Paper short abstract:

This essay converges ethnical studies in relation to cosmological identity of blind people and their difficult convergence as a political (and cultural) collective. Does a paternalistic-oriented State refrain the political and culture potencies of sightless people?

Paper long abstract:

Converging ethnicity, State and identity studies, this essay analyzes sightless people and their difficult constitution as a political collective, pointed out by current studies and fieldwork observations. Unlike the Deaf community that constituted itself as a political group advocating for the depathologization of their corporality and social acceptance of Deafness as a culture and not a disability, research on sightlessness shows internal divergences that makes this project somewhat impossible. Congregating cosmological notions of ethnicity, especially through the works of Eriksen and Barth, I work on the cosmology of blind people and their identity construction as production of relational subjectivity and the conflict with a paternalistic State and its homogenic-ableist project. Does such asymmetrical relations of power hinder sightless potencies and their constitution as an autonomous politically-based identity?