January 29, 2017 - 17:17
The reading Sight Unseen by Georgina Kleege started off slow for me but then quickly picked up the pace. Her anecdotal writing to achieve a point or metaphor was very engaging; her personal stories moved me. Maybe I felt the gravity of her words because it was almost like she was talking to me directly - I think that blindness is a scary thing. Thinking about going blind makes me uncomfortable, I probably have used the word blind a lot (and probably in not so nice ways), and I immediately think of a pitch black, empty void of darkness when I think of “blind”. I know I am guilty of these things and thoughts; yet, Kleege still resonated with me. Her work really made me think about why I feel these things, if they are rational or not, and what I could do to change my perspective on these ideas. I think that I will be more conscious of using the word blind, and take notice to its use in a particular phrase, sentence, or situation.
It was her stories that especially appealed to me: her depiction of the female wheelchair user on a plane, the sexualization and objectification of her visual impairment, and the bus metaphor at the end of the piece. All of these pieces, as well as other little anecdotes, gave me more context for her life and how she leads it.
After discussing a section about how those with visual impairments may be exempt from jury duty, Kleege describes how one trial let her husband, Nick, go: "they viewed Nick's close association with blindness as an impairment of his vision, his ability to make a clear-sighted judgement.” The words viewed, vision, and clearsighted, seem ironic in this portrayal when discussing Nick. Is Nick’s closeness to the blind that makes him unable to be clear-sighted? Is it his insider knowledge of loss of sight that clouds his vision in the court room? Her last sentence of this paragraph, “he might even upset the balance in the mind of other jurors with irrelevant details of the exact nature of this disability” seems ridiculous because no detail about his personal experience with blindness is “irrelevant” in a case that involves blindness. If anything, in this situation, Nick should be regarded as an incredible asset to the investigation, however, he is barred from its proceedings as if his contact with those with this impairment also impairs him as well.