SIGHTLESS – A Novel CONTEXTUALISING RESEARCH: The Visually Impaired Investigator

Yeomans, Riley Ellis (2024) SIGHTLESS – A Novel CONTEXTUALISING RESEARCH: The Visually Impaired Investigator. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

This thesis aims to explore the representation of blind and visually impaired characters in crime fiction, with a specific focus on the role of stereotypes used by sighted writers, along with the impact that stereotypes have on broader society and sight-impaired people. It then creatively investigates how a blind writer can authentically represent the experience of visual impairment in a crime novel and how this representation might dispel associated myths. Experience of visual impairment presents a unique challenge to fiction, particularly crime fiction. Emphasising the link between perception, insight, and ability is a revealing arena in crime fiction in which to analyse this challenge. The methodology employed in this thesis includes autoethnography, literary analysis, and creative practice. I analyse six previous crime novels involving visually impaired protagonists, as well as the novels' social, historical and detective contexts. I examine the impact of having a sighted writer depict blindness and their contribution to broader disability stereotypes. Alongside this, by way of contrast, I draw autoethnographically on my experience, presenting a series of autobiographical fragments as part of a first-hand exploration of what it means to be visually impaired. Finally, I combine personal experience and awareness of previous shortfalls in fiction to write my novel, demonstrating how blind people experience stereotypes, how they overcome challenges and how they not only live with the impairment but might have an advantage in an investigative scenario. Most importantly, I show how a world without visual description might be conveyed in literature. Overall, I identify a consistent pattern of prejudice, even when supposedly positive ideas about blindness are represented. I also highlight a failure to sufficiently advance new ideas about this disability in crime fiction over the previous ten decades. However, the creative component demonstrates the viability of a crime novel without visual description and of educating readers on the struggles that blind and visually impaired people face. It will additionally push the traditional conventions of writing, opening new possibilities for writers in the future. This thesis demonstrates the need to continue exploring how to incorporate blind people in novels as well as in real-life workplaces and creative writing by disabled people. It presents a contribution to both the study of disability in literature and to the literature of disability.