In class we went over what type of life narrative rhetoric Cockeyed would fit into but I would like to bring in different aspects of how it does not exactly fit into a single narrative type. I will be accomplishing this by drawing from the book and from Signifying Bodies” by Thomas G. Couser.
I believe majority of those in my class settled on Cockeyed being an emancipatory life narrative which according to Couser “contests received attitudes about disability” (33). I agree with this but aspects of Cockeyed do not conform to the emancipatory narrative exactly despite many instances of the narrative within the pages of Cockeyed. On the contrary of the emancipatory narrative, I believe Ryan Knighton also brings aspects of a narrative that is stigmatizing to the blind population; not intentionally but when he was learning to adapt to being blind. There were many instances in the book where Knighton in fact conforms to stereotypes about blindness carried by the normal (sighted) population. This was exemplified in page 185 of Cockeyed where Knighton expresses his fear of blind people leading to my next point about what is it that makes people fear blindness?
This idea of fearing blindness is seen in Cockeyed when muggers approached Ryan Knighton and his girlfriend Jane asking “watcha got, man?” (91). So of course the muggers pressed Knighton to give in and give them something but it all changed once the muggers found out he was blind. Their reaction to finding out he was blind was game changing, the thieves became empathetic and ran off. From reading this passage in the book, I think what deterred the thieves from attacking Knighton (after finding out he was blind) was the fact that being sighted is what people associate with being human along with many other senses that we in fact take for granted. I would guess according to the thieves it would be dehumanizing for the thieves to mug a man robbed of what makes him human. I was able to substantiate this claim by reading an article from the National Federation of the Blind were author Seville Allen gets assistance moving from a young man who exclaims “Seeing you frightens me because I would be helpless if I couldn’t see.” (para. 4).
Knighton’s narrative has an incomplete foothold simply on emancipatory narrative as there is also the aspect of stigma from himself and others in the context of it. Even Knighton conforms to the stigma while trying to hone is skills in adaption. Furthermore, it seems what is considered different makes the public fear it due to it being different from what is usual.
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Works Cited
Allen, S. (1997, November 1). Fear of Blindness. Retrieved November 9, 2015, from https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm97/bm971112.htm
Couser, G. (2009). Rhetoric and Self Representation in Disability Memoir. In Signifying bodies disability in contemporary life writing. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press.