Even when there is no vision through the anatomical eyes, people who are non-congenitally sight impaired often describe ‘visual’ experiences of the landscape through ‘seeing in the mind’s eye’. This imaginative sight is a ‘way of seeing’ through eyes of another time and can be understood as a ‘phantom vision’. Intentionally imagined or unintentionally triggered, the qualities of ‘seeing in the mind’s eye’ often change over time as visual memories fade and the nature of ‘the visual’ transfigures. These transfigurations warp normative sighted ontologies concerning the nature of visibilities, and the landscape is revealed differently. Drawing on sensory ethnography of the experience of the South Downs National Park in Sussex amongst walkers who have impaired vision, this paper explores these phenomena to address what this means for notions of landscape, the body, and the senses.
Pitt Rivers Museum Research Seminar in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology, Michaelmas Term 2024
Fridays, 12pm-1.30pm (Weeks 1-8)
In person at the Pitt Rivers Museum Lecture Theatre, except for Week 3, which will be in 64 Banbury Road.
Weeks 5-8 will also be on Teams at this link.
Convened by Chihab El Khachab and Charlotte Linton
