary Blind Memes.

"A probing, witty, and deeply insightful history of blindness--in Western culture and literature, and in the author's own experience--that ranges from Homer to Milton to Braille to Stevie Wonder. M. Leona Godin begins her fascinating, wide-ranging study with an exploration of how the idea of sight is inextricably linked with knowledge and understanding; how "blindness" has, for millennia, been used as a metaphor for ignorance; and how, in metaphorical terms, blindness can also be made to suggest a door to artistic or spiritual transcendence. And she makes clear how all of this has obscured the reality of blindness, as a consequence of which many blind people have to deal not just with their disability but also with expectations of "specialness." Godin illuminates the often surprising history of both the physiological condition and of the ideas that have attached to it. She incorporates analysis of blindness in art and literature (from King Lear to Star Wars) and in culture (assumptions of the blind as pure and magically wise) with the science of blindness and key developments in accessibility (the white cane, seeing eye dogs, eBooks), and with her own experience of gradually losing sight over the course of three decades. Altogether, she gives us a revelation of the centrality of blindness and vision to humanity's understanding of itself and the world"--

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