“one of the most fertile and creative minds of our generation”
“a tour de force”
“a must read for anyone interested in people’s lives”
Sight Unseen
Gender and Race Through Blind Eyes
by Ellyn Kaschak
Sight Unseen reveals the cultural and biological realities of race, gender, and sexual orientation from the perspective of the blind. Through ten case studies and dozens of interviews, Ellyn Kaschak taps directly into the phenomenology of race, gender, and sexual orientation among blind individuals, along with the everyday epistemology of vision. Kaschak’s work reveals not only how the blind create systems of meaning out of cultural norms but also how cultural norms inform our conscious and unconscious interactions with others regardless of our physical ability to see.
What people are saying about Sight Unseen
”"Is there a border between the seen and the unseen world?" Ellyn Kaschak invites you to explore this question through the mirror of blindness. In this superb book you will witness illuminating stories about race, gender, culture, sexual orientation, and disability. Part psychology, part ethnographic research, but all heart, this book is a must read for anyone interested in people's lives.
Lillian Comas-DiazGeorge Washington University
”This is a moving and astonishing union of wisdom, originality, and course.
Reviews by Amos Lassen
”This book provides unique insights not only into how the blind perceive and interpret gender, race, and sexual orientation but also into how these dimensions become incorporated in our conscious and unconscious interactions with one another regardless of our physical ability to see. This is definitely a very creative idea and makes for a book that stands out as different from anything else I have ever read on this subject. The use of interviews and qualitative analysis of the interview data provides a firsthand window into experiences seldom discussed.
Oliva EspinProfessor emerita of psychology, San Diego State University and Alliant University
”A contribution much to be admired and embraced.
PsycCritiques
”Sight Unseen is a tour de force. Ellyn Kaschak gives readers fascinating portraits of the life worlds of blind people--people who experience the social world and themselves without recourse to the visual. How, she asks, do blind people conjure up race, gender, sexual orientation, desire, and desirability? Her answers continually upend commonsense. By showing us what and how the blind "see," Kaschak makes evident the filters and lenses that all of us see through. Readers have always counted on Ellyn Kaschak for inventive analyses and thought-provoking insights. In Sight Unseen, she has delivered yet again.
Jeanne MarecekWm. Kenan Professor Emerita of Psychology, Swarthmore College
”[Sight Unseen] takes the reader on a unique journey through the world of the blind individual.... Highly recommended.
Choice
”From one of the most fertile and creative minds of our generation comes this original and innovative narrative of the social construction of race and gender among the blind and the sighted. The reader is first startled and then entrenched to learn the invisibility of assumptions about race and gender built right in to ordinary vision. It teaches us about privilege, compassion and our powerful search for belonging. A moving and astonishing combination of wisdom, originality and course.
Judge Elizabeth Odio BenitoFormer Vice President and Judge, International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia