Twelfth lecture for my students in English 165EW, "Life After the End of the World," winter 2013 at UC Santa Barbara. Course website: http://patrickbrianmooney.nfshost.com/~patrick/ta/w13/

1. Lecture 12: Blindness in An Essay on Blindness
English 165EW
Winter 2013
20 February 2013
“Placing biological life at the center of its calculations, the
modern State therefore does nothing other than bring to
light the secret tie uniting power and bare life.”
— Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer, p. 6
“Only the blind, reading its fault lines with their fingertips,
will ever understand Junkspace’s histories.”
— Rem Koolhaas, “Junkspace,” p. 178

2. A few words on papers
“If I had my time to go over again, I would make my sermons
much shorter, for I am conscious they have been too wordy.”
— Martin Luther
“My Reverend Fathers, my letters have not usually followed
so closely, nor been so long. The small amount of time that I
have is the cause of both. I would not have made this so
long except that I do not have the leisure to make it shorter.”
— Blaise Pascal
“You’ll have to excuse my lengthiness—the reason I dread
writing letters is because I am so apt to get to slinging
wisdom & forget to let up. Thus much precious time is lost.”
— Mark Twain

3. José Saramago (1922-2010)
● Nobel Prize in Literature,
1998, for his "parables
sustained by imagination,
compassion and irony", and
his "modern skepticism" about
official truths.
● Ensaio sobre a cegueira
(“Essay on Blindness,” 1995,
translated into English as
Blindness, 1997) is often
mentioned as one of the works
that led to the Nobel Prize.
● Depressed over Portugese
censorship of his novels, he
lived in Span from 1922 until
his death.
Photo courtesy of the Presidency
of the Nation of Argentina.

4. Henri Lefebvre’s two “illusions”
● Lefebvre critiques the idea that the Cartesian-
mathematical concept space is an “objective,” extra-
ideological construct.
● This assumption that “objective” space is extra-ideological
is produced as “natural” through …
– the illusion of transparency, in which “everything can be taken
in by a single glance” and according to which “[c]omprehension is
[…] supposed […] to to conduct what is perceived, i.e. its object,
from the shadows into the light”; this is a common default position
for those who are constructed socially as “educated.”
and
– the realistic illusion, the belief that things really are what they
seem to be; this is a default position for those who are constructed
socially as “naïve.”

5. Seeing and knowledge
The doctor: “it’s the same with a carburetor, if
the fuel can’t reach it, the engine does not
work and the car won’t go, as simple as that,
as you can see.” (64; ch. 5)
“it had to be acknowledged that the authorities
had shown great vision when they decided to
unite the blind with the blind, each with his
own, which is a wise rule for those who have
to live together, like lepers.” (106; ch 7)

6. Some common English phrases …
… that treat seeing as a trope for knowledge:
● To “see what someone means”
● Exclaiming, “Now I see” to indicate an epiphany
– or “to see the light”
● The claim that “seeing is believing”
● An opinion as a “point of view” or “perspective”
● “Foresight”
● Others?

7. As Wigglesworth has it …
“But we were blind,” they say, “in mind;
too dim was nature’s light,
Our only guide, as hath been tried,
to bring us to the sight
Of our estate degenerate,
and curs’d by Adam’s fall;
How we were born and lay forlorn
in bondage and in thrall.
[…]
“But Nature’s light shin’d not so bright;
to teach us the right way:
We might have lov’d it and well improv’d it,
and yet have gone astray.”
The Judge most High makes this Reply:
“You ignorance pretend,
Dimness of sight, and want of light,
your course Heav’nward to bend.”
(The Day of Doom, verses CLIX and CLXI)

8. Saul of Tarsus, on the road to Damascus
Michelangelo,
Conversion of St.
Paul (1542)

9. John Newton, “Amazing Grace”
Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav'd a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
– First verse, from Olney Hymns
(1779)
Newton, former captain of a slave ship,
describes his spiritual epiphany and his
decision to stop selling human beings
for profit in the hymn.Unknown painter, Portrait of John
Henry Newton, Jr. (ca. 1780)

10. “The [Age of] Enlightenment”
● Refers to philosophical
movements in, very
approximately, the 17th
and 18th centuries.
● The term enters
English-language
vocabulary in the middle
of the 18th century as a
translation of a term
current in French
philosophy.
● Contrast the “Dark
Ages.”
“Enlightenment is man's
emergence from his self-
imposed nonage. Nonage is the
inability to use one's own
understanding without another's
guidance. This nonage is self-
imposed if its cause lies not in
lack of understanding but in
indecision and lack of courage
to use one’s own mind without
another's guidance.”
– Immanuel Kant, “Answering the
Question: What Is
Enlightenment?” (1784)

11. And yet, blindness …
12. Then His disciples came and said to Him, “Do You
know that the Pharisees were offended when they
heard this saying?”
13. But He answered and said, “Every plant which My
heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.
14. Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And
if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a ditch.”
15. Then Peter answered and said to Him, “Explain this
parable to us.”
16. So Jesus said, “Are you also still without
understanding?
(Matthew 15:12-16 NKJV)

12. Shakespeare’s King Lear
Edmund resents his illegitimate status, and plots to dispose of
his legitimate older brother Edgar. He tricks their father
Gloucester with a forged letter, making him think Edgar plans
to usurp the estate. […] Edmund fakes an attack by Edgar,
and Gloucester is completely taken in. He disinherits Edgar
and proclaims him an outlaw. […] Gloucester protests against
Lear's mistreatment. Wandering on the heath after the storm,
Lear meets Edgar, in the guise of a madman named Tom o'
Bedlam. Edgar babbles madly while Lear denounces his
daughters. Kent leads them all to shelter. […] Edmund […]
shows a letter from his father to the King of France asking for
help against them; and in fact a French army has landed in
Britain. Once Edmund leaves with Goneril to warn Albany
about the invasion, Gloucester is arrested, and Cornwall
gouges out Gloucester's eyes.
(from Wikipedia’s summary of the play)

13. Partial vision
“To this he gave me but a pitiless
answer, ‘Stranger,’ said he, ‘you are a
fool, or else you know nothing of this
country. Talk to me, indeed, about
fearing the gods or shunning their
anger? We Cyclopes do not care about
Jove or any of your blessed gods, for
we are ever so much stronger than
they. I shall not spare either yourself or
your companions out of any regard for
Jove, unless I am in the humour for
doing so. And now tell me where you
made your ship fast when you came on
shore. Was it round the point, or is she
lying straight off the land?”
(Homer’s Odyssey, book IX)
Polyphemus, by Johann Heinrich
Wilhelm Tischbein (1802)

14. The Citizen and “egocidal terror”
–The memory of the dead, says the citizen
taking up his pintglass and glaring at Bloom.
–Ay, ay, says Joe.
–You don't grasp my point, says Bloom. What I
mean is ...
–Sinn Fein! says the citizen. Sinn Fein
amhain! The friends we love are by our side
and the foes we hate before us.
(James Joyce, Ulysses, ch. 14)

15. Looking again at Lefebvre …
● the illusion of transparency, in which “everything can be
taken in by a single glance” and according to which
“[c]omprehension is […] supposed […] to conduct what is
perceived, i.e. its object, from the shadows into the light”;
this is a common default position for those who are
constructed socially as “educated.”
and
● the realistic illusion, the belief that things really are what
they seem to be; this is a default position for those who are
constructed socially as “naïve.”
(From The Production of Space, 27-30)
“[R]epresentational spaces [are] space[s] as directly lived
through associated images and symbols.” (39)

16. Oedipus at Colonus (1788)
Painting by
Jean-Antoine-
Théodore
Giroust

17. The seer Tiresias
I Tiresias, though blind,
throbbing between two
lives,
Old man with wrinkled
female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the
evening hour that
strives
Homeward, brings the
sailor home from the
sea […]
(T.S. Eliot, The Waste
Land, lines 216-219)
Johann Heinrich Füssli, Tiresias
Appears to Ulysses During the
Sacrifice (ca. 1780)

18. Media credits
● The photo of José Saramago (slide 3) is taken from the Presidency of the Nation of Argentina
Website in accordance with their Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic policy. Source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Cropped_JSJoseSaramago.jpg
● Michelangelo’s Conversion of St. Paul (slide 8) is out of copyright, and the faithful photographic
reproduction of it is therefore also out of copyright, I believe. Original source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/4paul1.jpg
● The Portrait of John Newton, Jr. (slide 9) is out of copyright, and the faithful photographic
reproduction of it is therefore also out of copyright, I believe. Original source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/John_Newton.jpg
● Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein’s Polyphemus (slide 13) is out of copyright, and the faithful
photographic reproduction of it is therefore also out of copyright, I believe. Original source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Polyphemus.gif
● Jean-Antoine-Théodore Giroust’s Oedipus at Colonus (slide 16) is out of copyright, and the
faithful photographic reproduction of it is therefore also out of copyright, I believe. Original
source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Giroust_-
_Oedipus_At_Colonus.JPG
● Johann Heinrich Füssli’s Theresias erscheint dem Ulysseus während der Opferung (slide 17) is
out of copyright, and the faithful photographic reproduction of it is therefore also out of copyright,
I believe. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Johann_Heinrich_F
%C3%BCssli_063.jpg