Blindness by Jose Saramago

Our twenty-second interview is with Burghard Baltrusch, literary scholar (Vigo, Spain) by Kristof K.P. Vanhoutte (Basel, Switzerland) Wednesday, January 20, 2021.
PICT Voices is an interview series conducted by PICT faculty with notable members of the broader PICT community. Our goal is to present our community with a variety of voices across the spectrum of the humanities and critical, creative thinking. To achieve this, we will interview a broad spectrum of thinkers ranging from scholars to journalists.
website: https://parisinstitute.org/
The full interview can be accessed at:
https://soundcloud.com/parisinstitute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXv3c_CPdLc

Abstract for panel: ‘Animals, Empathy, and Anthropomorphism in Saramago’s Work’ at the VII International Conference “José Saramago’s Philosophical and Sociopolitical Heritage” (Oct. 2022)

Seeing Dogs: Dis/ability and De/humanization in José Saramago’s 'Blindness'

Rhona J. Flynn (University of Vienna / Messerli Research Institute)

Two sighted characters are at the metaphorical and narrative centre of José Saramago’s 'Blindness' (1995) - not merely a human and an animal, but specifically, a woman and a dog. When all other humans lose their sight in an ‘epidemic of blindness’, the dog and the woman act as actual and metaphorical guides; as sighted figures, they maintain quintessentially ‘human’ qualities as everyone else descends into moral, physical, and social squalor. Blindness, as an embodied experience, is portrayed as utterly disabling. Simultaneously, blindness, as a metaphor, is used to represent ignorance, irrationality, and moral failure. This paper argues that both the literal and metaphorical representations of blindness Saramago deploys are damaging, discriminatory, and dehumanizing.

In 'Blindness', those who lose their sight are utterly lost, utterly dependent, morally and socially degenerate, physically and psychically filthy; defective, incapable and bereft. Blindness, as an embodied experience, is portrayed as a total, non-adaptive state, as near-total incapacity, as lack, tragedy, and disaster. This imaginary of a sighted author, who seems never to have engaged with the work and experiences of blind people, is not only factually wrong – it reinscribes and perpetuates the real and ongoing animalization of disabled people.

Simultaneously, the ’epidemic of blindness’ narrative, and the social collapse which ensues, is intended as an extended allegory of human ignorance and irrationality. The morally pure, instinct-guided, sighted dog acts as a compass for the catastrophically failing humans, and for the sole sighted (female) human remaining. The metaphorical equation of blindness with ignorance (and of sight with moral purity and superior knowing) only works because it rests upon discriminatory assumptions about ability and ‘normal’ human capacities, and deeply dehumanizing norms about blindness and atypical embodiment.

This paper critiques both the literal and metaphorical representations of blindness, in Saramago’s 'Blindness' (1995). I argue that Saramago’s animalizing caricature of the embodied and social experience of blindness, together with his weaponization of blindness as a metaphor for ignorance, promotes a viscerally dehumanizing and damaging position on disability in general, and blindness in particular.