Challenging Blindness as a Means of Resistance for Change: Lenin El-Ramly’s (Weghat Nazar) A Point of View (1989)

نوع المستند : المقالة الأصلية

المؤلف

Faculty of Arts, Fayoum University

المستخلص

This paper examines the image of blindness in Lenin Al-Ramly’s play A Point of View and attempts to discuss the ambiguity of blindness in the light of a variety of critical frameworks related to disability studies offered by critics and scholars such as: Leonard J. Davis, Siebers, Longmore, Susan Wendell and others. The research also sheds light on how society views people with impairments and treats them as marginalized individuals. Moreover, the blind people’s rejection and challenge of such a perception is highlighted.     The questions raised in this study are: What is the distinction between disability and impairment? Do the blind lack insight or merely sight? Do all normal people have insight? The debate is related to the way disability and normalization are to be understood. The role of voluntary agencies originally established to care for the disabled people is challenged in this play as they tend to dehumanize and oppress the blind although it is their responsibility to offer them charity and help. Ironically, their lack of insight marks a failure to come to terms with their situation. A Point of View addresses the question of how the disabled people resist the passive and tragic view of themselves and how they react against the traditional charity-based agencies that deal with them as an excluded social group depriving them of their basic needs. Issues related to citizenship rights and equality are also dramatized.

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