Proleptic

Cover of Planet of the Blind....man and dog....

Proleptic. In rhetoric “the anticipation of possible objections in order to answer them in advance.”

Prolepsis is a socially agreeable internalized mode of oppression. All advertising depends on it and most selling in small “c” capitalism is driven by the subject’s anticipation of possible objections to her features. In disability studies we describe liberation from this as “crip ecology” recognizing the biopolitics of commodification and acknowledging the role of performance as creative epistemology.

Traveling blind is a performance both within normative subventions of assistance and cultural denotations of helplessness. All blind travel, taken as performance, is proleptic, both anticipating and answering implicit objections to the concept of blind independence in the very process of navigation. Accordingly tropes of blind travel always pertain to the incitement and enactment of art while walking.

Wouldn’t I just like to take a walk? Wouldn’t you?

Author: skuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University

One thought on “Proleptic”

  1. I was literally having this conversation yesterday with my friend, whose son is 11 and in a wheelchair, telling her how he wanted to be approached in public (now that’s self-advocacy!)

    Like

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