Special Issue: visual impairment and aesthetics: Drafting the constitution of a sensory democracy

Deadline for Submissions: 1 May 2013

Although the discipline of aesthetics has laboured long under the illusion of its own sociopolitical removal, increased emphasis on identity politics, individual difference, and inclusiveness has prompted widespread misgivings about the long-assumed social isolation and ideological neutrality of the discipline. While recent work within several disciplines within the arts, humanities, and sciences reflects this increased interest in differential and inclusionary aspects of aesthetic perception, the contribution of disability studies to this democratic enterprise resists easy demarcation. In 2002, Mairian Corker and Tom Shakespeare observed that disability theorists had been too slow to embrace the radical implications for their discipline that are latent in the postmodern perspective. The decade that has passed since Corker and Shakespeare volunteered their disapproving verdict has witnessed heightened levels of activity by disability theorists and practitioners within interdisciplinary explorations of inclusionary approaches to aesthetics, increased awareness of the potential role of the arts within wider health and well-being agendas, and mounting critical interest in imaginative renderings of the experience of disability. The forthcoming Special Issue of the British Journal of Visual Impairment (January 2014), therefore, represents an opportune means to gauge the extent to which disability studies has overcome its earlier hesitancy to involve itself in the contemporary repoliticisation of processes of art production and reception, to identify emerging trends in the fostering of innovative and inclusive art education and practice environments, and to take stock of work that remains to be done within this field before it can be meaningfully claimed that individuals with visual impairment have been unconditionally included.

One aspect of the increased critical scrutiny to which traditional universal aesthetic principles continue to be subjected, which has an obvious bearing on the drive toward greater inclusion of individuals with visual impairment, is an increasingly widespread criticism of the privilege traditionally afforded to vision within art appreciation, the consequent passivity of the spectator, and the under-utilisation of the non-visual senses. Environmental aesthetics has also deviated from the motive of furthering understanding and appreciation of landscape and environmental engagement in ways that prioritise the visual as the modality through which our surroundings register their impression. Increasing interest in phenomenology within a variety of disciplines has prompted a gradual displacement of concern for the spectatorial by that for the ‘immersive’ or ‘experiential’, while a corresponding burgeoning of interest in medical humanities has brought a number of traditionally remote disciplines into innovative forms of theoretical and experiential exchange in order to probe the interface between disability and art. At the same time, art education institutions and museums and galleries are beginning to assume greater responsibility for the development of inclusive and multisensory learning environments and strategies in order to facilitate inclusive art experiences through greater use of sound, touch, movement, performance, olfaction, installation, and modes of proprioceptive learning.

In preparation for our Special Issue of the British Journal of Visual Impairment (January 2014), we invite contributions on the theme of visual impairment and aesthetics. It is intended that the Special Issue will provide a framework for a cross-disciplinary pooling of resources, ideas, and examples of good inclusive theory and practice, in order to foster dialogue between such diverse domains as medical humanities, literary theory, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, education, museum studies, disability and cultural studies, technology, architecture, technology and product design, art teaching and therapy, and media and performance art. As we do not wish to delimit the range of issues that might be addressed, we are inviting systematic and historical studies from all traditions and on any topic in analytic or applied aesthetics and critical and cultural theory with a bearing on the lived experiences and/or creative portrayal and engagement of individuals with visual impairment. The following list of possible concerns may, however, be helpful: