The Everyday Life of an Almost Hero
by Valencia Shuler
It was like living underground. I could navigate without seeing as if my eyes were useless. Green blobs are trees. Refrigerator magnets are colorful squares. Everyday tasks of checking my email require extra strength and focus.
Hans Jonas and Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle believe sight is the best of the senses. Sight is a unique sense because of image performance, where the image is broken down into three categories: the simultaneity of presentation, dynamic neutralization, and the distance of the eye. Jonas uses light, imagination, and other senses to prove that seeing is the superior sense. Leaving the reader with quotes like “with sight, all I have to do is open my eyes, and the world is there.”[1]
Being visually impaired, these histories do not apply to me. When I open my eyes, a blur of objects and colors is there. Seeing is always mediated by glasses or contacts. My impairment is described as average. I am an almost hero. As Leona Godin put it, living with an impairment and functioning despite it appears to some as a superpower.[2] There are blind superheroes who save the day and who can climb the highest mountains, feats that regular people can not do. As visually impaired, I cannot do any of those things. What about those who are in between functioning vision and being visually impaired? What does the world look like from our eyes? Why aren’t we considered superheroes or considered mildly disabled?
I will represent the inbetweeners by recording a day in the life of someone moderately visually impaired, me. However, the audience will have the same impairment as me throughout the video to experience my disability. My video will contrast Jonas and Godin’s description of sight and bring a new perspective of a visually impaired, almost hero.
References
Godin, M. Leona. “When People See Your Blindness as Superhuman, They Stop Seeing You as Human.” A Blind Writer’s Notebook, November 29, 2018. https://catapult.co/stories/when-people-see-your-blindness-as-superhuman-they-stop-seeing-you-as-human.
Jonas, Hans. “The Nobility of Sight.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 14, no. 4 (June 1954): 507–19. https://doi.org/10.2307/2103230.
NOTES
[1]Godin, M. Leona. “When People See Your Blindness as Superhuman, They Stop Seeing You as Human.” A Blind Writer’s Notebook, November 29, 2018. https://catapult.co/stories/when-people-see-your-blindness-as-superhuman-they-stop-seeing-you-as-human.
[2]Jonas, Hans. “The Nobility of Sight.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 14, no. 4 (June 1954): 507–19. https://doi.org/10.2307/2103230 .