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To Know Me Now
Heidi Pfau
Vermont, USA,hmp1{at}verizon.net
This article combines an autoethnography that was part of the author's graduate schoolwork with a `post-script' written six years later. The autoethnography assignment focused on the personal experience of the writer while illuminating social and cultural contexts. The article's first section recounts a conversation in which complex personal, social and political aspects of disability unfold. The dialogue becomes a springboard for examining research about blindness and rehabilitation. It also prompts self-reflection and an inner examination of individual choice as the author struggled to be seen as `more than her vision'. In the second section, the fluid contexts of knowledge and the knower are made explicit as meanings of `choice' and `living' are re-examined. The author considers the apparent contradiction of needing others to see vision loss and to look beyond it. She also considers her own assumptions about how others relate to disability.
Key Words: autoethnography • blindness • disability • narrative • rehabilitation
References
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- Michalko, R. (2002a) `Estranged Familiarity', in M. Corker and F. Shakespeare (eds) Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory, pp. 175—83. London: Continuum .
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Qualitative Social Work, Vol. 6, No. 4,
397-410 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1473325007083353
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[Abstract]
[PDF]
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