The first allusion that came to mind when reading the title of Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark, was the title of Arthur Miller’s play, “Playing for Time”1.  Beyond title similarity, these texts point toward different modes and types of institutional prejudice:  Black racism within the US and the various, though particularly religious prejudices of the Era of the Holocaust; how pervasive and encompassing these evils are; how unaware we can become of the representations that ooze through our cultures and inherently color our relationships.  Whereas “Playing for Time” has a palpable component of good versus evil, Playing in the Dark delves beneath obvious pointers of blame to address the very essence of assumption, the prejudice within the concepts themselves.  Is it not interesting to note that Morrison unwittingly adopts an oppressive language style regarding the concept of disability?  Rather than weakening her argument, this seems to further her concept of “literary whiteness and blackness” as ableism is completely imbedded within the codes, morays and language, especially language, of the dominant culture.  Toni Morrison is as trapped as the rest of us, until we see the oppressive destructiveness built into language and culture.

        Morrison writes within the dominant discourse of ability, within which disability has as many troubling connotations as the blackness she analyses.  When considering the concept of blackness as dark / darkness and then reading closely, what does it mean to see, or, more importantly, what does it mean to be blind?  The darkness is black, though, is it empty and devoid of substance?  No, but that is the implication.  The darkness is an overall zero, a place of “otherness”, that without vision there is nothing.  While using the rudimentary strategy of analysis to approach the word through its conceptual meaning, by its authoritative definition(s) listed in the canonical dictionary, blindness emerges as extremely complex:
 

blind /blind/ adj., n., & adv – adj.  1 lacking the power of sight.  2 a without foresight, disconcertment, intellectual perception, or adequate information. b (often foll. by to) unwilling or unable to appreciate (a factor, circumstance, etc.) (blind to argument).  3 not governed by purpose or reason (blind forces).  4 reckless (blind hitting).  5 a concealed (blind ditch).  b (of a door, window, etc.) walled up.  c closed at one end. 6Aeron.  (of flying) without direct observation, using instruments only.  – v.  1 tr. deprive of sight (blinded by tears). 2tr. (often foll. by to) rob of judgment; deceive (blinded them to the danger). – n.  1 a screen for a window (Venetian blind). 2 something designed or used to hide the truth.  3 any obstruction to sight or light. – adv.  blindly (fly blind).  – turn a (or one's) blind eye to pretend not to notice.  – blind.lyadv. blind.ness n.(DK Illustrated Oxford Dictionary.)

        As with blackness, blindness becomes negatively representational and it places a person who is blind into the realm of  “other”.  As the aforementioned dictionary entry illustrates, blind can have various meanings, though for a person who is blind, these connotations reflect directly back on you, the individual.  First, within the conceptual framework of, “lacking the power of sight,” there is an inherent valuation built into the ability to see, which, logically speaking is not strange.  If any person could have the choice whether to see or not – I suspect that seeing would be the unanimous choice.  Unfortunately, there is no choice involved – if your eyes do not see you are blind.  What does it imply if you cannot see the world around you?  The visual is but a piece of building conceptual representations within one's mind, though generally, if you do not see, the assumption is that this lack de-legitimizes the holistically gathered representations.  Sight is power according to the definition and it is true.  As a blind individual, you would be more dependent on sighted individuals, especially within the context of interpretive description and you are trapped within the implication that since you cannot see, your thought processes are affected and operate “without foresight, disconcertment, intellectual perception, or adequate information.”   Blindness, as is the case with most disabilities, is equated with the Abnormal in relation to the primacy of the dominant Normal in the same way that dominant Whiteness has primacy over Blackness: “a conceptual response to a black, that is, non-white, figuration”(Playing in the Dark viii).

        Morrison cannot see that her use of blindness is conceptually negative.  For example, she illustrates the entanglement of whiteness with blackness, referring to Africanism as:
 

the vehicle by which the American self knows itself as not enslaved, but free; not repulsive, but desirable; not helpless, but licensed and powerful; not history-less, but historical; not damned, but innocent; not a blind accident of evolution, but a progressive fulfillment of destiny(52) [my emphasis].

        Could this apply to disability as well?  Yes:  the able American self is independent, not dependent; not enslaved (confined to a wheelchair or a world of darkness, etc.) but free; not repulsive, but desirable; not helpless but licensed and powerful . . . etc.  Yet the concept of blindness, within its defined context of “not governed by purpose or reason” affects the cultural perception / position of a person who is blind, the inherent lack of sight, again, operating as “without foresight, disconcertment, intellectual perception, or adequate information.”   Is this implication destructive?  Yes, as it is directly related to Toni Morrison’s concept of blackness as depiction “through a language that can powerfully evoke and enforce hidden signs of racial superiority, cultural hegemony, and dismissive ‘othering’ of people”(x).  Within the valuation of Ablism, blind is “other”.  Perhaps the substitution of “random” for “blind” is more appropriate when attempting to dis-empower these hierarchies embedded within language.

        When Morrison approaches Africanism as heritage, within Playing in the Dark, she uses the concept of blindness to depict exclusion and marginalization, though more so, blindness must exist with the hierarchy of non-blindness, much in the same way as black and white are interconnected within “a conceptual response to a black, that is, non-white, figuration”(viii).  The dominant whiteness wields a “willful critical blindness – a blindness that, if it had not existed...”(18) would have allowed the inclusion of Africanism into “our routine literary heritage.”

        This aspect of attainable, convenient states of blindness completely emphasizes blindness as a tool of suppression by the dominant as opposed to a minority whose blindness is a state of the non-visual.

        Interestingly, blindness seems to occupy a privileged space in her novel Jazz.  Alice Manfred teaches her niece about “deafness and blindness – how valuable and necessary they were in the company of whitewomen who spoke English and those who did not, as well as in the presence of their children” (54 - 55).  These disabilities are appropriated as survival strategies with the temporal implication that they are temporary, to be used when the occasion arises.  When delving within these concepts, it is obvious that the argument is flawed because this individual cannot become blind or deaf, in fact he or she will see and hear the unpleasantries, though, it is the reaction which is controlled – a feigning of blindness and deafness, so is it privileged?  No, because the individual still operates within the dominant, as able, while pretending to be deaf and / or blind.  Again, what does this imply for people who are deaf or blind?  It implies that deafness and blindness affect information entering the mind as “without foresight, disconcertment, intellectual perception, or adequate information.”

        Another interesting reference to blindness implies both a lack and an external control. “I've seen swollen fish, serenely blind, floating in the sky.  Without eyes, but somehow directed, these airships swim below cloud foam and nobody can be turned away from the sight of them because it's like watching a private dream”(67).  Blindness is serene because it implies a lack of negative knowledge so the clouds float,  yet the clouds lack autonomy and independence as they are directed, controlled.  The sighted are controlled as well since no one could turn away from this sight, which is interesting because the clouds are characterized as blind but must be seen.

        Perhaps the strongest example of blind “otherness” within Jazz is this complex trope.  Within the comparison of the Rural to the City, Joe discusses the contextual rather than spatial differences between the two, their affect on him and the feeling of loneliness, which is “other”.
 

Make me know a loneliness I never could imagine in a forest empty of people for fifteen miles, or on a riverbank with nothing but live bait for company.  Convince me I never knew the sweet side of anything until I tasted her honey.  They say snakes go blind for a while before they shed skin for the last time(129).

        How do we read blindness in this context?  The snake cannot see:  it is removed from its rightful place and relegated to “otherness”, though, within the larger context of the passage it is knowledge that creates dissonance.  Joe describes his range of changes and equates this last change, after meeting Dorcas, as a time of blindness.  Blindness as in not being able to see?  No, contextual blindness referring not to her visual image but her awakening of these concepts.  This blindness implies much more than temporary darkness.  When you are blind in this way you can be deceived and / or  mislead “without foresight, disconcertment, intellectual perception, or adequate information.”   It was not an issue of not seeing but of not knowing.  That is destructive.

        As scholars continue to study disability, more of these embedded codes will be discernible.  As language exists within its own power hierarchies, these assumptions, once “brought to light” will hopefully lose this power of inherent oppression.

1    Arthur Miller adapted his stage play from Fania Fenelon’s book:  Playing for Time.
 
 

DK Illustrated Oxford Dictionary.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Morrison, Toni.  Jazz.  New York:  Plume Books, 1993.

Morrison, Toni.  Playing in the Dark:  Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.  New York:  Vintage Books, 1993.